Tires are pretty amazing things. From the insane lateral grip road cars and formula cars depend on to the clawing and biting prowess of off road rubber, there’s an application for everyone. On the other end of the performance tire spectrum is the venerable drag slick. Invented in the 1960s, the wrinkle wall slick revolutionized the world of drag racing and is a large part of the 300mph nitro powered rocket ships of today. These tires do wholly unnatural things when subjected to the thousands of horsepower and umpteen thousands of ft/lbs of torque the engines unleash on them each and every lap.
We all know that the tires grow and expand during a run, but how many of you knew that they go virtually square at the top end of the track? We’ve seen still photos of this phenomena but this video is a simply amazing account of what happens in living color. We watched this video a couple of times and it really is mind blowing. The car and track is unnamed, but it is definitely a nitro burner and it seriously hustles down the track.
You’ll never look at a big drag slick the same way again after seeing this video!
That is what stiff sidewalls and low inflation pressure will do. There is a YouTube video I’m thinking of that shows a machine tire test from the 50’s where the passenger car tire, rolling on a steel drum like a dyno setup, has an incredible standing wave at right angles to the contact patch. No wonder those bias ply tires didn’t like low pressure and/or high speeds.
I’m assuming the tire flattens out at the end of the run due to the downforce generated by the aerodynamics at 300 mph.