Thursday, June 6, 2024

Now that's a tire

 


7 comments:

  1. Jacky Ickx is still around, age 79. In addition to F1 racing he won LeMans 6 times.

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    1. And a true gentleman. As any of his interviews can show!

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  2. He was a fabulous driver and won four of the LeMans races for Porsche. Here's a link to a short (<7 minutes) video of him describing what it felt like to drive the Porsche 936 and 956 on the track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcuhp7UUNM

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    1. Never won an F1 championship, altough he was a runner up two times. He came very close when Jochen Rindt died with enough points to clinch it, even when not around anymore to enjoy it. Ickx mentioned he was happy not to have won it because that would just be wrong. A true class act, besides an amazing driver on anything with wheels, two, four, and more!

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  3. Watching the Indy 500 or any F-1 race I am amazed at the roundness and balance of the tires that is required. Watching those tires spin in excess of 200 mph makes me think that the slightest imbalance or out round would be a catastrophe. There must be a lot of work that goes into setting up a wheel/tire assembly and getting it ready for a race. You can see a bunch of weights on that one.

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    1. Bias ply tires needed to be spun at the speeds they would run at to get an accurate balance, and some times you had to tweak the balance to work with two speeds. Radial types are much less speed sensitive in comparison. The problem seems to have been the diameter growth variances due to the speed of rotation.

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  4. Had a friend who was head of Indy car race timing a few years ago. After that she became the head of tires for Firestone. All th tires were mounted and
    balanced in their garage at each track.
    Teams could only maintain pressure within Firestone specs.
    Bubbarust

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