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LEO PARENTE: We're just outside Milan,
Italy at a test track.
But this Shakedown is not about racing.
Well, not directly.
This is Pirelli's test facility at Vizzola Ticino,
where they do all the work for their tires.
All the production models, some race and rally tires, all
the wet traction and noise performance testing.
What we discover is the process to develop road tires
is really the same as what racing does when the sport is
put to work.
Let's start with the man that leads the Pirelli tire
development team, and then watch this place in action.
STEPHEN ROWE: We are located in Vizzola.
Its perimeter is a national park.
We're 50 kilometers from Milan, where
we have an R&D base.
So we're basically--
from our office desk, from our indoor laboratories, we're 25
minutes in the car, to sitting in the car and testing the
tires we've just taken off high speed or
road resistance testing.
Or cut the sections to see what the
specifications look like.
We test everything here that we can get our hands on in
terms of wet.
We test rally cars here.
Anything with a lot of movement in it.
We are testing McLaren, we're testing Bentley, we're testing
the iconic Italian manufacturers.
But we're also testing Fiat, which is high tech small cars.
We tend to think of it as our open air laboratory.
It's an extremely valuable commodity for wet handling.
We can do all the instrumented and subjective testing here.
We have a number of special surface tracks for the various
conditions, whether it's cobblestones, open aggregate,
closed aggregate, tarmac, et cetera.
LEO PARENTE: If you were asked to design a tire test
facility, what I'm about to show you, you'd probably
figure out yourself.
Different surfaces.
The most modern of tarmac--
very smooth.
A little older, larger grain stones.
Concrete--
we see that all the time.
The most oldest of tarmac-- bigger stones still.
And then finally, cobbles--
small cobbles, large cobbles.
Pirelli calls this the European area, but I call this
the same surface you see in Northeast cities--
New York, Boston, Philly, whatever.
All to evaluate tire performance and the sound a
tire makes on these different surfaces.
But you'd have figured that out yourself.
STEPHEN ROWE: Here this is still, after 30 years, a state
of the art wet testing circuit.
An instrumented, braking, noise, vehicle dynamics track.
It was designed at the time based on performance of the
cars in those years.
So we're talking of the late '70s, early '80s.
It's evolved because it's become even more wettable.
Everywhere is wettable now, whereas the original time, we
didn't have corner aquaplaning, because it was
never a characteristic that was used at the time.
We had straight ahead aquaplaning,
and mixed wet handling.
Now we have the steering part.
We have the straight ahead and the slalom.
Because we follow the trends of vehicle manufacturers'
dedicated tests.
So over the years, we've re-laid the track, we've
redesigned some of the corners, we've re-laid certain
specific asphalt types or surface types to correspond
with the ISO standards for braking, for
bypass noise, et cetera.
For wet grip more recently with the European labeling.
So the structure of the track has not evolved, because as I
said previously, we're in a park.
We cannot expand laterally because we're confined by the
river on one side and national park on the other.
But the structure, the runoff area, the safety, the
irrigation systems have evolved, following where we
can improve our development techniques and skills.
We're testing with every major OEM here.
They love coming here.
And we're testing noise, comfort, wet grip, et cetera.
So here we come with our engineers.
We have all the instrumented testing either fixed into the
road surface, and the telemetry going in the tower.
So the lap times, the Gs, et cetera, are
built into the track.
But we come on a daily basis with the drivers, the
engineers, because we're so flexible, we could be using
the same group of people, prototype cars, prototype
tires, and the dry end of the track, working with an OEM in
their specific track, or bringing here.
So extremely flexible from that point of view.
But all the telemetry and the controls of the lap times, the
Gs, the density of the water, the thickness of the water on
the aquaplaning, the performance of the microphones
on the [INAUDIBLE] bypass noise testing, they're fixed
here as part of the structure.
As you can see from the test we're doing today, wet
aquaplaning, subjective handling, and braking are
fundamental characteristics of any tire from a
safety point of view.
So early on, the shape of the tire, the position of the
grooves, in terms of the efficiency and the wet, and
the efficiency noise generation on the various
tracks we have of different aggregates, is fundamental--
the very first steps of tire development.
Computers now invade the hands-on tradition approach
from people like myself who've got experience, our team.
But the verification early on that the [INAUDIBLE] profile,
and the patent don't create irregular wear, don't create
noise, or don't enhance the wet facilities are something
we have to get hands on immediately.
Telemetry, indoor simulation, outdoor verification are all
one pipeline of information into the development channel.
