Few motorsport events test the limits of man and machine quite like the Nürburgring 24 Hours. Held on the infamous Nordschleife, the race is a relentless proving ground not just for drivers and cars, but also for the tyres that connect them to the tarmac. With over 25 kilometres of track, rapidly changing weather conditions, and the constant stress of multi class traffic, the N24 offers an unmatched environment for tyre development. Tyre Trade News caught with Stefanie Olbertz, Falken Motorsport to preview this weekends race.
What makes the N24 a unique testbed for tyres, and how do the lessons learned feedback into Falken’s road tyre products?
The Nürburgring 24 Hours is unlike any other race, which is why it’s just so valuable from a tyre R&D perspective. You’ve got over 25 kilometres of track, over 170 corners, a lot of which are high speed, with huge elevation changes. The weather is often highly unpredictable, as we’ve seen in recent years. It’s not unusual to have bone dry asphalt on one part of the circuit and puddles forming at another. This kind of environment gives us the best possible tyre data.
Over the course of the race weekend, we collect huge amounts of data on grip levels, wear rates, stability and heat cycles. Our Falken racing drivers are constantly feeding information back to engineers in the garage on what they’re feeling, human sensations are equally as valuable as the raw data. This feedback loop directly influences our road tyre development.
You can see that transfer of learning in our latest ultra-ultra high performance road tyre, the Falken AZENIS RS820. It’s designed for powerful road vehicles, and a lot of what makes it so capable in terms of grip, stability and wet weather performance comes from our many years of experience at the Nordschleife. Falken’s compound technology and construction techniques are rooted in endurance racing, and we’ve refined them for the road. It’s motorsport DNA, adapted for the everyday enthusiast.
How many tyres do you use across the weekend, and what happens to the used ones?
Across both our customer and factory teams, we take around 500 tyres with us. As soon as a tyre is taken off a car following a pit stop, it is returned to Falken for thorough analysis, undergoing a visual and temperature check. The tyres from the factory Porsche are also sliced across to create a cross section, and these are sent back to Japan to be analysed to help improve future tyres.
What tyre compounds do you use, and how do they differ in performance?
For our customer cars, there are typically four compounds: two slicks for dry weather and two grooved for the wet. Depending on the amount of rain, teams can choose from an intermediate or extreme wet tyre.
When racing at night, we’ll opt for softer compounds, enabling them to heat up quicker in the cooler ambient temperatures after sunset.
The Nürburgring is a notoriously difficult race to master. What are the biggest challenges it poses from a tyre perspective?
Generally speaking, compared to a lot of tracks, the Nürburgring has a smooth surface with less grip. Because of its sheer size, it’s only resurfaced part by part. The newer asphalt does provide more grip and absorbs more water, but the older surfaces can be extremely slippery. The famous Karussel doesn’t pose a significant issue as it’s a very short section.
One of the biggest issues is the weather, if you’re on slicks and it starts to rain, because of the lap length, any issue is magnified. If a driver starts struggling with grip halfway round, they’ve still got another 10 or 12 kilometres before they can box. That can really affect lap time. However, pitting is generally dictated by fuel in a GT3 car, when you’ve reached 8 laps, you need to pit regardless.
Then there’s traffic, the mix of speeds and classes means drivers can’t always stick to the perfect line or conserve tyres in the way they’d like. They’re constantly reacting, defending or overtaking, which affects how evenly the tyre wears and how much heat they generate. It’s mentally and physically exhausting. When drivers stray away from the racing line to overtake, the smoother asphalt has to be treated with extra caution
Source: Tyretradenews
