Uploaded March 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Let's talk about tire/tyre slip angles! I'll go through two ways of thinking about it. The first is the mathematical description, which will be useful for my later videos on vehicle dynamics. The second is the physical description of what is happening in the tire contact patch when a tire is operating at a finite slip angle.

===== NOTES =====
► One thing I forgot to make a note of is that even though the terminology calls it a 'slip' angle, the rubber in the footprint is rarely slipping. In my foot-on-a-treadmill example, you can see that the only time the rubber starts to slip is towards the rear of the print. This is because towards the rear of the print, the normal (vertical) force pushing the rubber onto the road, and the friction coefficient between the road and the rubber, are no longer able to keep the rubber from sliding back to its undeflected position. It's more complicated than this, but that's the general reason.

===== RELEVANT VIDEOS =====
→ Tire Axis System
goo.gl/W4Y9iR

===== SEMI-RELEVANT VIDEOS BUT NOT REALLY =====
→ How to Calculate Top Speed
goo.gl/T4UvN4

→ F1 Aerodynamic Drag at Top Speed
goo.gl/oyStsp

===== THUMBNAIL PHOTO CREDIT =====
By Phil Guest (Flickr: [1]) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons