- Formula One has the most advanced technology
in the biggest budgets in motor sports.
So how the heck do they have tires
that just flat out stink?
Why does the best car in the world have tires on it
that are incapable of driving from my house
to Disneyland,
and back?
What if I told you
that there's an elaborate global conspiracy
to make Formula One tires worse than they could be,
that they're engineered to fail.
(indistinct) F1 tire is planned obsolescence,
happening in mere minutes in front of millions of fans
who are powerless to do anything to stop it.
So today, we're gonna find out
why formula tires only last 50 miles.
You into conspiracy theories?
Neither flat earth or friends.
Let's go.
Well, we here at "Donut,"
we've had a...
Sorry, okay.
Good morning, and thanks to Off The Record
for sponsoring today's episode.
Now, it might come as a surprise to you guys
but we here at "Donut,"
we've gotten a ticket or two in our lifetime.
Ain't that right, champ?
Well, would you believe that 41 million people get a ticket
each year.
That's 112,000 of you each day.
And if you pay that fine,
you're admitting guilt.
And on top of that,
you're gonna get insurance increases
on top of the fine you just paid.
That sounds pretty silly to me.
Wow, Lawyer Jerry,
who looks awfully like tickling Tony.
I didn't know that.
So what can we do?
Well, you can fight those tickets
with the help of Off The Record.
(banner flipping)
They're gonna connect you
with an experienced lawyer
who will fight the ticket on your behalf.
There's just slight problem here.
Well, what if I have oil on my shoe
from the annual turducken fry which caused my foot
to slip off the brake
and I roll through a stop sign,
and then the cop writes me a ticket for that.
Will they cover that?
Well, Off The Record fights all types of moving violations
including speeding tickets, misdemeanors,
and even D.U.I charges.
What's even better is that Off The Record has
a 97% success rate,
and offers clients a full refund,
if they're not able to either reduce their ticket
or keep it off your driving record completely.
Wow!
How do I fight my turducken conundrum?
Just go in the link in the description
or head on over to offtherecord.com/donut
to get 10% off your first ticket.
To understand why formula one tires live such short lives,
we need to know how a tire works
and what makes a tire stop working.
As the only point of contact between a car
and the road,
a tire's job is to create grips you can accelerate,
brake, and turn.
To create grip,
a tire's tread needs to be soft enough
to squish into
and around the tiny peaks and valleys
that make up a rough road surface on a road
or a racetrack.
And that's true for tread on your mom's minivan tires,
and it's true for the tread on an F1 tire.
Now, before you go (indistinct) comments saying,
"Hey, Jerry,
"F1 tires, they don't have treads,
"they're called slicks."
Well, I gotta tell ya,
slicks do have tread.
Tread is just a layer of rubber
that contacts the road surface.
And tread is tread,
whether it's slick or groovy.
Sometimes we use the word tread when we really mean
tread pattern.
That's the grooves molded into the tread on road tires
as well as formula one rain tires,
which maintain grip
by channeling water out of the tread.
So the job of every tire is to make grip.
But not all the tires are equally good at their job.
A minivan on normal all season tires can produce
about 0.7 G's of cornering force or lateral grip,
and about 0.8 G's of braking force.
Now, how different is a formula one car from a minivan?
Well, it's capable of six times that;
four and a half G's of lateral grip
and five G's of braking grip.
That's enough G's to bring tears
to your eyes.
Literally, the amount of force will actually draw the tears
out of your tear ducts.
So how's the tread different between a minivan tire
and an F1 tire?
And why does one only lasts 50 miles?
A tread on a conventional tire is made from natural rubber
and about a dozen rubber-like synthetic chemicals
with names like styrene-butadiene
and halogenated butyl-rubber.
Carbon black in extremely pure form of carbon,
is also mixed in
to improve the tire strength.
And this gives the tire their black color
because rubber, if you didn't know,
by itself, is white.
