Funky Physics problem.

[Elgin Clock]

As I was driving down the road tonight in the rain, I could feel myself hydroplane a bit. I naturally slowed down and then a weird problem came into my head.

As we all know, on a drag strip a racer does a spinning of the tires before they do the actual 1/4 mile or whatever. This makes the tires sticky and heats them up so that they will stick to the track during the actual race down the drag strip for improved take-off at the christmas tree (ie: red, yellow, and green light)

For improved design on tires, a tire warmer would work to grip roads better, or just natural driving will heat up the tires and make them grip better (in the short term - long term it will reduce tread and make the tire less grippy.)

My question is though, when the road is wet, what will grip the road better.
A "cold" tire, or a "hot" tire?

If they run drag runs in the rain (:ahh: ) do they run the pre-heat of the tires as well? And if so, does it really help, or does it make it worse by adding the stickiness of the tire and the released oils from the rubber to the already "slippery when wet" track?

[Denman]

i am imaginging a warm tyre.....
as the tyre heats up the road will heat up as well and some of the rain will be evapourated and thus the tyres will get more grip?

[Peter Matteson]

In Formula 1 they use tyre warming blankets on their tyres before putting them on the car. In wet conditions they still use them on "intermidiates", "wets", and "monsoons" (I can't make that up that's how they really refer to the wet weather tyre styles).

The wet weather tyres are made of a softer compound that allows for better traction, but will disintigrate on a dry track because they rely on the rain water to cool them. Basically I'm saying tyres are designed to be sticker when warm in all conditions so a warm tyre is always better. You may notice if you have a long enough commute how warm your tyres get even in the rain.

[Denman]

the difference between them is the thread pattern and how deeply cut the thread is...
http://www.formula1.com/insight/technicalinfo/11/476.html
has a load of stuff about the tyres

basically the more oil ,the softer the tyre . The softer the tyre the more wet conditions its meant to run in. As such i assume that the softer tyres have more oil to stop aquaplaning and to make it go faster

[petek]

I think that what goes on where the proverbial tire meets the road is a matter of trying to maximize the number of points of contact. On a dry road (or a wet one where the tire is not hydroplaning), the tire is in contact with the pavement in a lot of little spots - remember that even a smooth road has a pretty rough texture, so for a given contact patch area, the tire is only touching pavement in a fraction of the patch.

Everything being equal, it seems to me that a warmer tire will conform to the road surface, macroscopically and microscopically, better than a cold one.

When you throw rain into the equation, you have to get the tire to move the water out of the way so that it can touch pavement. That's what tread is for and why dry race tires are usually slick, intermediate rain tires have shallow and narrow grooves (to channel water out, but still have a lot of contact area) and full rains have deep and wide grooves (to pump the water out in buckets).

So my answer to your original question is: a warm one, with good tread.