A post from iRacing forums written by Scottie McQueen showing us how the tyres works with this TCR cars. How to warm them up and how to save them from the wear at the mid of the race.
Seems to be a lot of misunderstanding going on about how the tyres behave, and what things are useful and what aren’t for qualifying and the race. So thought I’d share a little insight from my past week of driving and digging deep into the telemetry.
Next week if I have time I might put together some clips showcasing the qualifying weave.
Feel free to add to anything I may have missed.
Qualifying
Tyre warm up on your out lap is everything here, especially the rears.
A nice big burnout as you leave the pits will quickly get the fronts scrubbed. I even drag the handbrake a little while doing it. This is probably a little controversial, as compared to the real thing, its quite excessive. Don’t sit on the spot for 5 minutes, just a rolling burnout as you leave, anything more, and you risk facing Nims ban hammer. It is important though, you need some temp in the fronts and an oversteery balance for the next part.
Just weaving left and right like you are on a casual Sunday drive is not very good. It will only add temp to the front tyres, but you need temp in the rears too! So what you need to do is get the rear sliding while you weave (hence the burnout). You can do this easily by adding just a little brake as you turn. It will take some practice though, its very easy to over do it and find yourself facing the wrong way or in the fence, so load up a test server and get weaving!
You can do some handbrake drifting if you wish, this is a real world tactic also. I personally find it way to inconsistent though, and half the time end up in the wall. So I prefer to just stick to the weaving, its just as effective once you get the hang of it.
Real hard braking works, but only because it is locking and unlocking the tyres on ABS. Just driving round riding the brakes is useless, so don’t waste your time.
If you do spin out, just roll back onto the track and carry on, no big power skids or anything outrageous unless you want to risk a 1 week vacation.
Be aware, it is possible to over do it. The tyres work best at around 30kPa higher then their starting pressures (roughly 80-100C). If you heat them past that you will start losing grip. So at Laguna for example, one warm up lap and then a flying lap are enough to get the tyres into the window for the 2nd lap. 2 warm up laps heats them up too much.
Race
The basic gist of it is, the tyres have a window for which they are quick, but they settle at temperatures above that window and then start to wear more. Nothing you can do will change this (short of driving really slow). The only control we have is how quick the tyres reach that point and how long they stay in the “window”.
So during the formation lap you have a choice.
You can weave and heat up the tyres for grip early in the race, useful for making an early break for it, or getting early positions, but you will run your fastest laps earlier and reach the running temps sooner, at which point you are going have to manage your wear, the more you push, the slower you will be at the end.
Or you can do nothing, you will struggle for the first few laps on cold tyres, but will have great pace for the mid race battles and will have a reasonable tyre to the end of the race if you manage it well.
Quick tyre management tips
The harder you are on the tyres early, the smaller your window will be.
Smooth isn’t the only way to be fast, but smooth is good on tyres.
Using the ABS for braking is hard on the tyres, and will quickly add heat and wear to them.
Battling with someone is a surefire way to add heat and wear to the tyres. Choose your battles wisely, an early battle can cost you a lot more then 1 position in the long run.
There are a lot more nuances then this, but these are the key ones to be aware of.
Here is a simple graph showing the rise in tyre pressures (and thus temps) over a 20 minute run at Tsukuba
The last 10 minutes are where those who manage their tyres well will shine, and those who didn’t will suffer.
See you on the track!
Maybe it’s the ABS or something but on the NASCAR side of iRacing the only way to heat up your tires is to ride the brakes hard on your out lap. Brake halfway depressed and near full throttle. I hear this is the only way that works for the open wheel guys too.
Weaving back and forth does absolutely nothing to put heat in the tires and at some tracks (Atlanta, Texas) causes tire wear to boot.