The tread also includes antioxidants and antiozonants
to prevent deterioration due to oxygen
and ozone exposure,
further extending the tire's life.
Now, tread also includes silica
to decrease rolling resistant,
increasing fuel economy
and reducing wear.
So, conventional tire,
it can last up to 90,000 miles.
And it's the specific chemical makeup
or compound of the treads rubber which makes that possible.
So, by fine tuning that compound,
a tire manufacturer can determine
how long a tire lasts,
how soft it is,
and at what temperature it produces maximum grip.
Now, the exact formula of a Formula One tire is kept
pretty hush-hush.
But to fine tune their performance,
the compound includes more synthetic rubbers
and as little as 10% of the natural stuff.
This provides increased strength, heat resistance,
and more of consistent grip.
Now, in F1 tire,
they won't have as many antioxidants
and anti-oxidants either,
because they don't last long enough
for oxygen and ozone deterioration
to be a concern.
F1 tires would probably contain less silica
because reduce rolling resistance means reduced grip.
I'm saying probably
because I don't know the chemical makeup.
So your mom, she wants a tire
that's comfortable, fuel economical,
long-lasting,
and provides enough grip
to be safe.
Now, F1 teams, they only want one thing.
And that is the disgusting amount of grip,
even if it only lasts for 50 miles.
Now, figuring out
how to make an F1's tires massive amount of grip,
is currently done by just one company, Pirelli.
Now, they've been the exclusive manufacturer
of Formula One tires for 10 years,
but that can change if they don't satisfy
certain requirements dictated by the FIA.
The FIA,
that's the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile.
The shadowy international cabal
that runs Formula One.
Now, F1 tire contracts have previously been held
by Michelin, Bridgestone and Goodyear.
So there's always another company waiting
to just slide in
and steal all that tire money.
There's always another dude
who's just waiting in line to steal your girl.
So you gotta watch out.
To satisfy those FIA requirements
and make sure the tires can withstand the tortures
of an F1 race,
Pirelli's tires are under constant development
by 150 engineers at their R&D facility in Milan.
Now, F1 tires are tested at speeds
up to 280 miles per,
subjected to impact up to 162 miles per,
and exposed to track surface temperatures
up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, Formula One cars generate massive downforce,
so each tire is load tested up to 2200 pounds.
And every F1 tire is precisely weighed,
inspected and X-rayed to look for flaws,
unique barcoded for tracking,
and 20% of the finished tires are put
through destructive testing
to ensure they match the F1's design specification.
All that research and testing means
formula one tire development
and manufacturing cost billions of dollars.
They're so protective of their tires,
that if one has a blowout in a race,
company employees will comb the track looking
for any pieces that have been left behind,
just so other tire manufacturers can't get their hands
on their secret formula.
Give me that tire.
So if billions are spent developing Formula One tires,
why do they wear out so much faster
than your mom's minivan tire?
Well, an individual tire's lifespan is determined
by a process called degradation.
And, degradation happens two ways.
First is tread wear
and the second is a term called giving up.
For a tire to make the kind of grip seen in formula one,
it's gotta be really soft
so it can really sink
into the rough road surface.
But that grip creates lots of abrasion,
particularly, when the car is turning.
And even if you're not doing crazy drifts,
your car's tires are slipping sideways
just a little whenever they're turning.
And at the microscopic level,
the rough road surface acts like sandpaper
and it's constantly removing small amounts of rubber
from the tire.
So the more grip your car has,
the harder it can turn,
but that also means the more slipping
and more abrasion scraping off of your tread.
So formula one tires wear much faster than your mom's tires
as a consequence of all that grip in that abrasion
that comes with it.
But F1 tires also start off
with a lot less tread.
A brand new long lasting consumer tire can have tread
as thick as 30 millimeters.
And it takes ages
to wear that all the way down
to the internal structure.
A slick Formula One tire's tread can be
as little as two or three millimeters thick.