Fundamentally, when you drive a car, when I drive a car,
it's subjective feedback.
So our interaction with our dedicated drivers for each
project, or dedicated drivers with each manufacturer's line
of vehicles is fundamental.
So we have a standard reporting sheet, very much
like a Formula 1 driver will get out to say understeer,
oversteer, breakaway, not fluid, progression, et cetera.
We said earlier that this is an outdoor testing laboratory,
so in any corner we can invent our own dedicated test, which
highlights certain aspects of the tire.
And this is just one example of a rudimentary test which
gives us an extremely interesting and documented
piece of information.
We're looking now at a glass plate photography--
nothing new--
where we're measuring the efficiency of the tread in
terms of aquaplaning resistance.
So we have high-speed cameras underneath.
We drive the car over the glass plate,
clearly using water.
We don't get a good contrast between the black tire and the
water, so we just use milk.
We use milk diluted in water.
Very, very simple technique.
We drive across the glass plate, and take, at each
separate speed, a high-speed photograph to see the
footprint, how it diminishes in size as the aquaplaning
forces raise the car and the tire off the ground.
And we can see the flow of the water through the grooves
which expel water through the back of the trailing edge of
the footprint, or laterally.
Clearly, the big major grooves evacuate the major part of the
water through the trailing edge of the footprint.
And then the other bits of water are evacuated laterally.
And then the sipes, where they're present, have a
squeegee effect and clean the road, so if the front tire's
in a critical condition, at least the rear tires are
working on almost a clean, dry road.
LEO PARENTE: So in additional to all this, Pirelli's keeping
the Provolone dairies in business by getting the milk
to do the testing?
STEPHEN ROWE: No, no.
We use milk that we would throw away.
Nobody's using vitamins.
And we dilute it, so one quart will last
us for quite a while.
Part of the bio-friendly approach to our tire
technology.
The OEM's come for two reasons.
A, because the tires-- and we can have prototype tires which
are futuristic, which may or not already be [INAUDIBLE] for
road use, cars maybe not even seen on the road.
So secrecy is a big added value.
And we can tailor any of our tests.
We can line up the drivers, invent tests, we can have hand
cutting, we can have any treatment of the tires we
want, to look at future solutions for the vehicles.
We have drivers assigned to certain manufacturers for
continuity of interface with their drivers.
So our assigned Lamborghini driver would be the same
person working on all the various Lamborghini models,
because he sits side by side to interface with the
Lamborghini driver.
And it's the same for many of the vehicle manufacturers.
P7 All Season is homologated--
the principal European manufacturers--
Volvo, Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz.
People are working on it until homologation is obtained.
It's ongoing.
Having a secret environment, having workshops in this
contained environment, we can do basically
anything they want.
And it's a way for them to get out of their stereotype
testing facilities, come here, take a week, tug through
things carefully.
And we can see their road maps into the future.
We've got a window into future car development, which is a
jump start onto future tire development.
Which we see as very precious, because our road maps of
products are driven by OEMs.
We're in the premium segment.
And if we can get any advantage on saving time, or
even understanding things the day before our competitors,
then this is one of the
fundamental benefits of Vizzola.
LEO PARENTE: It all comes back to the relevance of racing to
production car performance.
And here's where we learn something over and over again
when we talk with Pirelli.
The process, the materials, the whole approach to
developing a great tire, performance tire and passenger
car tire, is directly connected to racing.
Everything they're learning in terms of compounding, in terms
of construction, in terms of the profiling of the tire, is
coming from racing.
Everything they do in terms of the process to get a tire
developed, tested, and out on the street
performing is the same.
Simulations.
The same type of testing and debrief, data collecting,
analyzing their data and moving ahead, the laboratory
work, all of it really is racing.
So when anyone ever thinks about that disconnect of the
show of racing versus the real world, all you need to do is
look at tires--
Pirelli tires for sure.
STEPHEN ROWE: In the middle '80s, we had a lot of
rallying, world rally championship activity with
Ford, with Toyota, with Lancia.
A lot of the Scandinavian drivers, the start of the
Latin drivers, the Carlos Sainz, the DD [INAUDIBLE], the
Mickey [INAUDIBLE].
So we were getting a lot of the [INAUDIBLE]
and the Kankanens sideways across our bridge.
They get fed up of testing.
They like to enjoy themselves, so they come down this
straight here, flat out, a bit sideways onto the bridge.
And then trying to keep the car sideways until they get
over the crest and then just straighten it up to come off
the edge of the bridge.
So four wheel drive, and the limited mental approach of
what the consequences are if they go off the track.