F1 Long-term review: the fixes (part 2)

2) Tires, tires, tires. An old adage in racing of all scales is that tires are 90% of your setup. At a big race at an unfamiliar track, we talk about "hitting the tire setup". The challenge is to predict the best tire combo which changes throughout the race weekend. The "best" tire combo is one that provides the most overall grip while offering a balance that suits the motor and your driving style. This balance can be additionally tuned with dual rate, but you don't want to stray too far as steering angle has other repercussions.

You know the track will change, so there's no use in freaking out about overall grip. At the same time you can't afford to compromise practice or qualifying with an unbalanced car. What a lot of newer drivers don't realize is that low traction usually makes a car push, not oversteer (especially on entry). The exception is a motor with a lot of power or an abrupt powerband that can overwhelm the rear tires on exit. I start with as much rear grip as possible and a pretty aggressive front tire. The front tires gradually shift to harder compounds and less steering as the traction and front bite comes up over the weekend. Experiment with different brands, compounds, carpet tires and truing to develop a spectrum of front grip you can use accurately dial in the balance.

At the worlds, I completely screwed over my teammate Matt in the main with a bad call on rear tires. Due to the aforementioned packaging issues, I had been struggling with grip the whole week and took a last chance gamble with trued PN8's over Kyosho 20 rears. The grip was improved on a few trial laps, so I recommended it to the rest of my team. What I hadn't accounted for was the chemical grip fade of the PN8's. Less than halfway through the main, the rear grip disappeared and Matt and I were left with a couple really ill-handling F1's.

Luckily, Eugene and Jacob stuck with consistency of the K20's. Later on, I tried the same trued PN8's back-to-back against worn K20's, and it was like night and day. There was no physical indication of wear on the PN8's, but the grip was gone. The truing probably didn't help. The lesson learned is to understand your tires, how they wear, and when they will let go. The PN8's might just be the hot ticket when new, and I need to study how many runs I can get from them without relying on physical wear indicators.

Additionally, you MUST use R246 tape with these tires. There is just too much squirm in the center that leads to unpredictability. We also superglue the tire with mod motors for even more consistent traction.