Driving over piano"rumble strips"causes excessive tire wear?

[g-force_addict]

By piano I mean the bumpy red and white strips on the corners. Likely they are called some other way depending on where you live.
Do the bumps increase tire wear?
Doesn't the paint make them more slippery?
What's their effect on aerodynamics as the car bounces?

Is a racing line where you are not driving over them faster?
If so, which is worse the pre-corner entry outer strip, the apex inner strip or the corner exit outer strip?

[Jersey Tom]

Depends what you call or how you define "excessive." I'd take that to mean so much wear that it becomes impractical. In that case, the answer is no - or else the drivers wouldn't use it. Similarly, is a line avoiding them faster? I'd say no, as if it were the drivers would avoid them as a result.

From that evidence, any downsides must be being outweighed by the gain from being able to take a wider line.

How they effect aerodynamics... that's a good question. I wish I had a link handy but there is one ultra slow motion video in particular I'm thinking of, handful of F1 cars going over kerbs and such. The front wings move around like they're jelly.

[Tim.Wright]

I doubt they wear the tyres at all because they are normally off the ground at this point. Its more of a durability test for the suspension.

I've done a fair bit of work with laptime simulations and found that the laptime is massively sensitive to trajectory in terms of corner cutting. Small changes in the corner cutting algorithms resulted in laptime differences measured in seconds.

To me, that explains why, with all the finely tuned aero and suspension work, the drivers still throw the car through over the curbs to straighten out a chicane. You will win more time doing this than any setup will give you (provided the car is setup to bounce over curbs)

Tim

PS I have a strange urge to buy tickets for the Spanish GP... anyone know where I can get a good deal?

[bhall]

[...]

How they effect aerodynamics... that's a good question. I wish I had a link handy but there is one ultra slow motion video in particular I'm thinking of, handful of F1 cars going over kerbs and such. The front wings move around like they're jelly.

[riff_raff]

bhallg2k-

That slo-mo video of the RB car going over the rumble strips is very interesting. You can see that the wheel, suspension and chassis are relatively unaffected by passing over the rumble strips. But the front wing is clearly experiencing a dynamic oscillation response. Can't say whether the front wing oscillation is due to aero instability effects or structural dynamic coupling effects.

[bhall]

I think it's the latter, specifically that Red Bull uses the flexi-nose/wing as a sort of tuned mass damper. Look at the other cars in the video below and you'll see far less wing oscillation but substantially more tire/chassis oscillation. The Red Bull chassis, on the other hand, is silky smooth.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnqlLh-YiTQ[/youtube]

Then again, ↓

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Start at 35 seconds into the video and see how the rumble strips cause oscillation in the floor as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyzuFgtYj-o[/youtube]