Think Before You Burn

Driving fast, racing around the track or taking on challengers on the road offers an opportunity to perform a fun and flashy style of showing off on the road after you’ve had fun winning the race. While it can be a lot of fun to perform a burnout after a race when you’ve completed the race and crossed the finish line ahead of every other car on the track. If you’re in a race car you’re most likely using a variety of racing tires on your car during the race and it’s OK to burn out these tires and have a great time with them.

If you have a ton of money to spend on tires on a regular basis, go ahead and do all the burnouts you want. If you know you’re going to change your tires soon, you’ll be able to enjoy the fun of burnouts with these tires as a great send off for them. It can be a lot of fun to perform burnouts, but if you need the tires on your car to give you the ride you want on the road daily you might want to hold off on performing any burnouts in your car.

A burnout heats up the tires on your car and it doesn’t take long before this activity begins to wear down the rubber you need for your daily drive. How fast does it take to turn your tires that you depend on to get you down the road in safety into a pile of rubber on the road? It only takes about five seconds for tires to heat up to over 300 degrees while spinning. This is the temperature at which the rubber begins to fly off the tire, which wears down the tires much faster than you would want them to.

Check out the video linked below and you’ll see just how fast tires can be turned into the grip you need around the corners to the bald slicks you can’t trust to pull out of your driveway. Using a Flir thermal camera and a Honda S2000 the host of Engineering Explained, Jason Fenske, shows us just how much damage performing a burnout can have on the tires of your car. You’ll be amazed at how cool it is to watch these tires heat up and start to shoot out pieces of rubber that end up wearing down the tread.

If you’ve got tires on your car that you need to last for the 50,000 miles they’re rated for, don’t perform any burnouts in your car. The tires you have will get worn and run down if you perform burnouts in your car. On the other hand if you’re about to replace the tires on your car or you’re using a set of racing tires on your car that get changed out during a race you can do all the burnouts you want to enjoy. Check out this video and see what happens when you do a burnout and how much heat is created as soon as the tires begin to start spinning.