Carbon fiber composites can do a lot more than just make fishing rods more flexible, and Hondas more ricey – they’re slowly making their way into more and more serious structural components for race cars, and one area where there’s considerable promise is for non-drive wheels in drag applications. Weld Racing celebrated the tenth anniversary of the introduction of their one-piece forged front wheels by trying out a new 17-inch dragster front wheel made from carbon fiber.

1989 Dodge Shelby CSX-VNT "Fiberide" composite wheel

Interestingly enough, composite wheels have actually been done before, and for a production car – The 1989 Dodge Shelby CSX-VNT had unique gold “Fiberide” wheels, a first (and last, as far as we know) in the industry. Today, they’re rare and sought-after; despite the fact that they were lighter than a comparable aluminum alloy wheel, the experiment wasn’t repeated, and some sanctioning bodies banned them due to concern over UV exposure eventually weakening the composite matrix.

Twenty years of progress and a much better understanding of carbon fiber engineering and manufacturing techniques mean that the time may have finally come for the composite wheel to start making inroads in the race market. We’re looking forward to the results of Weld’s full testing regimen – they’re not making any promises yet about these wheels making it to production, and it will have to be at a price point racers can afford, but we have our fingers crossed…

Original Press Release

Weld Racing, the dominant manufacturer of racing wheels, successfully tested a prototype 17” dragster front wheel made of carbon fiber during the US Nationals. This test was on the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the Weld Racing one-piece forged front wheels that reset the bar in drag racing in 2000 and are still the dominant drag racing front wheels.

“The reduction in static mass is 34% and the reduction in rotating moment of inertia is 178%”, said Scott Rider, Vice President of Engineering. “These reductions result in significant performance improvements for an accelerating car over our forged one-piece V-Series which is the lightest SFI 15.2 approved front wheel.”

“I could immediately feel the results of the lower mass wheel. Additional effects were lighter steering and better steering feedback when making a pass”, said the driver Kyle Fickler, “even though we only had one carbon fiber front wheel on the car it was impressive to directly feel such a big improvement.” Weld Racing will continue to post information on the CF17000 prototype as development and testing continues on this potential new product.