Re: Porsche/talking about track tires in the wet

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

--- Tessie McMillan <tessmc@domain.elided> wrote:
> This to follow up on Scott's note about the
> fish-tailing 911 in the rain...
> 
> Scott, I still stand firmly by the Yo-Mama! Advan
> A032R in the wet. 

So, you gonna show us?  Huh?  Saturday at PIR? :-)

I'm glad to hear it about the A032R, though -- it's
high on the list of tires for the unused set of Alfa
wheels I've got in the garage.  Whether they go on the
Spider or the Berlina will be an interesting
discussion...

I still remember the first car on which I ran Yokohama
A008s, some fourteen years ago.  COMPLETELY different
tire from the A032R, and I ran them on an MGB -- not
exactly the tire-burning torque-monster that a 911 is,
but it was still frightening in the wet.  I lived in
southern California at the time, though, where we got
less rain on average than we've had snow here in
Oregon this year.  

> My vote still goes for driver error in the 911.

Same here -- with tire compound/tread design/condition
being another very likely avenue of investigation.  If
I were Grissom, I'd have somebody in CSI take tire
prints of this car before we presented a theory to
Brass. :-)

One final observation on tire width and rain driving:
yes, narrower tires can work better in rain and/or
snow, for a fairly simple reason: not CSI, but PSI. 
The car's weight (pounds) is distributed on the tires'
contact patches (square inches).  If you raise the
size of the contact patches but keep the car the same
weight, you have fewer pounds per square inch -- and
it can be easier for hydraulic pressure from the water
on the road surface to lift the car off the tarmac.

This action, called hydroplaning when it happens to
the tire/road interface, is essentially the same as
that performed by the film of oil between your
bearings and your crankshaft.  Another reminder that
-- just as in the case of wide tires with little or no
discernible tread being great on a dry racetrack --
what works in one application may not provide the
desired result in another.

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
.
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