WRC
Yokohama-supported rally driver Tom Cave has ended his 2009 rally season in 44th place overall, having attained a third in class during the Rally of Great Britain and eighth overall and first in class in the Rally of Scotland. The latter, notes the tyre maker, marked the best result for a Ford in the 2009 Intercontinental Rally Challenge and would have netted him a championship point had the marque been registered for the series.
So now that Bridgestone has opted out after the 2010 season, which company will step up to supply race tyres for Formula One?
Bridgestone has announced its discontinuation of Formula One tyre supply, and it appears Pirelli is less than certain about its future with the World Rally Championship. According to the autosport.com website, Pirelli’s director of motorsport Paul Hembery has admitted there are no guarantees company will bid for a second term as WRC control tyre supplier following the current deal’s expiry at the end of 2010.
Citroën driver Sebastien Loeb has the 2009 FIA World Rally Championship in the bag after victory in the season’s final round, the Rally Great Britain. This win, the 54th in the French driver’s career, enabled Loeb to overtake Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen on the points table and finish the year one point ahead of his Finnish rival. Pirelli, as tyre supplier to the WRC, has praised the 2009 winner and his team for their victory:
“Brilliant, awesome, it was a trip you could never pay to organise for yourself,” was how Martin Thomas, owner of Halesworth Tyre and Exhaust in Halesworth, Suffolk, described a recent trip to the World Rally Championships. Thomas and his wife Lisa were VIP guests at the Rally of Spain (October 1-3) after winning the top prize in a national promotion organised by Grouptyre, the UK’s leading independent wholesaler, and premium tyre manufacturer Pirelli. The Grouptyre/Pirelli incentive ran from 1 May to 30 June. For every Pirelli car, van and 4×4 tyre that independent tyre retailers bought during the promotion period, they were credited with an entry into a draw, the top prize of which was the Spanish rally excursion.
Pirelli has brought its Scorpion-brand rally tyres to the gravel roads of the UK for the final decisive stage of the 2009 World Rally Championship, which begins tomorrow. The roads around Cardiff usually present a tough option when the WRC visits, with heavy rainfall, uneven roads, slippery land, mud and insidious special stages during the Rally GB, but this year, thanks to a change in the scheduling, there is a chance that dry, milder conditions may prevail. Therefore, Pirelli states that it will use soft compound Scorpion tyres as part of the key elements in the race to final victory.
Following a Rally Poland with large measures of success and frustration, young British World Rally Championship driver Tom Cave reserved special praise for his tyre supplier Yokohama, which uniquely provides the rubber for his Ford Fiesta: “The Yokohama tyres worked extremely well for us this weekend. We used the 195 section tyres and the outright grip was exactly what we needed. The tyres were also incredibly consistent and stood up to the conditions exceptionally well. We had no damage or puncture issues at all and they were very hard wearing as well as performing brilliantly.”
The 17 year-old from Aberdovey won 13 of the 15 stages he contested in his class (Group N3, up to 2000cc), but was denied the class victory when the cylinder head gasket on his Ford Fiesta rally car failed on Saturday, meaning he had to retire from the second day and incur time penalties before rejoining and finishing the event on Sunday. Though disappointed with the result, Cave expressed his delighted with the pace that he, co-driver Craig Parry, the team and the Yokohama tyres had demonstrated over the weekend. Commenting after the finish, he said; “While I’m obviously extremely disappointed that we didn’t get the result we hoped for up until the problem with the engine, we can definitely take a lot of positives from this event. Fastest stage time in class with the exception of one proper stage shows that our notes were working very well and the car was perfect, except for the engine problem. I think this was the weekend where everything seemed to come together – at the beginning and the end, at any rate!”
The UK distributor for Yokohama tyres, Yokohama HPT, will be heading south to Portugal next month, as it supports RX Racing when the buggies form part of the first regional final towards this year’s Race of Champions. With the 2009 Race of Champions moving to the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, home of last year’s Olympics, the organisers of the event have responded to demand from numerous countries to join the Nation’s Cup by creating the first regional final. The event, to be held in the Estadio do Dragao in Porto, the home of FC Porto, will see teams from Portugal, Spain, Italy and Monaco fight for a place in the ROC.
The format for the first final will follow a similar one to the ROC, with teams of drivers from every discipline of motorsport competing on a tarmac course laid out in the stadium. Saturday will see Portuguese drivers going head-to-head for a place alongside local Production car World Rally Championship leader Armindo Araujo to form the four-strong team for Sunday’s competition.
Pirelli has reported a “difficult” yet problem-less three days at the all-gravel Rally d’Italia-Sardegna, the tyre-manufacturer’s home event. Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala put the brakes on Sebastien Loeb’s domination of the 2009 World Rally Championship season to claim his first win of the year, while the five Pirelli Star Drivers took part in their second round of the six they will face in total, continuing their development in the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X Group N cars. On an event that gave all six youngsters some extremely valuable experience of rough gravel, up-and-coming Finn Jarkko Nikara emerged best-placed of the Pirelli Star Drivers. Pirelli’s Rally Manager Mario Isola said, “These very rough conditions also taught our five Star Drivers how to blend consistency with their obvious speed, which will serve them well in the future.”
