Tyre degradation

[Guest]

I'm a bit lazy to sign up so hopefully the mod will forgive me for asking an off topic question.

My question is regarding the stupid tire controversy. Bridgestone says that 'the front tyre contact patch of the Williams 286mm, 16 more than what is allowed by the rules'.

My question is is this level of degradation the norm?

[Monstrobolaxa]

welll...my answer would be....yes....

Well the michelins acording to what I heard are designed to do exactly that...so the "degradation " is normal for the Michelin tire....

In terms of a normal tire....the wear rate of the tire depends all on the construction of the tire...and the usage conditions.....I don't know for how long you've been watching F1...but if you remember the slick tires....specially in 1997 you say them blistering like hell.....a blister consisted in the tire surface heating up too much....so the "oils" used in the composition of the rubber would create bubbles...that would jump off the tire surface...these blisters could go up to 3 cm in diameter.....nut in some cases they were a litltle bigger....

So...the contect patch of a tire has around 5 cm of rubber that can be eleminated during the tire usage.....so up to that limite it is a normal degradation.....but it also depends on the amount of time you use the tire....

[Guest]

Thanks!