Dunlop Showcases Its Race-to-Road Technology

In touring car racing, Dunlop is the tyre supplier of choice in the German DTM, Australian V8 Supercars and the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship. The company possesses more wins at Le Mans than any other tyre manufacturer. This racing pedigree has helped the company to innovate technologies for tyres designed for everyday motoring. Dunlop will be exemplifying this at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this weekend (11-13 July), where the company will demonstrate how its racing success leads to high technology road tyres; the result of development partnerships with premium performance car manufacturers.

The partnership between Dunlop and Jaguar embraces many of the iconic successes in the history of both brands. Six Le Mans victories were shared between the two companies, with the success story spanning the 1951 Jaguar XK120C through the legendary C and D-Type era to the Jaguar XJR-9LM that won in 1988. At Goodwood, Dunlop will showcase the latest XKR road car alongside examples of Le Mans winning Jaguars. The Dunlop tyres used in the current Le Mans Endurance Series are designed, developed and manufactured at Fort Dunlop in Birmingham, England, directly adjacent to the Castle Bromwich factory where the new XK is manufactured.
Jaguar and Dunlop have worked together to fine tune bespoke tyres that provide the fluent handling, responsiveness and roadholding demanded by Jaguar engineers and customers.

The current Jaguar models, the XK and XKR are fitted with Dunlop SP Sport Maxx tyres. The Sport Maxx features a sophisticated Multi Radius Tread design. This technology permits the calculation of an exceptionally accurate tread surface. The more accurate the tread shape is calculated the more homogeneous the pressure deployment in the contact patch becomes. The more even the pressure deployment, the more the tyre is on the road.

Sponsored by HiQ and Dunlop, this year’s BTCC championship represents the series’ 50th anniversary. Dunlop is celebrating its sponsorship and participation in the competition by displaying the only four wheel drive car to win the BTCC – the 1996 Audi A4 Quattro, driven by Frank Biela, who will appear on the stand in the Stable Yard to talk about that epic year of racing.

In the present day, Dunlop works closely with Audi, supplying tyres for their latest A4 DTM race cars, whilst The latest Audi S5 road car is homologated with Dunlop Sport Maxx GT tyres using Dunlop’s ‘Touch Technology’: a feature ultimately derived from lessons learned on the racetrack.