Muscle Car Showboating: Burnouts
Any muscle car enthusiast would agree that there’s nothing as satisfying as laying some tread and producing a glorious cloud of smoke that's guaranteed to turn heads. Burnouts allow racers to heat and clean their tires. Doing a burnout on street tires makes a lot of smoke, removes layers of expensive rubber, and accomplishes nothing of dynamic significance. But it does elicit a big grin from the driver and perhaps the police officer who will write the ticket for an "unsafe start." Burnouts Actually Serve a Purpose Sure they’re fun, but burnouts actually serve a useful function in drag racing. The purpose of a burnout is to remove foreign matter from your tires that might be collected while rolling around in the pits. Burnouts occur when the power going to the car's wheels makes them lose traction with the road, causing them to spin in place. The heat caused by the friction between the tires and road surface melts the rubber, causing smoke. Tire smoke is ...