This is another of Ollie Read's excellent photos. Most of the good race shots on my site are by Ollie. I publish this not only because it's a great view of the car as I come through Lodge bend at Oulton Park, but also, you get a great view of the way the tyres work. I've enlarged the view of the front offside tyre. You can see how little of the tyre surface is actually in contact with the track. Yet on the nearside, although you can't really see, I can tell you the entire width of the tyre will be in contact. If you were standing at the front of the car in the garage, you'd see that the distance between the front tyres at the ground will be greater than the distance between the front tyres at the top. What this means is that as the car is driving in a straight line, only a small part of the tyre tread (the inside edge) is in contact with the track. This is not a big problem on the straight because there is no sideways loading. When the car goes round the bend however, the weight of the car is transferred to the outside tyres and the inside becomes lighter. As the outer tyre is loaded, more of the tread comes in contact with the track, a condition amplified by the cornering forces. The more tread in contact with the track, the more grip you have and the quicker you can go around the corner. What you're seeing in the photo above is the unloaded inner tyres with the camber angle clearly visible. Getting the amount of camber right is a fine art and something I am working hard to achieve.

As a footnote, Formula 1 stock cars race anticlockwise on an oval circuit. They don't have independent suspension and so have to resort to different approaches to gain camber. The front axle is fairly easy as it can be heated and bent to provide for some fixed camber. At the rear, a neat trick is to use a smaller circumference tyre on the inside than the outside, thus tipping the axle over. This is known as stagger.

Illustrating camber on a car with independent suspension

Larger outside rear tyre providing camber to the rear of an F1 Stock car