Michelin Pilot Sport for Formula E: from the street to the circuits

The new Formula E season debuts new cars and tyres, the Michelin Pilot Sport. And any resemblance to Michelin’s range of street performance tyres is no coincidence…

With the official test sessions held between 16 and 18 October at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia, the new Formula E season has been given its starting signal. And to get to know the new Michelin Pilot Sport, the tyres that Michelin has prepared to meet the demands of the new electric single-seaters, we spent a day where everything is “cooked” right at the circuit itself.

Electric single-seaters and a winning formula

Many greeted with some scepticism a competition that began in 2014 and is now in its fifth season. But the formula – and never has the phrase been more fitting – of electric single-seater racing, in a one-day format with cars racing on urban circuits in different cities, and very accessible to the public, has only aroused the interest of the major brands. Not to mention the outstanding management carried out by Formula E’s CEO, Alejandro Agag, with whom we shared a pleasant conversation in which he took the opportunity to throw the “hook” to Fernando Alonso, saying he would love to have the Asturian driver in a team in the future. Agag also spoke about where the competition will head in the future, betting on cars with even more compact batteries, and on systems that would allow “ultra-rapid” charging.

The fact is that a competition that in four years has been won by four different drivers – Nelson Piquet Jr, Sébastien Buemi, Lucas Di Grassi and Jean-Éric Vergne – certainly doesn’t lack top-level drivers. And drivers from Formula 1 are also starting to arrive, such as Felipe Massa or Stoffel Vandoorne. As for the brands, following the latest additions, for the 2018/2019 season we will see Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Nissan and DS fighting for the title. And there are already other manufacturers on the waiting list, who also bet on electric mobility and see this competition as a magnificent showcase for the public and an excellent testing laboratory.

The new Michelin Pilot Sport

Michelin is a founding partner of Formula E, and the official tyre supplier for the competition since its beginnings in 2014. At the end of 2017 an agreement was signed to extend this commitment until the end of the 2020/2021 season, for now. The tyre manufacturer, involved in competitions such as the World Rally Championship and the World Endurance Championship (WEC), saw Formula E from the outset as a unique opportunity to work in competition.

And it did so with a revolutionary tyre, the Michelin Pilot Sport EV. Revolutionary for its dimensions, designed for use with 18-inch wheels and in sizes equivalent to those used by high-end street sports cars. And revolutionary because, unlike other competitions, the aim here was to offer a single tyre valid for everything: practice, qualifying and race, on both dry and wet asphalt.

For this new season, the challenge is even greater. The new Formula E cars have more power to transmit to the asphalt, 250 kW (about 340 CV), reach higher speeds (up to 280 km/h) and accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in under 3 seconds. And what is more important: now it is no longer necessary to change cars halfway through the race, so the tyres must deliver maximum performance throughout the race’s 45-minute duration.

For the fifth season, the new Formula E cars include more powerful motors and batteries, which allow a race to be completed without changing single-seater.

To do so, Michelin has developed the new Michelin Pilot Sport. The name drops the letters EV, in a clear strategy to align it more closely with Michelin’s street Pilot Sport range. A lighter tyre, which saves around 9 kg across the four wheels compared with the first-generation Pilot Sport EV, and about 3.6 kg compared with the Pilot Sport EV2 used last season.

The tread pattern has also changed, now designed to offer more contact surface with the asphalt, as well as the compounds, to guarantee durability while reducing rolling resistance at the same time. In addition, the sidewall receives a striking new design that many users would surely not mind being able to choose for their road cars.

As a point of interest, note that the dimensions of the Michelin Pilot Sport for Formula E single-seaters are 24/64-18 for the front axle and 27/68-18 for the rear, which would be equivalent to tyres 245/40-18 and 305/40-18 respectively, the sizes a Porsche 911, for example, can fit. And so that you get an idea of how close the competition Pilot Sports are to what would be the most similar street tyre in the French manufacturer’s range, the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S, the former could be fitted to a street sports car, or the latter to one of the electric single-seaters… and it would be feasible to drive with them.

Obviously they would not be interchangeable, as each is designed to meet very different demands. But in no other tyre as in the Pilot Sport EV, and now the Pilot Sport, is there so much transfer of technology used in competition applied to street tyres… and vice versa.