As we know, tires have grooves with a very specific purpose: to drain water in wet conditions. It is thanks to these grooves that the tires maintain contact with the wet asphalt, providing the necessary grip so that curves do not become straight and the brake pedal does not become a kind of “artistic” accelerator.
This phenomenon is called aquaplaning. and those who have already experienced it know that there is no joke at all...
But… what about when the floor is dry?
As already mentioned, competition cars use slick tires to increase the contact surface with the asphalt and therefore the grip. The equation is simple: the greater the grip, the greater the “beat” that the timer takes.
And it is precisely based on this assumption that one of our readers, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from his group of friends (don't worry Ricardo Santos, we'll never reveal your name!) asked us the following question:
Automobile Ledger Reader (anonymous)Do bald dry tires have more grip than their grooved counterparts?
The answer is no. Tires no longer have dry grip because they are bald. Quite the opposite…
Why?
Because unlike slick tires, which use soft compounds that can only last a few tens of kilometers (or laps), our car tires were designed to run thousands of kilometers and use harder compounds, therefore less sticky.
When the rubber that composes the tire grooves runs out, only the carcass rubber remains, which generally has less quality.
In addition to having less quality (thus less grip), road tires were not designed to run bald, either in terms of geometry or in terms of structure. The “leftover” rubber is too close to the tire's metal belt, increasing the probability of a puncture.
Lastly, a bald tire must have its rubber aged, so the rubber that is left over, in addition to not having the necessary quality, does not guarantee the necessary elastic properties to generate traction.