FIA selects Pirelli as official tire partner and supplier for GT World Cup
Following a tender process, the FIA has appointed Pirelli as the official tire partner and supplier for the FIA GT World Cup for a term of three years, starting with this year’s edition of the competition held as part of the Macau Grand Prix.
Pirelli will supply all FIA GT World Cup competitors with its tried-and-trusted P Zero DHF tire this year, which has been used worldwide by several championships that run GT3-specification cars.
According to Pirelli, P Zero DHF is a versatile compound tire that is well suited to the demanding nature of the Macau Guia Circuit, which features a mixture of slow and high-speed corners throughout the 6.276km lap, as well as an abrasive surface combined with frequently high track temperatures and significant track evolution from session to session.
Over the course of the entire competition, each car will be allocated five sets of dry-weather tires and three sets of wet-weather tires. For the first time in an FIA-sanctioned competition for GT3 machinery, RFID technology will be in place, enabling seamless automatic monitoring of tires alongside the use of scannable barcodes on the outer sidewalls.
The Italian tire manufacturer continues its long-standing relationship with the FIA in GT3 racing, which dates back to the inaugural running of the FIA GT World Cup in 2015, and has also included the 2018 FIA GT Nations Cup as well as the two editions of the FIA Motorsport Games that have taken place to date.
Marek Nawarecki, FIA senior circuit sport director, said, “Held as part of the Macau Grand Prix, the FIA GT World Cup represents a unique challenge among competitions for GT3 cars. The Guia Circuit doesn’t allow for any pre-event testing, so it is crucial to have a reliable tire that teams and drivers can trust 100%.
“Pirelli brings a wealth of experience from various forms of motorsport, has an established working relationship with the FIA through different disciplines and series, and has a very strong presence in the worldwide GT3 marketplace. This is a natural partnership for the FIA GT World Cup that makes sense for a lot of reasons.”
Mario Isola, Pirelli’s head of motorsport, said, “We will also be exclusively supplying our bespoke P Zero tires to the Formula 3 World Cup. From the perspective of a tire supplier, Macau not only has the glamour that makes this circuit a racing legend, but it also contains a massively varied technical challenge: from the flat-out wide straights of the city section to the twisty and demanding ‘mountain’ sector, all the way to what is probably the slowest and tightest hairpin bend in the history of motorsport.”
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