Pirelli’s hybrid-tweaked tyres ready for new WRC season

A new generation of hybrid-powered rally cars that generate more than 500 hp and over 500 newton-metres of torque make their debut when the 2022 FIA World Rally Championship season begins with the Rallye Monte-Carlo, which gets underway on 20 January. This presents a fresh challenge to Pirelli as the Italian company enters its second season as exclusive supplier to the top category and new-look support series. To equip these cars, Pirelli has optimised the entire range of P Zero, Scorpion, and Sottozero tyres to cope with these tech-rich vehicles’ extra weight and additional torque.

“The debut of the Rally1 cars is an exciting development at the beginning of the second season of our agreement to supply the WRC,” comments Terenzio Testoni, Pirelli’s rally activity manager. “The arrival of hybrid power is a welcome one that maintains the WRC’s relevance to the cars being driven by everyday drivers.

“As a company, Pirelli has a lot of experience with hybrid including from Formula 1 – but preparing for its use in the varied conditions experienced in the WRC has been a totally different challenge,” Testoni continues. “As a result, we’ve embarked on a comprehensive development programme starting from last year to align our tyres with the latest demands of the sport. In particular, the tyre structure has been reinforced to deal with around 100 to 120 kilogrammes of extra weight with the latest cars: a significant increase.”

3 Pirelli WRC families

As usual, there are three families of Pirelli WRC tyres: P Zero and P Zero Cinturato for asphalt, Scorpion for gravel, and Sottozero for snow and Ice. The latest asphalt tyres, first seen in Spain and Monza last year, and the new gravel tyres have benefitted from reinforced structures and an optimised design to cope with the extra weight and torque of the latest Rally1 cars.

Both the asphalt and the snow tyres will be seen in Monaco this week, with the new J1B studded ice tyre for Sweden making its debut on round two (having evolved from last year’s J1A tyre) before the 2022 gravel tyre is first seen in Portugal. Following this latest evolutionary step and ongoing development, this year’s hard and soft Scorpion compounds will be called WRC H A and WRC S A respectively.

Pirelli tyres in Monte Carlo

P Zero RA WRC: Pirelli supplies its regular asphalt rally product in a soft and a supersoft compound, exclusively for Rallye Monte-Carlo and its cooler temperatures.

P Zero RA: From 2022, WRC2 will be for Rally2 cars and WRC3 for Rally3 cars. These less powerful four-wheel drive cars also have supersoft (RA9) and soft (RA7+) P Zero tyres available, featuring many of the same characteristics of the WRC tyres fitted to the top cars.

Sottozero STZ-B: A winter tyre for all categories of four-wheel drive cars in case of ice and snow, but also for mixed conditions: including wet and mud with ice and snow. For Rallye Monte-Carlo in mind, this comes in two versions: with or without studs.

“On this year’s Rallye Monte-Carlo, tyre choices could be even more critical than usual in order to have the grip needed to make use of the extra 100 Kw of electrical power available,” says Testoni. “However, an unknown factor is exactly how and when each driver will be able to conserve and use that extra power over the course of a whole stage. Making the most of all the available power and energy effectively is sure to be a key to winning the rally.”

Pirelli in numbers

Pirelli will bring around 4,000 tyres to Monte Carlo, of which 1,200 will be for the top class of Rally1 cars. Each of the Rally1 drivers has an allocation of 80 tyres, from which they can use up to 38 during the rally.

24 P Zero RA Super Soft
20 P Zero RA Soft
24 Sottozero STZ-B studded
12 Sottozero STZ-B without studs

Pirelli will also supply 2,400 tyres to the other four-wheel drive cars in the event, including those entered in WRC2. Each of the Rally 2 drivers has an allocation of 72 tyres, from which they can use up to 32 during the course of the rally.

20 P Zero RA7+ soft
16 P Zero RA9 super soft
24 Sottozero STZ-B studded
12 Sottozero STZ-B without studs

Pirelli will also supply 400 tyres to the other four-wheel drive cars in the event including those entered in WRC3 Each of the Rally 2 drivers has an allocation of 72 tyres, from which they can use up to 32 during the rally.

20 P Zero RA soft
16 P Zero RA super soft
24 Sottozero STZ-B studded
12 Sottozero STZ-B without studs