Build A Faster Car - helping drivers engineer

The camber angle is the angle at which your tires lay relative to the vertical axis of your car. Assuming your chassis is level, it is also the angle at which your tires lay relative to perpendicular to the ground. A tire that is perfectly parallel to the chassis' vertical axis (and thus perpendicular to the ground) is said to have zero camber, whereas tires angled inwards towards the chassis are said to have negative camber. Camber is one of the most important aspects of an alignment because it greatly affects tire grip.

You may know the basics of how a tire works, but there's more to it than just rubber rolling along the ground. Tires are elastic and deform, and that's part of how they grip. However, the nature of how this happens is very important. In this article we'll explore the basics of how tires deform.