Pirelli X Lamborghini Super Trofeo – A Winning Partnership
In case you didn’t know, the Lamborghini Super Trofeo one-make racing series celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, with the series’ Asia Pacific leg kicking off its 2018 season not too long ago at the Sepang International Circuit.
This pivotal milestone couldn’t be a better setting as the series also marks the entry of its latest hardware, that being the Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo Evo racer. If you’ve read our previous report about it, you’d know about the many new things it packs including new aero that was co-developed with Dallara.
Of course, power is nothing without control, and Super Trofeo series’ adoption of specially developed tyres from Pirelli to guarantee that. The famed Italian tyre marque has been a partner to the series since its inception, and we got to see that partnership in action first-hand during the season-opening leg of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia Pacific in Sepang recently.
You could say that this partnership in racing between Pirelli and Lamborghini is an extension of an existing collaboration both firms have had with the latter’s road cars, and that’s one partnership that’s been around for over five decades in fact.
Just like the road-going Lamborghini Huracan, its track-only Super Trofeo Evo machine comes shod with Pirelli P-Zero racing slicks and rain tyres specially developed for the series – a fact our hosts Pirelli keenly pointed when we were taken for a quick tour inside the Super Trofeo Asia Pacific garage.
The tyres supplied for the series are specially made by Pirelli in its dedicated motorsport facility - known as ‘the factory of champions’ – that’s located in Izmit, Turkey.
The compounds and structures are especially formulated for racing, with the tyres for the Super Trofeo series in particular, being designed to provide the right balance between performance, durability and driveability –the key essentials when it comes to making GT racing tyres.
Given the extreme conditions they are subjected to when shod on the Huracan Super Trofeo Evo racer, making bespoke tyres of such high capabilities is no small ask indeed. Nevertheless, Pirelli’s seems to have gotten things right, providing drivers racing in the series tyres that deliver all the grip and performance needed.
Despite the obvious differences these race tyres possess over their road-going counterparts, Pirelli were also keen to highlight how technology from the former is transferred to the latter.
To be more specific, it’s the methods and processes for the design and development of these Super Trofeo tyres that have been transferred and implemented into the realisation of Pirelli’s tailor-made products for the road.
In other words, the road-going Huracan, as well as its go-faster special siblings like the Performante, wouldn’t have had their exclusively made and grippy Pirelli road tyres for the road had it not been for Pirelli’s exploits into the Super Trofeo racing scene indeed.
You can see more of our behind-the-scenes look from within the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia Pacific garage through our Instagram (@topgear_malaysia).
