Do I need tyre warmers for early trackday sessions?

I’ve been getting into track days recently, and this year’s Indian summer has been a godsend. But even with the sun shining the tracks are pretty cold in the mornings. Is it time I invested in some tyre warmers to give me a head start in the breakfast sessions? Stuart Pearson

Tyre warmers’ main benefit isn’t in giving you sticky rubber at the first turn, but in limiting the ‘heat cycles’ your tyres go through as they cool at the end of a session and get back up to operating temperature in the first few laps of the next thrash. The fewer the heat cycles, the longer the tyre life in a race track environment. Treated well like that, your rubber will last twice as long, so they will pay for themselves within a year.