What Actually Occurs with Your Tires When You Drive at High Speeds

What Actually Occurs with Your Tires When You Drive at High Speeds

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      I may not be a racecar driver, but I once thought that the straighter you navigate a racetrack, the quicker your lap time would be. However, like many things, I was mistaken. It’s not just about speeding through corners; it's more about maintaining momentum from one corner to the next, staying right at the limit of grip while your tires make sounds of their own. There exists a threshold where your tires are perfectly gripped, just before they start to lose traction. This concept relates to slip angle, which is vital to grasp if you're serious about high-speed driving. It's also the focus of our latest YouTube video.

      To clarify, I’m not featured in the video; my boss Kyle is. Furthermore, he isn’t the driving expert—Nik Romano is. Nik is fast in any vehicle he drives, making him the right person to consult if you're looking to best the local Corvette owner on the track in your GR 86.

      In simple terms, slip angle is the discrepancy between the direction in which your tire is pointing and the path it’s actually taking. Kyle and Nik visited Apple Valley Speedway for the track-driving segment of this explanation to demonstrate it in action. You can see Nik maneuvering the Scion FR-S demo car through corners—not completely straight, yet not fully drifting either. What he’s doing is optimizing the contact patch as the tire flexes, maintaining it at that critical limit before traction fails. It’s quite impressive.

      Even more fascinating was their demonstration involving a Porsche 718 Spyder RS on a glass floor. Thanks to the friendly folks at Porsche Santa Clarita and Galpin Automotive, we were able to film this experiment from their Wonderground, a museum located in the basement with a partial glass ceiling. By observing the tires from below, our Very Professional Explainers showcased how the contact patch shifts as the car changes direction. Unless I'm overlooking something, there really isn't another way to physically illustrate this.

      There’s a lot more to the topic than my brief explanation involves, including a fair amount of mathematics. (Did you know that some racing slicks can achieve optimal slip angles of 7 or 8 degrees, while rally tires can exceed 30 degrees? Now you do.) Check out the video at the beginning of this blog for the complete picture. It’s definitely worth a view.

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What Actually Occurs with Your Tires When You Drive at High Speeds

We drove a Porsche on a glass surface so you can observe how your tires react while cornering.