F1, Pirelli-Bridgestone challenge for tyres. The role of the Italian company – Corriere.it

Formula 1 races towards the future, we are entering decisive days for choosing the tire supplier from 2025-2027 (with an option for 2028). Bridgestone has stepped forward, wants to return to the top category. one of the largest groups in the world in the tire sector, it has money and means. He will have to beat the competition from Pirelli, the Italian company remains a guarantee that many in the paddock would never want to lose. a question of money, but not only. Of skills, sensitivity, technique, relationships, trust of the pilots.

Pirelli represents continuity, world leader in the supply of tires for motorsport (it serves 230 car and 120 motorcycle championships), has taken on the challenge of 18-inch maxi-tyres (introduced last year) demonstrating that it was the way right to go, beating the initial skepticisms. The recent history of Pirelli in Formula 1 begins in 2011, a time ago, when Sebastian Vettel won his second World Championship with Red Bull. It operates under a mono-supply regime, since the circus changed the rules by abolishing the cohabitation of several companies at the same time.

Over one and a half million kilometers traveled each year by tires designed at Bicocca, the two factories dedicated to the production of F1 tyres. Reducing Pirelli to a simple supplier would be wrong and simplistic, the Milanese company is an ally of F1 and has embraced all the initiatives promoted by Liberty Media (from hotlaps, fast laps on the track in road supercars, activities reserved for VIPs, the Academy , the new women’s series) and has shown great flexibility in adapting to the requests of the organizers, both today and yesterday. First by making high-degradation tires, then modifying them for the new 2014 hybrid engines that completely changed the machines by increasing the weight. Even if one of the biggest revolutions took place in 2017 with the advent of inflatable boats combined with aerodynamic innovations capable of making single-seaters faster by up to six seconds per lap. To respond to the increase in performance, new materials and unprecedented construction criteria must be found.

the appetizer of the 18 inches, an epochal change supported to meet the transfer of technologies from the track to road production, an element that has always characterized Pirelli. The novelty has brought a wider range of usable strategies, to a control of the level of degradation that has allowed the riders to push harder than in the past, to a greater ease in sending the tires up to temperature thanks to a wider window of use . A continuous challenge from those who want to keep running for a long time to come. With Italian and foreign engineers, with research centers and patents (over 6,100, those registered by Bicocca, not only in racing activities), because racing is and will remain an open-air laboratory.