Pirelli’s New Hero

Not many people are given the opportunity to co-star on screen alongside Uma Thurman, and even fewer tyres are afforded this privilege. So it is safe to say that the Pirelli’s new P Zero – christened ‘P Zero the Hero’ and subject of Mission Zero, Pirelli’s new short film starring the glamorous actress – is not your everyday run of the mill tyre.

The P Zero has been viewed as possessing a certain shaken-not-stirred panache ever since the first tyre to bear the P Zero name was fitted to the Ferrari F40 twenty years ago, and Pirelli are confident P Zero the Hero will continue this legacy. Officially launched to media and dealers at the Dubai Autodrome in mid-February, the new tyre takes its place at the top end of the UHP P Zero range. Designed with the supercar and premium sports car segment in mind, P Zero the Hero is the product of two years’ development and testing.

Mr. Michael Wendt, HP & UHP product development platform manager at Pirelli and one of the key members of the design team responsible for P Zero the Hero, speaks with obvious pride when discussing the technology that’s contained within the new tyre. “This (P Zero the Hero)…represents the most technologically advanced product that has come out of Pirelli’s research,” he noted before highlighting the finer points that Pirelli believe set their new prodigy apart from the competition.

Uniform Footprint

The tread pattern is in keeping with the latest UHP tyre developments and features an asymmetrical design. According to Pirelli, this patented ‘Dynamic Asymmetric Contour’ tread pattern offers P Zero the Hero the significant advantage of minimising dynamic deformation, thus providing a fundamentally uniform and consistent footprint – and therefore optimised road holding – at both high and low speeds. The uniformity of the footprint should lead to more uniform wear, preserving the tyre’s performance characteristics well into its useful working life.

The extent of carcass deformation is also controlled – a combination of synthetic nylon and aramid (aromatic polyamide) fibres have been used to construct the carcass, and the inclusion of this fibre combination (aramid is commonly used as a body armour fabric and is strongly heat resistant) enables the tyre to maintain a consistent profile at speeds up to 370km/h. This minimisation of carcass deformation reportedly not only increases the overall mileage P Zero the Hero can cover during its lifetime – Pirelli testing indicates that the new tyre has 25 per cent greater durability than the P Zero Rosso – the company’s studies also show that a more consistent performance can be maintained even at high mileages.

Wendt explained that P Zero the Hero’s ability to deliver a high level of performance even from a cold start lay in the tyre’s patented nanobase compound. Specifically, the compound between the tread and the belts contain nanocomposites – nanosized particles with a high surface area to volume ratio that are dispersed throughout the compound – and according to Pirelli these nanocomposites bestow the compound with thermoplastic stability, or in layman’s terms, allow the compound to maintain its shape and consistency when heated or cooled.

Environmentally Friendly Compound

The German development manager also emphasised that the Pirelli design team’s focus upon performance has not been at the expense of environmental considerations. With European Union directives prohibiting the use of high levels of carcinogenic aromatic oils in the manufacture of tyres only three years away, Pirelli has gone one step further and entirely eliminated aromatic oils from the compound used in P Zero the Hero. The absence of these oils, and the polycyclic aromatic compounds (PCAs) contained within, mean that, as the new P Zero gradually wears during road use it will not be releasing toxic and bioaccumulative chemicals into the environment.

The end result of this technology and investment in development is a tyre that appears to fulfill its promise of delivering a high level of performance in both wet and dry conditions. Although opportunities to experience the new tyre during the product launch were undertaken in conditions that emphasised the most positive aspects of P Zero the Hero, even such tests revealed that the new P Zero is amply capable of translating the output generated by the world’s most powerful road cars into a satisfying driving experience.

Many observers will find the number of tyre variations available for each wheel size in this newly released range to be of interest. No less than eight 20-inch P Zero the Hero variations have been released, more than for any other wheel size. While this is hardly surprising given the long-standing consumer preference for larger diameter alloy wheels, it is significant to note that the original P Zero, produced for the then state-of-the-art Ferrari F40, was a mere 17-inches in diameter – a size that now apparently represents a minority preference and is represented by only three P Zero the Hero variations.

At the tyre’s Dubai launch Uberto Thun, Pirelli’s Central and Western Europe sales and marketing director presented statistics demonstrating that the P Zero range had, in terms of yearly sales increase, performed better since 2001 than a dozen other manufacturers that Pirelli consider their principal competitors. And while positive statistics are to be expected at a press release, it does seem that Pirelli possesses a highly market friendly product. Indeed, the list of OE customers already on board is impressive. Ferrari has chosen P Zero the Hero for their 599 GTB Fiorano, as have Aston Martin for the DB9. Two Lamborghini models, a Maserati, a pair of Audis and AMG Mercedes plus offerings from Jaguar and Alfa Romeo round out the list, and Pirelli claim that more OE homologations are in the pipeline.

Despite outperforming industry norms, the people at Pirelli still see room for improvement. A company spokesman reportedly commented that Pirelli’s UHP range accounts for 10 per cent of sales, before adding “We push to double this share, not in volume but in terms of value.” No precise timeframe was given for this jump in sales revenue, but it was noted that such an increase would not come at the expense of other Pirelli sales.

Whether or not Pirelli attains this ambitious “medium-term” goal remains to be seen. But given the reputation the P Zero range has acquired during the past two decades and Pirelli’s almost iconic status as a maker of performance tyres, it is likely that P Zero the Hero will appear on the shortlist of many a prospective performance tyre buyer. The new tyre is available in 26 conventional 17 to 20-inch sizes and 7 run-flat 16 to 18-inch sizes. Retail prices for the UK market were not available at the time of launch, but it is anticipated that pricing for P Zero the Hero will be in line with the upper end of the current P Zero range.