Customer Reviews

The Racing & High-Performance Tire: Using Tires to Tune for Grip & Balance (R-351)

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The tire is the most important part of an automobile, and the least covered by the literature. That's why any information about tires is a treasure. The complexity of the structure and behavior of the tire are such that no complete and satisfactory theory has been propounded. Books on vehicle dynamics are available but they are mostly written by academics who emphasize mathematical rather than clear explanation of how things really work. The tire might be the most useful and complicated device humans make, but the tire manufacturers provide no useful information to their customers. People are forced to buy tires mainly on the basis of price and company reputation. Even race teams get tire data only sporadically, and that data is pretty useless anyway. Tire performance is necessarily highly dynamic, but tire data comes mainly from testing under static conditions.

This book describes basic properties of components of the rubber compound, carbon black reinforcement, and so on. It also shows mechanical model for rubber: "If you apply a cyclic force the rubber will deform mostly like a spring and give back the force applied to it, but also partly like a damper which is sensitive to the speed (frequency ) of the applied force". The book breaks rubber friction into adhesion (molecular bonding) and mechanical keying (deformation friction). Mechanical keying becomes more important when the road surface is lubricated by dust, water or ice; here is where another interesting property of rubber, viscoelasticiity comes into play. "Press your thumbnail into a street tire and the rubber rebounds. Press it into a racing tire and the mark stays there, recovering only slowly. This is a simple but crude test of hysteresis, or energy loss, in rubber". The book analyzes surface texture effects on rubber friction - how the slope of the asperities affect friction, and "the myth of off-line in the rain". Tire behavior is another major issue of the book.

The last 75 pages of the book (chapter 11) are not directly about tires, and devoted to "Basic Vehicle Dynamics", in case if you don't have an appropriate book on that topic, e.g. "Race Car Vehicle Dynamics" by Milliken Bill and Doug.

I also recommend "Mechanics of Pneumatic Tires". It is a PDF that you can freely download from the publisher's website using an internet search engine. This PDF is an excerpt from "Theory of Ground Vehicles, 3rd Edition" by J. Y. Wong.

Beleive it or not, this technical book had me glued to its pages like a great work of fiction. Haney is an excellent writer, and the 'meat' of the text is intertwined with great real-world stories and examples from motorsport. Interviews with Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, as well as other less famous but no less competent vehicle dynamic experts are included.

The first part of the book is everything you could have ever imagined you'd like to know about tires. There are explanations and insights into tire manufacturing and testing that I don't think you could find anywhere else. If you are into any form of motorsport you realize how important tires are; this book will help you understand how tires function and, even more importantly, how to use this information to go faster!

The second section of the book is basic vehicle dynamics. If you're well read, most of that will be review. But for beginners, I think the way Haney starts with tire dynamics and works ino the vehicle is very natural and a good way to learn for the first time.

This book is technical but easy to read, contains information and discussion that will be enjoyable for veterans yet not overwhelm newcomers to vehicle dynamics. Even if you have a large library I promise you this book will remain one of your all-time favorites.

The Racing & high-performance Tire "using the tires to tune for grip & Balance" by Paul Haney.

As an autocross racer I know that tires are the second most important factor in quick laps; (the driver being the first) and this book told me everything I wanted to know about racing tires.

Graphs abound showing grip (as lateral force) verses slip angle, and camber curves showing, grip verses tire camber. The graphs and drawings are interspersed with text explanations and stories from the tire and racing industries.

This is a "near engineering textbook." Concepts of force, pitch, Center of Gravity, spring rate and contact patch are well covered, but the mathematics coverage is very light. One can read the book and work any equations presented with simple algebra (no calculus required.) For me, as a technically minded racer, but not a tire engineer, the level of detail was superb; in depth without being mind numbing.

While many of the concepts in the book I have seen before; frequently they are presented in a confusing, incomplete or contradictory way in more shallow treatments (say for instance in car magazines, or on forums on the `net). I learned some things that I hadn't seen before as well. For instance there is a graph on page 197 showing "self aligning torque vs. slip angle... (for) 3 cambers" It shows that Self Alignment Torque decreases as slip angles increase, where grip is maximized. Leading to the concept that: "One of the holy grails of racecar setup is to have the steering torque fall off at maximum grip and give the driver a signal that the grip limit has been reached." A new concept for me and something I'll be looking for this racing season, while driving my Mustang Cobra in SCCA SM class racing.

While the majority of the book deals with tires; 3 chapters at the end deal with tuning and vehicle dynamics. Suddenly after reading about tires in great detail, a short explanation about anti-roll-bar tuning made much more sense.

In short if you want to study the engineering of tire construction and calculus of vehicle dynamics look elsewhere; but if you race and you want to know more about tires and how they relate to fast times on the track (and if you're a racer you should); get this book and read it cover to cover.

-Monta Elkins

So although it might not seem appealing to read a book about tires, Paul Hanley has done a SUPERB job at gathering a lot of information, chewing it up and presenting it in a way which is a pleasure to read.
Despite me being an Engineer with some racing knowledge, I learned a great deal about tires and could see this as being great for non-technical people as well thanks to the author's way of presenting the information. Paul presents the reader with interviews, Graphs,diagrams and pictures and takes you from the begins of rubber, through the chemistry of tire compounds up to tuning the chassis to work with the tires.
I highly recommend this book

This book explains well the complexities of the racing and high performance tire. A large part of the book is given to the effect of different types of suspension settings, which I also found particularly useful

Paul Haney's book about tyres proves interesting before turning a page. The Racing & High-Performance Tire: Using Tires to Tune for Grip & Balance uses the American tire instead of the English tyre.

I am a michael schumacher fan since 1991 and i have a large collection of books on or based on him,and this one will join that collection,its the bees knees i am hoping one day to meet michael schumacher and hand over my book i have compiled. but i hope it sells well like all the other ferrari/michael schumacher books and if it does i will be happy as can be, its such a pity that this book you cant buy in england and many other books on michael schumacher one thing is certain in case you cant buy anymore books and audio or cd books are to replace books i will certainly start a collection of them.