Is My Camber Correct? | Tyre Contact Patch Optimisation [BLOG]

Camber is one of the most important tools we have available in our wheel alignment toolbox when it comes to optimising the car's performance on the race track. We’re trying to optimise the tyre contact patch with the race track when the car is heavily loaded in a corner which will require some amount of negative camber. The reason for this is that when the car is cornering hard, the car will body roll, the outside suspension will compress, and the tyre will deform on the rim. By running negative camber we will be sacrificing the tyre contact patch in a straight line, however, we will be improving the tyre contact patch when cornering.

This situation is highlighted by the inner edge of the slick on this Toyota TRS single seat race car which shows a distinct line between where the tyre is in contact with the ground in a straight line (the dirty side) and where it is only in full contact when cornering (the clean side). Generally the grip we gain through corners more than makes up for any reduction in straight line grip. If you’ve spent any time around a race track then none of the above is probably news to you, however, the next obvious question is ‘How do you know when you have the correct camber?’.

If you’ve got a suitable budget then one of the options available is to use an onboard IR temp sensor that measures the temperature at multiple points across the tyre tread. This data is logged for later analysis and lets the engineers see how hard the tyre is working while cornering. The theory here is that if the tyre is contacting the track evenly, the temperature of the tread will be consistent across the tread width. This is an expensive technique though so the next best option is to use a tyre pyrometer when the car comes back into the pits. This is a probe that is used to measure the temperature at three points across the tyre, just below the tread surface. The downside is that the tread temperature will naturally start to equalise as soon as the car is no longer cornering which means by the time the car comes back into the pits our measurements don’t reflect exactly what was happening mid corner.

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