Now, under conditions with a lot of grip and abrasion,
those three millimeters can go away really quickly,
leading to a blowout.
Which is exactly what happened
in this year's British Grand Prix
where five teams had blow outs from worn tread.
Now, this doesn't actually happen very often.
And the reason it happened at the Silverstone Circuit,
comes down to a few factors.
Some of them, due to race strategy,
but I'm only gonna talk about the nerdy ones.
So first off,
the Silverstone Circuit has a lot
of high speed corners.
Copse Corner, for example,
is a long right-hand sweeper taken
at over 180 miles per hour,
where one tire can be subjected
to as much as 2,800 pounds of load.
And secondly, F1 tires don't actually produce less grip
just when the tread gets thinner.
This means the drivers couldn't tell
how worn the tread was,
because they still had grip.
And before they knew it,
they were all out of tread in lost pressure.
It's exactly what happened
to race winner, Lewis Hamilton,
who crossed the line with one flat tire.
But wait, can I hear you F1 fans out there say,
"38 laps of Silverstone.
"That's 140 miles,
"that's way more than 50 miles."
Well, good catch smarty pants.
And that's because treadwear isn't usually the reason
for an F1 tire not making it past 50 miles.
That's where giving up comes in.
That's when the rubber compound hardens,
it can't sink into the rough road surface anymore
to produce grip.
Now, with most consumer tires,
this really isn't an issue
because giving up is caused
by repeated rapid heating and cooling,
and that doesn't happen under normal driving conditions,
unless, you drive like a boss.
When your mom gets into her van,
the tire is already soft enough
to produce grip,
even if it's below freezing outside.
And while driving,
friction between the tire and the road will cause the tire
to heat up to around 120 degrees Fahrenheit,
still well within the temperature range
that the tire's compound can create grip.
But soft compound tires in Formula One,
they don't achieve ideal grip
until nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
And that grip is maintained only
until about 240 degrees F.
And a hard compound F1 tire doesn't get started
until about 230,
and we'll work up all the way to 285.
Now, that's a pretty narrow temperature range,
and it's why Formula One tires don't have a lot of grip
when they're cold.
It's also why teams keep the tires in heated blankets
when they're not on the car.
Now, if that soft F1 tire exceeds 240 degrees,
it'll start to lose grip
and the tread can become too soft,
it can't overcome the abrasion from the track,
and it slips too much.
And the whole car will start to slide,
making it hard to control,
which can create a cycle.
The too hot tire slips,
creating a more friction which creates more heat,
which creates more slipping
and more friction,
all the way up to about 300 degrees.
That's when the tread starts to liquefy,
which reduces the friction and temperature,
so the tread resolidifies
and forms blisters.
So this temperature fluctuation is called heat cycling,
and giving up happens
when there's been too much heat cycling
to maintain the tire's ability to soften.
The natural and synthetic molecules
that make up a tire,
they're just long chains of polymers composed
of lots of atoms held together in long strings
by lots of chemical bonds.
And heating stretches those molecules,
which is how the tire gets softer.
When it cools,
most of the molecular bonds snap back,
but some are permanently broken or deformed.
That's called plastic deformation.
A normal heat cycling,
even without overheating,
can cause a tire to harden
and become less able
to create grip over time.
And once a tire can't soften enough to be safe,
it's said to have given up,
like me after my first week
of my new year's resolutions.
Sometimes I say, "Hey, this year,
"I'm not gonna eat any sugar."
And then, two weeks later,
"I'm gonna open up a bakery." (laughing)
F1 tires heat and cool very quickly,
and so, they give up very quickly.
A Formula One tire that has worn out in 50 miles,
probably hasn't lost all of its tread,
it's just probably given up.
A tread wear and giving up are part
of a tire compound trade-off.
When you change the recipe to gain grip,
you lose longevity.
But with billions of dollars spent making F1 tires,
couldn't they be longer lasting
while still making massive amounts of grips?
