Tyre pressures at Lydden Hill

The lap, to scale. Track outline © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How hard a circuit works each corner of the car shows up as tread temperature, and temperature is what sets pressure. GripCalc carries corner heating figures for Lydden Hill as a starting point: how much hotter each tyre runs over the session's base temperature, from the layout's mix of corners and load. They pre-fill the calculator when you pick the circuit, and your own pyrometer readings refine them from the first session.

ESTIMATED — class-based starting values over an 85°C session base, derived from this layout's type (direction, speed profile, load), and shared with circuits of similar character rather than measured here. Not gospel: enter your own pyrometer figures after a session and they take precedence.

Lydden Hill, on paper

OSM — the sections mappers have named on this venue's tarmac: Paddock Bend · North Bend · Canterbury Straight · Pilgrims · Chessons Drift · Dover Slope · Devils Elbow · Dummy Grid · Jump

Lengths are measured from the OpenStreetMap geometry drawn above; the longest straight is derived from the same line and is approximate. Section names are the venue's, and can belong to any of its layouts.

What Lydden Hill asks of a tyre

Lydden Hill measures 1.10 km on the map, with 3 corners counted along that line. Corners come about every 366 m, so the lap is more about carrying speed between them than surviving them back to back. It is a short lap, so those corners come round again and again within a session — heat accumulates lap on lap, and going out with pressures that were right at the start is the classic way to finish a session several psi over target. Nothing on the lap is straight for longer than about 211 m, so there is no stretch where the tread gets a real chance to cool.

DERIVED — length, corner count, hands and straight measured from the mapped lap drawn above. Corner counting is a judgement (a double apex can be read as one corner or two), so treat these as this line's reading of the circuit, not a series' official figures.

Lydden Hill, the birthplace of rallycross, is Britain's shortest proper circuit: a natural amphitheatre lap of fast, cambered sweeps and one hairpin. Laps arrive relentlessly, so heat builds despite the modest top speeds, and the cambered corners load the outside tyres more than the layout map suggests.

A 992 GT3 on Cup 2 R at Lydden Hill

Published hot target 30.5 / 32.0 psi at 92°C tread, on a 15°C morning, with the corner figures above: cold set 21.5 / 21.5 front, 22.6 / 22.6 rear. A different car, tyre or morning moves every number, which is what the calculator is for.

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