motorsport

Bridgestone will return to a FIA World Championship for the first time in a decade-and-a-half when it begins delivering tyres to Formula E starting in the 2026/27 season. The company will succeed Hankook as the sole tyre supplier under an agreement that covers 2026-2027 through 2029-2030. The start of Bridgestone’s Formula E engagement will coincide with the introduction of Gen4 cars in the championship’s 13th season.

The ‘Option’ slick compound tyre has returned to the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch following calls for its reintroduction from drivers and teams. Goodyear brought the Option to last weekend’s BTCC round at Brands Hatch, ending the practice of providing a single slick tyre at each round, as had been the case ever since the championship embraced hybrid power in 2022.

As of next season, Hankook will be the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship tyre supplier. The news came out at The Swarovski Crystal Worlds in Austria on 27 September. WhatTyre was there and saw the Gen3 Formula E vehicle close-up plus Hankook being officially presented with the newly developed Hankook iON race tyres.

David Coulthard, himself a 13-time Grand Prix winner, has hit out at the current generation of Formula One tyres, which are supplied by Pirelli. Speaking in an interview with RaceFans.net, Coulthard said Pirelli-era tyres resulted in boring races: “This whole Pirelli era is just confusing to me and boring to me to have to talk about, and super-boring for me to have to listen to the drivers going ‘I was trying to avoid pushing too hard on the tyres’.”

Cooper Tire Europe will continue its exclusive tyre supply to the FIA World Rallycross and FIA European Rallycross championships for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons. This year’s World Rallycross season, the  8th contested on Cooper tyres, commences with the World RX of Norway on 12 June.

For better or worse, the Nürburgring 24 Hours has become one of the last bastions of open tyre competition in recent years. It represents a rare chance each year for tyre manufacturer rivals to go head-to-head on track on the world stage. Held at arguably the toughest race track in the world, the 25km Nürburgring Nordschleife, it is a race that features over 100 GT and touring cars, all being pushed to their limits, and has a sizeable global following. One tyre brand racing up front in the top category for GT3 cars (SP9), aiming to take its first overall win against teams racing with Michelin, Goodyear and Yokohama rubber, is Falken, which has been competing at the Nürburgring 24 Hours since 1999.

Pirelli is investigating the reasons for the tyre failures at this weekend’s British Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton limped his Mercedes to the chequered flag at Silverstone on 2 August race after his front-left P Zero White deflated on the last lap. His team-mate Valtteri Bottas and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz both had tyres fail in the final stages too. Mario Isola, who is Pirelli’s head of F1 tyres, explained that the likely causes of their failure were that they wer “extremely well-used”, while Hamilton also spoke of the presence of debris on the track from two accidents early in the race.

Put electric-powered 4x4s in some of the toughest off-road racing environments in the world and what do you get? Extreme E. German tyremaker Continental is a founding partner of the series. From 2021 Conti will premium sponsor. And this means Conti will fit all the competing ODYSSEY 21vehicles with tyres. Indeed, according to the tyre manufacturer, Extreme E is the biggest challenge tyres have faced in motorsport. With this in mind, Nico Meier, product designer at Continental, talks about the challenges tyres face in Extreme E and the importance of the 4x4 tyre sidewalls in general.

The ADAC TOTAL 24h of the Nürburgring is one of global motorsport’s great endurance events, with 300,000 spectators descending on the circuit every year. It is a major event for many tyre manufacturers, including Falken, whose motorsport and marketing teams alike build their years around the event. The COVID-19 related rescheduling for September has therefore left many Falken representatives at a bit of a loose end this weekend, when the event was due to be held. Fortunately, the tyre brand’s team is followed by an enthusiastic fan base, which has helped devise 24 challenges for its drivers to do at home.