There's gotta be something else at play here.
Could it be politics?
Nah, you can stick around,
I'm about to tell you.
It turns out
that the extra factor at play is those FIA requirements
foreshadowed earlier on.
And unfortunately, it's not really an elaborate conspiracy.
The FIA maintains that fast degradation rates unnecessary
to keep formula one exciting for the fans.
And the degradation targets they give
to manufacturers like Pirelli,
are made publicly available.
For any race,
hard compound is the baseline for lap times.
And FIA wants medium compound tires
that are 1.2 seconds a lap quicker than the hard compound.
And, soft tires should be 2.2 seconds a lap quicker
than the hard compound.
But the FIA also wants a soft compound
to exhibit two seconds of degradation after 10%
of the total race distance.
So if a race is 50 laps,
the soft tire should be running two seconds slower
by the end of the fifth lap than it was in the first lap.
And the same sort of rule applies
for medium tires as well.
So since FIA (indistinct) rules require each car
to use at least two tire compounds in every race,
teams have to choose a strategy.
For example, they could pit once,
starting on medium but switching to hard compound,
or they could pit twice using soft tires,
then medium tires, then soft tires again.
The FIA says that rapid degradation maximizes
the potential number of race strategies
to create the greatest variety in the racing spectacle.
So an F1 tire maker like Pirelli has to engineer compounds
that degrade as precisely as possible
to those FIA requirements.
And that takes some serious chemical wizardry,
and that's why specific formulas
for each F1 compound are so closely guarded.
In each season, as F1 cars and courses change,
Pirelli has to race to keep up,
revising their recipes
to stay within the FIA's demands.
Pirelli, they currently make five different F1 compounds
for dry conditions creatively called C1
through C5.
Pirelli chose three of the five dry compounds
for each race,
and each team gets the same tire type.
Pirelli chooses based on conditions
for that event;
the type of asphalt,
the corner speeds,
the past performance of Formula tires at that track.
But they also had to make sure
that the tires chosen wear out fast enough
to keep things exciting.
So, for example,
because of the severe conditions at Silverstone,
they brought the three hardest compounds
to the British GP:
C1, C2, and C3.
It's all the blow outs that happened
that turned out to be a pretty exciting race,
but not because of pitch strategy.
Every team but one switch to C1 on lap 12 or 13.
Now, it's not easy choosing the tire for a race,
and sometimes, formula one uses a track
for the first time.
So Pirelli isn't sure what to expect.
Now, a lot of people blame Pirelli
for what happened at Silverstone.
But even though they make
and choose the tires for each race,
it's not really their decision
to make the tires that wear out artificially fast,
that's mandated by the FIA.
The Pirelli along with F1 drivers have even pushed back
against the FIA's requirements.
They worry that the degree of tire degradation,
the FIA is demanding,
is dangerously high.
And there's no reason why tire company couldn't develop
a tire that would have just as much grip
and lasts way longer than 50 miles.
I mean, their tires are used in any car series
that lasts 55 or 60 laps.
The tires used in the 24 hours of Le Mans are changed
only after distances equivalent
to two formula one races.
Now, the official statement from the FIA says
that rapid degradation is for the improvement of the show
to maximize variety
and create drama and spectacle.
But these are the world's best drivers,
the most advanced cars
and the biggest team budgets in motor sport.
Does a variety and pitch strategy really make the show
any better?
After all, time in the pits is time spent not racing.
So maybe, it would just be a better show
if the FIA just let them race.
Where's my Formula One friends at?
What do you guys think?
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode
of "B2B."
Follow me on Instagram, @jeremiahburton,
follow us on "Donut," @donut media.
If you wanna see some more behind the scenes stuff
that we do here at the new donut shop,
hit us up on "Donut Underground."
If you go down there next to the subscribe button,
there's a little thing that says, "join."
Gram and get a discord,
you can come and chat with me.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
Till next week.
Bye for now.