Tires, innovation and performance: 5 questions for Pirelli

Spring is upon us! It's the time of year where most of us will take off our winter tires or even get a special car out of storage.

We reached out to Pirelli Canada’s Orazio Mastracchio and asked him 5 questions about his company & the tires they produce.

Innovation

You are closely associated to performance. How does that translate in everyday life?

“Our company dedicates 7% of premium sales in R&D” mentions Orazio Mastraccio. “The technology that goes into tires we put on a Ferrari car is the same one as on a commodity car.”

“The investment we make in R&D in F1 allows us to transfer new technologies, new production process to the Passenger side. The focus is safety in all aspects, new production processes and innovations in materials.”

Material

What single aspect of a tire would you say is most impactful on overall performance?

“All parts of the tire have an impact on the overall performance of the tire. The carcass materials have an impact to the structure of the tire. The tread compound and tread design have an impact on mileage, traction and braking, sidewall construction on cornering and handling. The tread design becomes very important in regards to safety. We can design a tread pattern that would generate lots of grip, how effective would it be when it rains? Tread design needs to balance grip, water evacuation and mileage. Definitely, the more high performance the tire, the less mileage you will get, compared to an everyday passenger car tire.

All these parts need to work in sync in order to have a great performer.”

The importance of tires

Tires are a secondary preoccupation for some drivers. What would you tell them?

"One simple thing: your tires are the only part of the car that touches the road, it’s very important, I’d say mandatory to choose good tires”

Connected tire

How does connectedness impact our driving?

“The cyber tire is part of the greater trend of connected car. We already have a mechanism that can automatically check tire pressure: this is extremely important, especially in a country like ours, since we go through major differences in temperatures. It should be checked once a month, but let’s be honest, not many people do it! This information is crucial to Canadian drivers, and we can avoid accidents by handing it to them.

The cyber tire can also give us the temperature of the road and so much more data. As I said, the tire is the only part of the car that touches the road, and that can relay information about it. So the connected tire is a major step forward.”

Buying tires for a special car

If you’re planning on buying a nice car, how should you pick its tires? (Also: do you own such a car?)

“I have a BMW M3, and if I had some advice… get tires that work for the car. Take them as a package and make sure that they correspond with what you have. If you are looking to switch tires, take something that’s superior to what you already have and something that fits with the requirements and spirit of the car.

Let’s take Porsche for example, every tire we make needs to go through a vigorous test from the car manufacturer, once it passes all the homologation tests, it gets the Marking “N0”. This means that the tire was approved by Porsche to be fitted on their cars. There are multiple variation of the “N0”, you can find “N1” or “N2” depending on the version of the car, for example. This is valid for Lamborghini, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Bentley, Aston Martin and other luxury cars. Tailor-made tires are basically created for these cars, and each model will be different according the car it belongs on”.