Formula One Fans.....?

Question

What is the difference between hard and soft tyres? Does one have more grip/ bigger treds?? Cheers J

Answer 1

well the soft tyre is when the compounds are soft and can blister very easily and if you get a hard tyre the compounds are tighter and less wear and tear, the treds on the soft are wider but the hard tyre treds are closer together.

Answer 2

Soft tyres grip better, but wear faster and have a greater rolling resistance so are slower.

Hard tyres are the opposite.

Answer 3

the softer the tyre the more sticky it is. this helps grip on the track. They really do get very sticky! At the moment there is not a lot of what we would call tread on the tyres, just grooves. next year it will be back to slick tyres with no grooves.

Answer 4

Softer tires always wear faster, and usually provide more grip, as long as they stay within operating temperature.

In circumstances where there is a lot of heat as a result of high ambient temperatures or extreme loads the softer tire will overheat easier and start to slide on a film of melting rubber producing a slower lap time.

A good example of this is the fact that some times teams prefer to start on scrubbed tires.

A new tire has a lot of rubber resulting in lots of movement, movement crates friction and friction produces heat.

The tire will lap very very quickly initially and then overheat and go off.

So if the weather is very warm they won't put the car on brand new tires, rather use tires that have a few careful laps in them, or, preferably have been scrubbed by the engineers of the team because careful laps is not what drivers are there to do.

This is a good example of what heat can do to a tire.

The difference between soft and hard rubber in F1 is much smaller than in other disciplines of motorsport.