Tire squeal

[Booth.the.doberman]

Is tire squeal in a corner good, bad, expected, unavoidable? I never thought about it until I drove Indy oval with the USF2000 DX11. There, I found I did faster laps when I did not squeal the tires in a corner, and that got me to thinking (which is generally a frowned upon activity). It would seem that a squealing tire is one that is losing traction and grip. Most of the (well, actually, all of the time) I'm driving road tracks and I just added the oval because an oval setup was added to the USF2000.

By the way, my race at Indy ended in shame. I had the pole, I was leading the race when a yellow came out iahead of me in turn 4. As I rounded turn 4, I saw debris all over the track. I hit something and went airborn. I saw only sky. When I came down I landed on the wheels and was able to limp into the pits where it took the crew about three minutes to fix the damage. By the time I got out, I was P21 (of 25), and that's where I finished the 20-minute race. I've never had debris on the track cause me such woe before.

 

[Emery]

As you've surmised, tire squeal is bad if you're driving on real race tires. A very light squeal or chirp is acceptable at times.

The default tire squeal in AC annoys me because it is so overdone. Thankfully they provide a control to turn it down.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

I've seen historic footage of an old car at Continental Divide and the guy driving had regular tire squeal, sometimes lasting about 5s as he negotiated some corners (and was very fast). It depends on the car you're driving. In rF2 you should think of tire squeal as a warning of not being on optimal grip in the game.

 

[Emery]

I've seen historic footage of an old car at Continental Divide and the guy driving had regular tire squeal, sometimes lasting about 5s as he negotiated some corners (and was very fast). It depends on the car you're driving. In rF2 you should think of tire squeal as a warning of not being on optimal grip in the game.

Was that onboard the Meister Brauser running against the Bocar Stilleto? Filmed in 1961 as I recall... yeah, back then race rubber was hardly different from street rubber.

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I'm not sure that really answered my question. On the USF2000 I seem to get a lot of squeal. Sure, I could turn down the tire volume, but that wasn't my question. The sound doesn't bother me. My question was whether tire squeal is an indication that something is not in balance on the car or that I'm really taking the corner too fast. I infer from the comments that assumption is true then? I am horrible at making car adjustments. I'll change something, run a few laps and find I'm faster. I'll keep making a change, running more laps and see continued improvement. Then I'll go back to the default setup, run a couple of laps and find I'm now faster on the defaults than I was on my "improved" model. Crappy driver, crappy mechanic.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

It just seems like you just need more laps with the same car to find your pace and get comfortable with it. The best thing to do is check which kind of setup keeps your tires lasting the longest. Last time I was in a league (Indycar) I ran a lot of laps and was able to use a similar base setup with specific track tweaks where I could still beat an alien, have excellent race pace, and keep the tires lasting the longest in the field.

Without us seeing your laps or even having experience with the car and track combo ourselves, we could not correctly pinpoint what's causing the squeal. The squeal on URD cars is the worst, there's a higher level of squeal that is unnerving and maddening .