The biggest advantage we found with the nitrogen is that you don't make
STEAM. The moisture in plain air gives an unstable increase. When you've
got a tire that is twenty-two inches wide and runs at 28 pounds pressure
blazing hot (that's after three hot laps, you'd better know what to set it
cold for the start of the event the next day. The pressures were carefully
checked every session out and back in and then at ambient in the (shaded
area)pits.The problem lots of times was that the pressure had to be set so
low cold for the optimum handling and you had to take a chance that the tire
might rotate on the rim under braking before the temp comes up and then you
have a tire out of balance. At one time we SCREWED the rim to the bead of
the tire to stop this from happening. This was with CAN-AM cars and the 5000
cars.. Again sometimes there would be a problem with too high a pressure
build up from the excessive water and soap that the tire people used to
mount the rims to new tires. The water made steam and you're out to lunch
again.
The brilliance of engineering might explain all this with formulas, but
lots of experience with this weird stuff helps when on the hunt for strange
handling.
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