Tyre pressures at Paul Ricard

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 Paul Ricard 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.

Paul Ricard, on paper

OSM — the sections mappers have named on this venue's tarmac: Courbe de Signes · Pinede · Piste de Glisse · "S" de la Verrerie · Chicane Nord · Driving Center Castellet · Double droite du Beausset · Virage de Bendor · Courbe du Garlaban · Virage du Lac · Virage du Pont · Ligne droite des stands · Virage de l'hotel · Virage du camp · Virage de la Sainte-Baume · Ligne droite du Mistral · Stand · Terrain dévolution · Espace tout-terrain

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 Paul Ricard asks of a tyre

Paul Ricard measures 3.85 km on the map, with 12 corners counted along that line. A corner every 321 m gives the tyre a steady rhythm of work, enough to build temperature without running away with it. Its longest straight runs about 1177 m, far enough to cool the tread before the stop at the end of it, so a hot pressure taken in the pit lane understates what the tyre saw mid-lap.

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.

Paul Ricard is flat, spacious and engineered: long runs including the Mistral straight, the very fast Signes right-hander at the end of it, and famous painted run-off instead of gravel. Signes is the corner that matters to tyres: arriving at maximum speed onto a sustained right after the tread has cooled down the straight.

A 992 GT3 on Cup 2 R at Paul Ricard

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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