CAMBER

Camber refers to the angle a wheel sits away from pure vertical; zero camber is when the wheel is exactly perpendicular to the road. Positive camber is when the top of the wheel is angled away from the car and negative when the top angles towards it. Positive camber is never ideal, so we’ll only discuss negative camber.

Negative camber maximises the amount of tread the outside tyres put onto the road in a corner. When cornering, the outside tyres deform, pushing the tread towards the centre of the car and the outer shoulder closer to the road. Negative camber preempts this by presenting the outside tyres at an angle that means their tread lies as flat as possible on the road surface during cornering.

Negative camber can increase wear on the inside edge of the tyre, compromise straight-line traction, and reduce acceleration and braking abilities, because it limits the tyre’s contact patch when the car isn’t cornering. Advantageous purely during cornering, only a small amount of camber is of any real benefit.

MacPherson strut suspension, where the camber hardly changes during its full stroke of movement, responds well to a greater degree of negative camber. Double wishbone and multi-link setups offer more calculated amounts of negative camber as the suspension compresses, so often work just as well with less negative camber.