After battling it out in the Argentine Sierras, the World Rally Championship is back in Europe and drivers are getting ready to hit the tough gravel roads of Sardinia. The Rally d’Italia Sardegna, the sixth round of the FIA World Rally Championship, is also another challenge for Pirelli Scorpion tyres – which, for this rally, come with a hard compound and, as usual, cannot be hand-cut.
This is the sixth year in which the Italian rally has been held in Sardinia and it will again be based in Olbia, although special stages will bring the teams to the southern end of the island where they will have to face challenging and mostly fast terrain, in places narrow and winding with a sandy surface concealing a hard base: all this will make the second passage even harder and the Pirelli Scorpion tyres will be put to the test together with the skill and precision of the drivers.
Following the success of its exclusive Pirelli promotion last summer Grouptyre, is launching another national incentive in conjunction with the premium brand to build retail sales through the independent sector. The new Pirelli promotion runs from 1 May to 30 June inclusive and the top prize is once again an all-expenses paid VIP trip for two people to the WRC Rally of Spain (October 2-4), the penultimate round of the 2009 World Rally Championship whose sweeping asphalt roads provide the fastest sealed-surface stages the teams will encounter all season.
The winners will be able to compare notes with Aaron Bothamley, manager of Rickmansworth-based Fairway Tyre and Auto Services, and his brother-in-law Paul who were VIP guests of Pirelli and Ford at the Spanish round of the 2008 World Rally Championship. “The flights, hotel, food and overall organisation were superb, in fact the whole weekend was absolutely fantastic and I can’t stress enough how well we were looked after by Pirelli and Ford,” said Aaron, who is supplied by Grouptyre member Broadway Tyres.
Citroen driver Sebastien Loeb maintained his dominance of the 2009 World Rally Championship with victory on the fourth round of the series, the Rally of Portugal, which ended in Faro on Sunday afternoon (5 April). There’s nothing new there, considering Loeb’s early season form, though the Portuguese WRC stage represented a landmark worthy of note for tyre suppliers Pirelli. The Italian giant’s Star Driver scheme – undertaken with collaboration from the FIA in order to develop new young drivers – inaugurated five new drivers, all of whom will compete at a further five events. Jarkko Nikara of Finland, Nicos Thomas from Cyprus, the Czech Republic’s Martin Semerad, Mark Tapper from New Zealand and South African Jon Williams tackled Portugal as the first stage in their WRC education.
Pirelli rally manager Mario Isola said, “We are very pleased with the way this event has gone. We had no problems with the tyres. Okay, there were some punctures caused by accidents, but otherwise the hard-compound Scorpion tyre coped very well with the conditions. This has been another very strong drive from Sebastien Loeb, but once again we saw Ford pushing Citroen hard. This was also a historic rally for Pirelli with the Star Driver Scheme. This association with the FIA to help young drivers in the sport has made us very proud as a company. All five of the drivers have performed well and we now look ahead to the rest of the season with these exciting guys.”
Drivers at the upcoming Cyprus round of the World Rally Championship are to face an increased challenge on the island following the decision to supply competitors with only hard compound gravel tyres, despite the change of format to include a first day on asphalt in addition to the more traditional gravel surfaces of the later stages.
Mario Isola, the rally manager at Pirelli – the official tyre supplier to the WRC – stated, “this is a very demanding situation for our gravel tyres and surely the skills required from the drivers will be somewhat different. There is surely less grip but everyone has been surprised by how well the tyres stood up in the tests.”
He’s one away from the ‘big five-oh’…Rally Norway, the sole all-snow round of the World Rally Championship, was the scene of five-time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb’s 49th career win – it also marked the first competition victory for Pirelli’s brand new generation of Sottozero studded winter tyre. Loeb’s Citroën kept the Pirelli-equipped Ford Focus RS WRC of Mikko Hirvonen at bay throughout the event, finishing the three-day rally after what Pirelli has called a ‘close battle’ with the Finnish driver.
In past years, spiked winter tyres for world championship winter rallies used to be of a special narrow size, designed to bite through soft snow to the harder surfaces underneath. This year, as part of the Pirelli supported FIA cost-cutting drive, Pirelli’s tungsten-tipped Sottozero winter tyres – each of which contains 384 studs – have been designed to fit on standard 15-inch gravel wheel rims.
Rally Norway, the second round of the 2009 World Rally Championship, begins in Hamar, 60 kilometres north of Oslo. While the mainstay of the action runs on the frozen roads around the rally’s hometown, this year on a surface that spectators can barely stand on. Heavy snowfalls in the lead up to the event have been compacted to make a near-perfect ice base for the stages. And while such conditions are a true test of man and machine, Pirelli argues that it is probably its Sottozero tyres that face the biggest test; the Italian manufacturer’s rubber is the sole link between vehicle and slippery surface.
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