Hello!
There are a lot of things keeping me awake at night, and one of those things has lately been tire scraping with a heat gun.
Saw it in F1, and was wondering if anybody knew why, and if it would be useful or give an advantage in karting?
-is it like going out on new tires? 
Thanks in advance guys.
Scraping the rubber pick-up from the cool down lap off, which we scrub off on our out lap for the next session anyway. Pretty much useless. In F1 I’m sure they are doing it for more advanced reasons because the tire construction is different, and tires are so important in that specific instance.
So, it’s basically just spares you the extra warm-up wiggle on the way out?
Basically. Its actually somewhat common here for kid kart/bambinos because they never generate tire temp to scrub the tires and always come in with extra rubber pick up.
I wonder if anyone does the marble pick up thing in karting… ive been closer than id like on the scales a couple of times
It’s done in the final sometimes.
I’ve done it, just not in the last 20 years 
. You can pickup a lb or two.
I always pick some up, just to be safe
Wot? You guys are grabbing marbles off track and stuffing your pockets for weigh in? (I assume rolling over them with hot tires on cool down?)
Just slowly running along the outside of the track, especially on a warm summer’s day, is really effective if you need an extra 200 grams🏁
This guy has picked some up👆
We do it on the Porsche’s. It’s done for a couple of reasons; taking pick up off tires that are going to be ran again so the out lap isn’t super sketchy with the marbles. To measure tread thickness to look at tire wear from camber/pressures. To look at the graining patterns.
At OVKA, you cannot tire scrub on formation lap before green. If you do, you go to the tail and so many people will scrape tires with heat gun between heats to get a cleaner tire for Turn 1 and 3 after that the advantage is negligible.
Kid karts also have to do it because they have a maximum tire circumfrence rule. Too much pickup and you could be illegal.
How does one warm up tired in the wet?
One uses aluminum rims for starters. There seems to be a certain amount of puddle finding/avoidance depending upon how your tires are heating up.
You can’t get the tires “hot” in the rain. It’s more about getting the pressures right to match the amount of water on the track. More water = more pressure to let the tire displace water.
If it’s damp but drying you want low low pressure to keep the tire from overheating and burning up.
But as Dom said aluminum wheels are the choice fit rain since they hold heat better, and they’re softer.
I believe I only have magnesium, it should rain in the morning and stop at noon. So lower pressure for the light rain?
Depending on what rain tire you run… For MGs we’ve run as low as 6-7 psi when the track was drying and we knew we would burn the tires off. We’ve also run as high as 22 or so if it’s heavy rain with big puddles.
Mag wheel will be fine if that’s all you have. Aluminum is also typically cheaper though so if you wreck one (which easily could happen in the rain) not so bad to replace.
