Record 40 entries on Pirelli tyres at GT World Challenge Asia

Pirelli tyres will be fitted on a record 40 cars at the next round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia Powered by AWS at Fuji in Japan this weekend. The event also represents the opening round of the Fanatec Japan Cup event. Pirelli is sole supplier to all the GT3-based championships organised by the SRO Group around the world. These events showcase racing equivalents of roadgoing supercars, making them particularly suited to Pirelli’s core business of supplying OE and replacement market tyres to performance vehicles for the road and track. The tyre manufacturer says it uses motorsport for the development of road tyre products in its P Zero and Cinturato ranges.

At the Fuji Raceway weekend, the 13 manufacturers represented in the GT3 and GT4 categories will use the P Zero DHF tyre. This is the latest evolution of Pirelli’s racing tyre, designed to provide versatile performance to all classes of GT racing across a wide variety of models.

The Pirelli team servicing this intense demand at Fuji is equally international, comprising personnel based in Japan and China, as well as representatives from Pirelli HQ in Milan, Italy. The action consists of qualifying on Saturday, followed by an hour-long sprint race on Saturday afternoon (14:25-15:25 local time) and another hour-long race on Sunday lunchtime (12:00-13:00).

A similarly high number of manufacturers will be represented at the jewel in the crown of the GT World Challenge, the Spa 24 Hours, which takes place at the end of June. This is also the biggest event on Pirelli’s entire motorsport calendar, featuring a record number of tyres and team personnel.

While taking place at opposite ends of the world, both ground-breaking events have Pirelli’s state-of-the-art competition tyres and meticulous care for every client in common: one of the reasons why Pirelli also equips around half of all the supercars currently sold for the road.

Matteo Braga, Pirelli’s racing activity manager said: “We’re delighted to see the GT World Challenge Asia go from strength to strength in its first full season after the pandemic, with a record-breaking grid this weekend that takes in nearly all of the homologated GT3 manufacturers. Wherever we race, we pay exactly the same attention to detail to all our customers so that they can extract the maximum potential from their tyres and improve their overall performances. Fuji is an iconic circuit on the global racing scene, so we’re looking forward to a spectacular and unpredictable weekend of action with the chance of uncertain weather.”

Qualifying and the race will be streamed live on the SRO YouTube channel.