Tire force combining review

[NaN]

So here is what I've learned about the tire width and contact patch relationship. The area of the contact patch is determined by tire pressure and weight the tire has to carry. This means a narrow and a wide tire will have pretty much the same contact area.

For the 360 with 3000N front and 4000N rear tire load and 30psi pressure, we will get 215 x 67 mm^2 for the front, 275 x 70 mm^2 for the rear, or about 30% larger patch. The reason here is the higher weight on the rear, not the tire width. One could have used 215 mm rear tires which would have a 90 mm long patch.

So why using a wider tire? The obvious reason is that the deformation of the tire is smaller with a shorter patch, resulting in lower roll resistance and heat. The more complicated reason is that a contact patch consists of a grip and a slip zone. With a shorter contact patch the slip zone is smaller, which results in more grip and also less heat.

Now how do we apply this to vdrift tires? Ideally we would like to have a (probably simpler) tire model that takes tire shape and pressure into account and somewhat matches the pacejka curves, doesn't have to be too exact imho.