OK, so I'm retired now, with plenty of time on my hands to pursue a lot of things, including a bunch of annoying little dumb questions I have accumulated over the years.
Here's one:
I came across this fascinating little picture-rich site about engines a couple of years ago:
http://fastjeff57.tripod.com/This picture of the Mario Andretti Indy 500 winning race car appears in it:
http://fastjeff57.tripod.com/marioindy.jpg(You may have to load the whole page to see this picture. Apparently "Tripod" does not like deep links.)
OK, now for the dumb question which has been bothering me all this time:
How do they keep the tire treads flat against the surface of the track?I can "see" it with passenger car tires, but these things seem to be 16-18 inches across the treads.
Do they mold the tires such that at a given pressure the tread surface just "comes out flat?" (I note that they will change tire pressures during pit stops to match track conditions, etc, so this doesn't seem likely.)
Do they have steel (or other) rods inside the tire which resists the "bowing out" of the tire tread as it is inflated? (That is, with higher pressures, the tire surface would seem to be convex, and with lower pressures, it would tend to be concave.)
Or are there other methods?
See, I told you it was a dumb question, but I'm not all that familiar with automotive racing concepts.
(Incidentally, this is a really interesting site on unusual internal combustion engines. Just to whet your appetite, it has details on such things as the deltic 3-crankshaft 2-cycle 36-piston locomotive diesel engine, and the world's biggest monster marine engine: 1,556,002 cubic inches [25,480 liters].)
Terry, Chief, Dumb Question Dept, Colorado Division, 230RN