16 inch wheels?

[improvedae86]

NoHachi Wrote:I know some racing teams that experienced exactly the opposite.. The interesting question is WHY 17s were faster in some cases and WHY they were banned at all. Were they faster because of the bigger brakes that could fit under them? Superior traction? etc etc.

It could have been anything from better brake cooling to newer better tyre material. The brake rules didn't change so increase in brake size wasn't the issue , and going of the lap times it clearly showed more constant times lap after lap leading. Most likely it was just a stupid banning due to not being in OLD SCHOOL and fitting in with all the other dated rules.

NoHachi Wrote:Sorry but you are very wrong. With given tire pressures and vehicle weights, contact patch size is exactly equal for ALL imaginable tires. Think about it. If tire pressure is xx and vehicle weight = yy then contact patch size is always the same and equal to yy/xx. This is one of the most repeated internet fallicies you find. The only way to change contact patch size is to change tire pressures. (which is what they do for example in the desert).

Does the tyre always stay in this perfect postion ? no the tyre gets flex etc . A wider tyre will equal more area that given the tyre angle change or surface change in contact with the tyre has more chance of contacting with.

NoHachi Wrote:Again this is not correct people. pressure/cm2 is again exactly equal between tires. What does change is the shape of the contact patch. Narrow tires have longer, less wide contact patch that allows rubber particles to stay in contact with asphalt particles longer and allows for more time to squeeze the water out. That is why they are better in the wet.

I think time is unrelated to contact . The speed which the vehicle is traveling has more to do with time in that area of contact , in which more area will always equal more contact to a given rule of the vehicle weight effecting the pressure. Sure there is the fluid dynamics of water and lots of other factors like compounds etc.

NoHachi Wrote:Not correct. Wider tires actually can produce faster laptimes. For example, they reduce the friction experienced by the car due to turning. I wont go into details as I dont fully understand the elastic and dynamic behaviour of tires myself. Milliken&Milliken has a great introductory section that goes into this. I suggest you read it if you are really interested.
Less friction also means less force required at the steering wheel and less information arriving at the driver. Its all a trade-off..).

I have no idea how at low speed at the mechanical grip level more area doesn't equal more friction. I know trying to park with 225/45/16 over 205/50/15 requires alot more effort

NoHachi Wrote:Almost NO tire company does this kind of testing and releases the results. Whatever information you got with the R888s was most definately a very rough approximation, as true tire/force diagrams are not readable for 99.9% of the engineering community..nevermind the enthousiast.

I sure also Matt here has the same information on the R888 , if it was even a rough for most given vehicles is going to be a better starting with there information than nothing. Its not a race tyre its a club sprint semi slick so i guess giving information out would only produce more sales. Myself have used different setting in the alignment to which was given by them , but there settings work best so far. Sure i am not going out with data logging to later this year then there will be no approximations just real data. But going of the times there rough information is fine for most weekend track people out there , and switching from yokohamas i couldn't be more happy. Yokohama they give you jack information and there pricing.

Maybe it might be time to just keep the thread open to more feed back from people using 16" than all this random information with no real showing of results.