Bucharest city centre the home of a new challenge for Pirelli

BUCHAREST CITY CENTRE THE HOME
OF A NEW CHALLENGE FOR PIRELLI

Ten years after the last urban race at Helsinki, the FIA-GT Championship cars are to compete on a new city circuit in the Rumanian capital. Pirelli Competizioni to field new tyre types for Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati and Porsche.


Milan 16 May 2007 - The roads of the Bucharest city centre will be the stage for the third round of the international FIA-GT Championship. For the Rumanian race, which will take place on surfaces not exactly ideal for the powerful GTs, Pirelli Competizioni produced a series of developments of a certain importance that should guarantee an optimum level of competitiveness for its cars competing in GT1 and GT2.

Being an entirely new circuit, there are no reference parameters on which to base the preparation and definition of the set ups for qualifying and the race. However, Pirelli's various test sessions, some of which were carried out recently, enable it to be confident of the Rumanian race.

As Pirelli Competizioni's Circuit Manager Pierluigi De Cancellis notes, "Bucharest has to be considered a real unknown in relation to the condition of the road surfaces, taking into account the fact that city circuits are not usually very abrasive. They have smooth surfaces coated with the rubber of every day traffic. For obvious reasons, the track in the Rumanian capital has various straights interrupted by tight corners: a layout that suggests a preference for soft and medium tread compounds for the cars competing on PZero Racing tyres.
At Bucharest, we will fit tyres amply tried and tested with precisely those characteristics on the Maseratis, engineer De Cancellis continued, "while teams running Ferrari 430 GTCs will have tyres with a new medium compound. We have developed an ad hoc front tyre for the Aston Martin DBR9s and the Porsche with a soft tread mix, which will be making its debut this weekend in Rumania".




For more information and pictures on Pirelli's motorsport activities visit: www.pirellicompetizioni.com

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