McLaren and Pirelli

With over 140 years of experience, and a presence in over 160 countries Pirelli is one of the leading manufacturers of performance tyres, and the perfect partner for McLaren.

The bespoke tyres for the McLaren P1™ and the McLaren Senna are the result of close collaboration between Pirelli’s researchers and McLaren’s engineers at Woking, with the dual objective of harnessing all the power of the car while ensuring total control. At the heart of the project is the complete integration of the tyre design with McLaren’s construction architecture and the sophisticated electronic technology in order to make the P Zero tyres a fundamental component of the car.

The perfect harmony between car and tyre guarantees driving pleasure and precision, an immediate response under a variety of different forces and an instant reaction to changes in aerodynamic loads and set-up, no matter what the conditions of usage.

Thanks to the experience gained by Pirelli in Formula One as well as other high-profile motorsport championships, Pirelli’s engineers developed tyres that are capable of meeting the needs of the high-performance McLaren cars.

The development work with the bespoke tyres concentrated on both the structure and compound. The objective for the tyre structure was to ensure flexibility and grip, while at the same time guaranteeing enough rigidity to cope with high aerodynamic loads. In order to be sure of this versatility, the structure of the front and rear tyres have been developed individually to respond to the different demands placed on them. The work carried out on the construction obviously has an important effect on the compounds, which have been designed to warm-up quickly and complement the whole tyre’s rapid reaction to direction changes, while providing consistently high levels of grip.

The nanotechnology used by Pirelli in the design of these tyres allowed the Italian firm to develop ‘intelligent compounds’, which react instantly to adapt themselves to the varying forces acting on the car at any given time. These compounds make full use of the most advanced Pirelli’s technology during their production, to ensure complete precision in the compound mix.

To learn more about Pirelli tyre technology, visit Pirelli's website.