Wes;
You have a good point regarding Firestone's knowledge base. They certainly
had a wealth of experience at one time.
However, I wonder how much of the earlier Firestone work with narrow tires
was simply due to tradition and how much real advantage, if any, they had
over other tire approaches? True, Firestone ruled Indy for a long time
during the roadster era but in the mid- sixties, tire design changed rapidly
after a few iconoclasts demonstrated that tires mounted on wider rims had
stiffer sidewalls and this translated into faster lap times. Tire
manufacturers were convinced that their traditional aspect ratio must be
maintained, so they built wider section tires for the now- wider rims. Once
again, the "ignorant" racers put the new wider tires on even wider rims and
this ratcheted up to what we see today.
Back in the skinney tire days, "experts" were convinced that racers could
never exceed one "G", as a coefficient of friction of 1 was thought to be
the limit. That conventional wisdom fell by the wayside on dragstrips in the
'50s.
It would be interesting to hear from some of the Firestone LSR team although
I think that Goodyear has more current experience.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
|