I would like to suggest that "No Flat" Tires and Tubes of the "air foam" variety be allowed.
Normal tires when used, should have a significant flat protection liner or flat resistant tube must be used with something like "slime".
These two changes should minimize or remove flats and blowouts as a course safety issue.
This no-flat safety comes in several forms, but there should be enough testing that tires/tubes are not sheared off the rim by sidewall forces if there is not a leaning mechanisim:
At this point slime, thick walled tubes and etc are allowed and up to the individual racer to choose or not.
Solid tires are currently banned. The rules stipulate pnumatic. A few years back when PGE had the Electron Run there was no stipuation for pnumatic tires I was going to try running solid tires. One trouble with them is they are very heavy. About the worst weight on the wheel is rotational weight, so this is bad. The biggest issue though was they roll off the bead with the side load we have due to the steering design. The end issue I came up with was that it was just too dangerous to be flipping tires in a hard corner, so I went away from the concept. I think I actually still have one of the tires out in the trailer.
I strongly agree that a design which rolls the tires off should not be allowed to race, and clearly stated that should be eliminated by design and testing in the initial suggestion.
However, foam tubs with steel beaded standard tires, minimize that.
A leaning trike design completely eliminates rolling the tires off ... so for at least that class of advanced design, forcing air only tires increases the risk of a injury when a blow out or flat occurs during the hour race.
There are a lot of tradeoffs in any design.
Slime doesn't always balance well at higher speeds, and can become unsafe when the liquid pools and forces severe out of balance.
Again, I believe that mandating a technology that does fail in a dramatic way, is a big step backward. Especially when it blocks non-flat leaning trike designs.
