Road-clearing Air Knife

Standing water on the road surface, be that liquid or snow, reduces friction between tires and the road. That friction is required in order to accelerate, stop or turn. Tires have a tread pattern of various grooves or "sipes" that are designed to give the water somewhere to go. Tires designed to cope with more water have more and larger sipes. Consequently, this leads to less tire in contact with the road in dry conditions and the smaller blocks of tread tend to flex, leading to local heating/inefficiency as well as a perceivable change in driving feel.

Inevitably, everyday tires end up as something of a compromise* and when the road gets really wet, the amount of standing water can overwhelm the capacity of the sipes leading to a layer of water between the whole tire contact patch and the road surface. This is known as aquaplaning/hydroplaning, depending on your latin/greek preferences, presumably**. This is sometimes fun/occasionally terrifying depending on variable conditions.

To prevent this, we need to ensure that the amount of water on the road surface is below the capacity of the sipes. Specifically, reduce the amount of water to that below the volume the sipes can remove PER UNIT TIME. The easiest way to do this is to slow down, move slow enough and cars tend to sink through the water layer and gain contact with the road surface***. However, since slowing down is time-consuming and suffers from poor buy-in from the general public, we need another option.

I propose a nozzle in front of each tire to direct high-pressure air in an Air-Knife<link> format to clear a significant amount of water from the road surface immediately in front of the tire contact patch. This would act a bit like those super-noisy hand dryers we've all tried, as an efficient way of separating water from a sold object. Only we replace our hands with some road. The exact shape of the jet will require experimentation, I'd start with a forward-facing arrow shape or possibly an inward facing angle to drive water under the car to minimize additional road spray.

A brief experiment with a tray of water in the work bathroom (over the weekend) reveals that a Dyson Airblade is eminently capable of removing a half-inch of water and spraying it all over the wall/floor/me.

The amount of air required isn't huge, requiring in the region of a few hundred Watts of fan/compressor power. The closer the nozzle is to the surface, the more efficient, but again, experimentation required to find a good compromise. The total downward thrust will be negligible at a few kG at most. Sadly, I can't find a way to make it legal by Formula 1 rules, I think it contravenes "movable aerodynamic device".

*get winter tires people, they improve going, turning and stopping. AWD only does the first one.

**This is all, of course, pending the archaeological discovery of a mosaic depicting an out-of-control chariot in slightly too much standing water. Although chariot wheels have favorable profiles in terms of aspect ratio etc. for the prevention of aqua/hydro planing. Perhaps derived from hard-won chariot experience?

***Prudent to check you're in a car and not a boat at this point.