Tyre News

There are plenty of reasons to feel for young drivers hoping to pass the driving test in 2020. Test centres and the DVSA website itself are struggling with the bottleneck in demand, following lifted pandemic restrictions. More than 200,000 people queued to book their test online this morning, crashing the site. In response, the DVSA has begun tweeting test availability (see below). And it’s not just getting a date that is proving difficult. The driving test pass rate is at its lowest point in 10 years, at just 45.8 per cent.

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.

Four-time BTCC champion Colin Turkington put the latest Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres through their paces ahead of next week’s Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) opener at Donington.

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.

Bridgestone has launched its Mobox all-inclusive monthly tyre subscription service in the UK. The Mobox subscription offers new tyres, full warranty and other premium vehicle-related services from £7 per month. It is initially available in five ETB Autocentres prior to rolling out across all 31 ETB centres.

Having looked at how we got from the invention of the wheel to the kinds of tyres we know today, our series on the history of tyre technology concludes with an overview of the kinds of technologies currently available.