Details Foj Motorsport - 13. - Tires

Tires are essential in these desert races especially in production cars. We do not have much power engine and we are very heavy, so to go into soft sand we have to deflate. When deflated, the tire increases the contact patch with the sand to not sink into it. The thread has to be wide enough to have a beter support in the sand, but it gets exposed to the stones, because stages are not all stones or sand, but a mix. The sidewall, that is what flexes, must be protected to the stones, The tread has to be wide enough to resist the stones and sand scratches; this is why it has this drawing. Another important thing, especially when it is deflated, is that the bead seats tightly against the rim, because of the abrupt steering, so we can avoid the tire to jump off the rim. What we usually do is to deflate to 0.8 bars in soft sand and medium pressure in mixed stages of stones and sand. These are the three basic parts of a tire for us.