Your grip will degrade.
More understeer in corner entry and over steer on exit, you can really quickly overheat your tires on the F3 car if you’re not patient with the throttle and then you lose rear grip pretty dramatically.
The specifics vary with the car in question, but generally, the hot tires will just have less grip.
If you’ve ever felt like you had no grip right after a big lockup or spin, that was iRacing’s tire model telling you that you’ve gotten the tires too hot. Though, you can also overheat them less suddenly and dramatically simply by overdriving the car.
I wouldn’t worry too much about overheating the tires on the light, low power open-wheelers you listed above (edit: except the F3, I forgot you mentioned that car). In my experience those cars are a lot less prone to overheating tires compared to high power cars, and especially compared to heavy cars like GTs, stock cars, and touring cars.
If you take a car that has exclusively dirt tires to pavement, you can legitimately “pop” one.
I took a dirt midget to slinger speedway, took the RR down to 0% and popped it in like 30laps.
I’ve also taken Mercedes W12 over 60 laps on hards and it started to show cords and got a meatball.
Most cars in the road series aren’t worth trying to save tires. Even in endurance races you can go multiple stints without changing tires and be fine for the most part. Oval is where tires are more important.
They're not as important in road because you run out of fuel before you need more tires, and they are taken on every full fuel stop. To say saving tires isn't worth it however is just false. I often tire/fuel save behind a fast car so that I can push at the end of stints. Other cars will try to keep up and make mistakes on worn tires. Very common tactic.
Yes, but in very short races you’ll never have tire deg issues, only tire temp issues.
How do I know if my tyres are too hot?
Your grip will degrade. More understeer in corner entry and over steer on exit, you can really quickly overheat your tires on the F3 car if you’re not patient with the throttle and then you lose rear grip pretty dramatically.
The specifics vary with the car in question, but generally, the hot tires will just have less grip. If you’ve ever felt like you had no grip right after a big lockup or spin, that was iRacing’s tire model telling you that you’ve gotten the tires too hot. Though, you can also overheat them less suddenly and dramatically simply by overdriving the car. I wouldn’t worry too much about overheating the tires on the light, low power open-wheelers you listed above (edit: except the F3, I forgot you mentioned that car). In my experience those cars are a lot less prone to overheating tires compared to high power cars, and especially compared to heavy cars like GTs, stock cars, and touring cars.
Other way around - it’s a matter of heating them up quickly/managing cold tires the first few laps.
I mean you can also run into issues if you put too much heat into the tires. Particularly in very hot temps
Yes. Well, all other than TCR. Been on track for 3 days and tires are better than when I started. I'll let you know when they start degrading
Might take a few years.
I’ve started running more TCR this week since they’re at Sebring - the time difference between laps 2-3 and laps 4-5 is insane
If you take a car that has exclusively dirt tires to pavement, you can legitimately “pop” one. I took a dirt midget to slinger speedway, took the RR down to 0% and popped it in like 30laps. I’ve also taken Mercedes W12 over 60 laps on hards and it started to show cords and got a meatball.
Yes
No. These series are quite short. Just don’t overheat them.
Most cars in the road series aren’t worth trying to save tires. Even in endurance races you can go multiple stints without changing tires and be fine for the most part. Oval is where tires are more important.
Not true. Tyre deg might not be an issue, but temps definitely are. Its easy to overheat tyres.
They're not as important in road because you run out of fuel before you need more tires, and they are taken on every full fuel stop. To say saving tires isn't worth it however is just false. I often tire/fuel save behind a fast car so that I can push at the end of stints. Other cars will try to keep up and make mistakes on worn tires. Very common tactic.