Tire Tech: Tire Shaving
— by Justin Banner
When you attack the track for a track day, autocross, or time attack with your stock tires, they usually end up very feathered or even have chunks coming off. Even as-bought high-performance tires can come back with missing pieces, but aren’t they designed for this environment? They are, but there is something you can do to not only increase the performance of your tires, but increase the life for track use. It’s called “tire shaving” and I’ll talk about it briefly here in this Tire Tech.
It seems counterintuitive to remove tread rubber from your brand-new track tires. However, it makes sense once you see what’s actually happening at the microscopic level. As your tires go around corners or even accelerate hard, the unshaved tread blocks squirm around and not only do not grip the track fully but create heat and additional wear. When you shave down the tires you remove the smaller tread blocks to make them larger and create a larger surface for the tires to grip the racing surface. There is another benefit to shaving tires: when you remove that tread you also reduce the weight of the tire.
However, tire shaving does have a disadvantage aside from the additional cost. If you take shaved tires to a wet track, you will hydroplane more, and you’ll lose time or even spin out. You do also lose a little overall service life because you don’t have as much tread rubber to use. So, you’ll gain tread life at the track by reducing squirm, but you’ll lose tread life for everyday driving and wear with less rubber to wear down. Also, not every tire can or should be shaved, so you’ll want to consult with the tire manufacturer, tire store, and even your fellow racers.