Quote:
Originally Posted by Oval
Lots of factors at play here... Beetles are light (especially in the nose) so only need a small tyre compared to other cars. I give myself a sore neck in motorsport with only 195/205 tyres (semi-slick) and in fact any wider (especially on the front) doesn't heat up sufficiently
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This is Bang on^^^^^^,
but of course it's Motorsport where the wrong moves on tyres and brakes show up,, over braking and over trying is easy to do, brake temperature is tyre temperature, especially over the all important first few race laps where a properly set up Beetle can do a lot of damage to embarrass the others, too big on discs or calipers will mean no brake temperature to heat the hub/wheel and tyre core, it's even a problem in winter with the bog stock VW caliper on light cars of say 700 to 800 kg.
One advantage, to a point, of WIDER tyres on light cars, is you can run softer compounds at lower pressures, which on theory make it a quicker car, but again, it comes back to good brake temperature to heat the bigger tyre to best operating temperature.