I'm driving the FOX on South City Long.

Things are fine on R1 tyres for the shorter races, i.e. 5-10 laps.

For races longer than this, I find that the R1 tyres are not really suitable as they tend to overheat/wear out after 8-10 laps.

So, I change the tyres to R2s which have a higher optimum operating temperature (85 degrees). Obviously the plan is, that although they will take longer to reach operating temperature they will last longer without overheating.

Now, the R2 tyres do last much longer but the problem is I can't seem to get them up to optimum operating temperature. South City (as you all know) is quite twisty, so I would have expected the tyres to warm up without too much trouble.

To give an indication of the kind of speeds I'm doing, when I'm playing offline against the Pro AI (experienced) I'm usualy giving the lead car a run for it's money. Not WR pace I know, but surely quick enough to warm the tyres up - no?

How do I get the R2 tyres up to temperature?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers
d

You can probably run less tyre pressures, and perhaps more camber to generate some heat. I don't know if tracking increases tyre temps in LFS, but you could try running more if it does, on the basis that scrubbing speed isn't really an issue at somewhere like South City (and is much less important than decent tyre temps.

If you drive extra agressively and get the tyres warm (using too much steering in the first lap or two), will they stay warm after that, or do they cool back down?

guess for that combo r1 are the best choice.

r2 tires are crap, to get them to temperature you´d either have to slide carefully somewhere ( ) or decrease the pressure.

i´d advise you to use nilyns set, if i´m not remembering totally wrong it´ll last heaps of laps.

I agree with Tristan. Pressure seems to be the biggie here. That's how I get the temperatures I want too. I don't run the FOX very often though.

Hi T

Thanks for the reply.

Quote from tristancliffe :

If you drive extra agressively and get the tyres warm (using too much steering in the first lap or two), will they stay warm after that, or do they cool back down?

To be honest I haven't tried that, but when I drive aggressively on cold tyres I usually spin out!

I'll give it a go though, to see what happens.

The thing is, even after 10+ laps, it just feels like the tyres aren't gonna get any hotter. The surface temp seems to go green but the internal temps won't budge.

Maybe they only warm up inside during GP leingth races i.e. 50-60 laps. Even so, most tyres irl normally warm up after 10 or so laps don't they?

My tyres warm up in about 2 or 3 laps irl (although the last lap the improvement is almost negligible).

Don't throw it around too much, but near apexs suddenly put the steering on full lock to induce lots of understeer and tyre slip. As for the rears, burnouts might help

Internal temps aren't that critical in LFS (iirc), just the surface temps. If they are green and reasonably even then that's good enough.

Thanks guys.

OK

So going with the pressures then, what should I roughly be looking at?

Say, drop the pressures by 10% (2-3psi) at first and maybe more later if handling is still OK?

Quote from tristancliffe :

... As for the rears, burnouts might help

Aah, excellent - I was hoping I might have to do something like that!

Try increasing the pressures with R1's, all the way to max if you have to. R1's aren't really overheated until they get up to about 85-90 degrees, especially since they'll cool down a lot as they wear down.

Just a quick bit of feedback after messing with pressures.

Dropping to 19psi front and 16psi rear (doing around 1:39s to 1:40s), internal temps were as follows:

After 3 laps: cold blue starting to turn turquoise on rhs tyres (mostly left hand turns on South City Long).

After 5 laps: turquoise starting on all tyres, more on rhs tyres as expected.

After 10 laps: rhs tyres turquoise, lhs tyres blue/turquoise.

This is much better. Just stone cold blue before.

Might try even lower pressures and longer runs when time permits, but still very driveable at these new settings.

Thanks for the pointers guys.

Quote from Forbin :

Try increasing the pressures with R1's, all the way to max if you have to. R1's aren't really overheated until they get up to about 85-90 degrees, especially since they'll cool down a lot as they wear down.

Ah, OK.

Same method, but the other way 'round, eh?

Cool. I'll give that a go too.

Thanks, Forbin

You know, the normal/optimal LFS tyre heat cycle normally involves them slightly overheating (getting orange/red-ish) for about the first 1/4 - 1/3 of the stint distance. As soon as the tyres start wearing down the temperatures will also go down again. If the tyres don't overheat at all, chances are they will get much too cold once the rubber wears thin.

Regarding tyre compound, if possible you should go R1 with high pressures to keep the tyres cool rather than choosing R2 and fighting to get the tyres up to temperature at all. Even with the less favourable tyre pressures the R1 will provide way more grip, and they will also more likely fit the usual LFS tyre heat cycle.

You should really stick with R1s and up the pressures, as Forbin said. The percentage of league races that I've had where I had to switch to the middle compound to make them last is really, really tiny. Usually you can make the "softs" last quite a long time if you manage camber and pressure correctly.

Interesting stuff.

So do the tyres in LFS ever wear out completely?

What I mean is, if you run R1s at high pressure for say, 60+ laps, will they eventually destroy themselves if you just keep going?

I know you can burst tyres doing burn-outs, but I just wondered about how they behave under proper race conditions.

If you accidently oversteer or spin then you will overheat your tyres. Then its hard to get the temperature back down to optimal (green). You can see how much the tyres are worn by the thickness of the pad on the F9 screen.

You should use R1s with high pressure because they have more grip than R2.

Yes, they will wear very thin and pop once it's completely worn down. However, the grip doesn't seem to change with rubber thickness (but I'm not sure what happens with real tyres either, so...)

Laptimes at the end of a race usually decrease, because you can stress them more without overheating them (less rubber material holds less heat/energy). Straight line speed might go down a bit because of the smaller tyre radius but on the other hand corner speeds and acceleration increase because of the reduced tyre mass which makes more than up for the maximum speed loss (actually while the vmax potential decreases, the real straight line speed on the track might be higher due to the higher corner exit speeds).

Cool.

Thanks to everyone for sharing knowledge and experience.

Gonna try R1s with more pressure tonight.

Cheers.

This wasn't driving the FOX, but ya, tires pop. Blew both fronts under heavy braking (tried to make them last 1 more lap) Result was a 5min lap getting back to pits and loss of 2 position during a league race.

got to agree with the R1's reply's here..

i dont personly class ss as a high force's track twisty yes but its the high forces wich generate the higher temps, westhill for e.g is the worst for this, r1's should last you a lot longer than that, i duno what set ya running but if its a downloaded one its more that lightly a set close to WR times and unless you know HOW to drive that set your gona have problems , plus these sets are well known for eating tires...

personly i think just throwing more more psi in the tires can be a bit of a lottery, somtimes you can go the wrong way, loss of grip under breaking and underster for example, then you temp's get even higher ... but its worth a try, all im saying is if your doing 7 laps now and there cooked dont expect to increase preasures and be doing 20 laps it just dont work like that...

my advice is

1. if its a WR set or close to it, get shut of it, do you own or get a more stable set, otherwise your chasing your own tale..

2. take a look at your driving are you asking the car to do things its not set up to do?, some like to be thrown into the apex some like a smooth turn in , get this wrong and yur temps will sky rocket and no amount of added tire pressure will put that right....

hope ya get it sorted