Pirelli focuses more on front tyres for 2016
Giorgio Barbier assesses 2015 and looks on to next year.
The WorldSBK paddock is unique as an international road racing World Championship, as the bikes used are based directly on their road counterparts.
The same goes for tyres, as Pirelli supplies its products across all WorldSBK classes as well as for every day road users.
“This year has been interesting and important to understand better how the soft tyres work on Superbike and Supersport machines,” Giorgio Barbier, Racing Director of Pirelli Moto, explains as he sums up the 2015 campaign – Pirelli’s 12th consecutive year as an experienced partner and energetic contributor to the series.
“This season we concentrated all of our efforts on the rear tyres and very soft compounds because this is the area we would like to develop more for the market. Actually, we have always raced with soft tyres this year. We took some different solutions to have the right feedback from the riders and we are happy with them.”
Having concentrated so much on its rear solutions for 2015, Pirelli’s attention turns to the front end of the bike for 2016.
“For sure, the focus for next season will be mostly on the front tyres,” Barbier continues. “Now we are really using the softest on the back, so we have to balance more on the front. The front is more difficult because, usually, riders have different attitudes and feelings towards the front. Some riders like it very soft and others very hard, so to make a really good range for all of them is a big challenge.”
Italian company Pirelli participated in and won the original bid to supply control tyres to WorldSBK in 2004. This rule would inadvertently change the future of the brand, as the new rules demanded industrial production methods to meet the large numbers of tyres required, as opposed to the prototyping processes as used previously.
