Rain tires
As rain tires are racing tires referred to in motorsport are used events Select when the track is at least partially wet and the types of tires Slick and intermediates can no longer be used or would be too slow.
properties
Rain tires have a very soft rubber compound, which ensures good grip even at low track temperatures. In addition, the tread is heavily profiled so that water can be drained off easily. The negative profile partly corresponds to conventional road tires in terms of proportion and optics. With these characteristics, very high speeds are still possible on the route, even in pouring rain and standing water. Even under these conditions, the possible lateral accelerations are still higher than those of road-legal tires on dry roads.
disadvantage
Due to the high proportion of negative tread and the soft rubber compound, rain tires tend to wear out very quickly if the track conditions no longer match the intended use. When the road surface dries, the flexing work and thus the tire temperature increase extremely; the tires begin to “float” in the limit area, so they lose grip very early, but gently. It is therefore often observed that racing drivers look for and drive through wet parts of the track under these conditions in order to cool the tires down again. The optimally usable temperature window on the tread ends at around 60 ° C; at higher temperatures, intermediates are the better choice.
Others
The tire company Uniroyal also calls one of its tire types rain tires. However, these are not racing tires, but street-legal series tires that are supposed to work particularly well on wet roads. Since these tires also have to cope with all other non-winter road conditions, the term should be understood more as a marketing classification.
