When you have cold tires in iRacing, a specific phenomenon occurs that also happens with many compounds in real life, making this concept critically important to understand. If the entirety of the tire is cold and you generate excessive temperature on the surface, the car will immediately lose a significant amount of grip.

Cold Tire Surface Temperature Effects

Consider this scenario: when exiting the pits and approaching the first corner with cold tires, even a small amount of wheel spin on the rear tires can create serious problems. That minimal wheel spin is sufficient to overheat the surface of cold tires, causing the car to lose virtually all grip for the next 15-20 seconds.

This happens because the surface temperature spikes dramatically before the heat can transfer to the carcass of the tire. The car becomes undrivable until that surface temperature either dissipates or conducts inward to the tire carcass.

Key Principles for Cold Tire Management

It is essential when starting races or exiting the pits on cold tires to avoid excessive scrub on the tires. The moment you introduce too much energy into the tire surface through wheel spin or aggressive steering inputs, grip levels plummet until the temperature normalizes.

Front Tire Overheating

The same principle applies to the front tires. If you aggressively scrub the front tires on a straight line while they are cold, you place excessive temperature on the front surface tires. The result is absolute understeer with no rotation whatsoever. The sensitivity of this effect is most pronounced during the first few corners.

The Snowball Effect

The real danger lies in the cascading consequences of initial tire overheating. If you overheat the fronts in the first corner due to understeer, you enter the next corner with compromised grip. This leads to further overheating, which compounds the problem corner after corner. You can end up destroying the front tires during the outlap of a race through this snowball effect:

• First corner: understeer causes front tire overheating

• Second corner: reduced grip leads to more understeer and additional overheating

• Subsequent corners: progressive degradation continues throughout the outlap

The same snowball effect occurs with the rear tires. Excessive wheel spin followed by overcorrection and oversteer puts tremendous temperature into the rear tires, creating a cascade of grip loss and handling instability.

Managing Cold Tire Situations

The solution requires precise control of several factors:

• Understanding exactly how much understeer or oversteer you will induce with your inputs

• Knowing your brake pad temperatures and characteristics

• Controlling brake pressure appropriately for cold tire conditions

While these effects are obvious and exaggerated on cold tires, the same fundamental principles apply throughout an entire stint, even when tires are up to temperature. Cold tire demonstrations simply make the differences clearly visible, allowing you to recognize the more subtle variations that persist during normal running.

Overheated Front Tires: Loss of Rotation Tools

When front tires overheat, the car exhibits severe understeer that cannot be corrected through normal driving techniques. Trail braking, engine braking, and other rotation tools become ineffective because the front tires have exceeded their optimal temperature range.

Even after a 10-second straight that should allow some cooling, the consequences from previous corners persist. The front tires remain overheated, the rears stay cool due to lack of scrubbing, and the driver struggles with understeer throughout the entire first half of the outlap. This occurs regardless of setup quality—it is purely a consequence of improper tire temperature management at the start.

Overheated Rear Tires: Persistent Oversteer

The opposite scenario demonstrates equal severity. Initial wheel spin on cold rear tires creates a snowball effect of oversteer throughout the first half of the track. The car becomes loose, constantly threatening to lose the rear and oversteering in every corner.

While these effects are obvious and dramatic on cold tires, you will feel them in smaller amounts with hot tires as well. Recognizing these principles in their exaggerated cold tire form trains you to detect and manage the more subtle temperature-related grip variations that occur throughout normal racing conditions.