Tire warmers in car racing

So I’ve been just casually watching and reading about various car racing series here lately and I’ve noticed that outside of open wheel, a lot of series don’t actually use tire warmers, which surprised me. I would’ve guessed all the various pro series would use them. Anyone have any insight into why they don’t? Internet is not helping me at all.

 

Most of them ban tire warmers

 

I know that but what I can’t figure out is why. Not sure what it accomplishes.

 

Officially, cost reduction. I think it makes sense. They are not safety items in the same way they are on motorcycles. So if everyone has cold tires, parity remains.

 

Really? I figured Warner’s would be such a minuscule cost at the pro level that it wouldn’t matter. But I’m also way outside my element here.

 

The even talked about taking them out of Formula One. Where teams easily spent $250 million a year before the latest budget reduction rules.

 

Not on the topic of car racing but one of the top off road ATV teams was running some let’s say “new technology” that if the other team looked close enough would see and duplicate. So the first couple times they ran it they put tire warmers on the machines when they were out in the paddock and could be seen. It was just a tactic to distract the other teams attention and it worked amazingly well.
Many of the teams were completely lost because they didn’t even know what they were normally used for.
Of course they were not “on” and served no purpose other than to distract attention.
I love racing “strategies” like that. Lol

Ride safe,
AAron

 

Wow. That’s kind of dumbfounding. I would think a seasons worth of warmers would cost less than a single weekends worth of tires.

 

For the one set you see them putting on the car they have 10 others sitting on warmers ready to go. That's 10 sets of warmers per car.

 

So I’ve been to the chicken hawk website plenty of times and until today never looked at the car tire warmers...... were talking anywhere from $17,000 to almost $23,000 per car. That’s assuming the warmers they use in F1 are similar priced and not higher.

 

A lot of it comes down to cost. Some race orgs allow them and others don't to save the teams some money. Chicken Hawk makes tire warmers for cars, but they are $2k or so and custom made so it wouldn't be like reselling motorcycle tire warmers.

Last time I truly followed Le Mans, they had tire ovens in the garages to heat the tire and the wheel to operating temperature.

Also, most of the teams in the large racing orgs will not reuse the tires after the race, so they don't care about heat cycling and the drivers already know how to drive on cold tires and how to work them up to temp ASAP.

 

You can bet the warmers they are using are double that cost per set.

 

I figured as much but I guess maybe I’m either underestimating the cost of a set of warmers or overestimating the cost of tires. Or both.

 

That is nowhere near what I expected.

 

Cheaper than I thought on the tires. About $3k a set. I figured low volume production of specific tires would have had them in the $10k to $20k a set range.

 

$3k a set for which series? F1? That would also be way cheaper than I’d expect as well considering there are off the shelf tires for for the normal consumer market that cost that.

 

Lets not also forget what it takes to power them.

Pretty limiting at tracks that don't have a really good infrastructure to support those kinds of power demands, as I wouldn't think that teams are hauling around or renting huge diesel generators everywhere they go......

 

According to what I could find on the web in a quick search that F1 cost. I was surprised at that number. I have to wonder if Pirelli gets a big number up front from F1 because that's too cheap to make money per set of tires.

 

Given the weight of a car I would suspect those tires come up to temp much quicker than a motorcycle

 

Meh, not really. It's counter balanced by them being larger with more mass.

It's cost reduction. Amateur events allow them everywhere but the false grid. Most car series do multiple pace laps, tire warmers would be pointless for that. They also don't do the whole park on the grid for the pre-race.

The amount of diesels generators on the pit wall if a series like NASCAR, IMSA, IRL allowed them would be stupid.