Softening sidewalls delberately

[vitnagetrouble]

Hi - was watching some trials cars recently and some cars appeared to have much greater tyre footprints than others, even though they were the same type of car, wearing the same make, type and size of tyre, running the same pressure and bearing similar mass on them.

Made me wonder if the sidewalls of a tyre can be softened in order to get this greater footprint and if so, how do they do it ?

One person said they simply heated the side of the tyre up with a blowtorch - but surely that would stiffen it due to increasing the amount of vulcanisation ?

Any input much appreciated !

Thanks.

[vitnagetrouble]

Hi - thanks for replying, but note I said the pressures were the same. In fact, everything was the same, only the footprint was different, because one car clearly had softer sidewalls than the other even though the tyres were same type, age, size etc.

How did they get the sidewalls softer ?

[vitnagetrouble]

New - I have replace tyres like.for.lome, new for.old and they appear more.flexible giving a bigger footprint.
Am aware it's possible.to give a pressure reading which is way higher than the pressure in the tyre but no idea how it's done. I'd sooner not cheat anyway.