Partnership Pirelli Ferrari Maserati

Pirelli and Ferrari Maserati Group: three grand Italian marques re-united on the track

Only one name: Pirelli P Zero. Exclusively with Maserati on the track, with the Trofeo in the single-marque championship and, beginning in 2004, with the program in the GT races. The framework agreement till 2005 also includes the Ferrari Challenge and
the technological partnership with the Ferrari 360 GT.

Milan, November 15th 2002 - Pirelli has signed a co-operation agreement with the Ferrari Maserati Group in exclusive for all the racing programs of Maserati and the renewal of collaboration for the Ferrari Challenge. The agreement is valid until 2005, with an optional two-year extension to 2007.
According to the agreement, presented today in Milan by Marco Tronchetti Provera, chairman of Pirelli SpA, and Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, chairman of the Ferrari Maserati Group, Pirelli will become the exclusive technical partner of Maserati in racing, starting in January 2003, and supplier of reference for the Ferrari-marque GT competitions.

The eagerly awaited Maserati Trophy, to begin in the spring of 2003, will therefore be raced on Pirelli tires, while Pirelli will the exclusive tire for the new Maserati GTS car scheduled for 2004. Regarding Ferrari, the framework agreement confirms the exclusive supply of Pirelli tires for the 200+ cars in Italy, Europe and North America that participate in the existing Ferrari Challenge, and also confirms Pirelli's role as exclusive original equipment supplier for the Ferrari 360 GT.

" The commitment to the world of motor racing, in its various forms, has always been so constant and effective as to become a characteristic of our company, of Pirelli notoriety and spirit," Marco Tronchetti Provera stated. " And in the glory years of racing it was precisely the collaboration first with Maserati and then with Ferrari that made Pirelli a success and a

household name around the globe. This collaboration is as valuable as ever from the standpoint of technical and technological development, the maximum expression of active experimentation along with the continuous research activity in the Group's laboratories worldwide. Today this return to racing with Maserati and Ferrari is a significant milestone that for a company like Pirelli, always projected toward the future to remain competitive, represents a point of departure towards new challenges."

At the basis of the agreement with the Ferrari Maserati Group is a name well-known for years throughout the tire world: P Zero. This is the insignia of Pirelli's racing tires, from high-performance road tires to the racing series for track use to the rally models. Behind the P Zero name stands all the know-how Pirelli has accumulated in almost a century of motor-racing competition: virtually since the birth of the automobile.
Created for Ferrari in the mid-80s, the extraordinary epitome of power and technology that is the Pirelli P Zero has evolved over the years in the role of a veritable laboratory-product. Today P Zero racing are the tires Maserati has chosen for its on-track activity and are fitted on the Ferraris that enlive since ten years the championship dedicated to the Ferrari clients.

So, beginning in 2003, the Pirelli P Zero will be supplied as exclusive original equipment on the Ferrari 360 GT that competed with success with the private team JMB Racing in the 2002 FIA N-GT Championship. And Pirelli P Zeros will also be the exclusive tires of the Ferrari 360s that will do battle in the 2003 edition of the Ferrari Challenge.
That valid idea a decade ago that launched the Pirelli-tired Ferrari reds on the track is now bearing fruit: it will again be the P Zero that exclusively equips the white-and-blue Coup that will vie in the Maserati Trophy beginning next spring.
And then, along with the future Maserati GT, Pirelli is ready to resume its top-level American adventure in the Endurance races in USA.

Pirelli P Zero: at the origins of a name dedicated to racing

" The automobile is not just a hunk of steel but a living creature with a beating heart that enjoys, feels good or feels bad according to how it is treated. If you want it to respond to all your demands on the road, you must be thoroughly familiar with it and help it express its personality"
Juan Manuel Fangio

Fangio's words properly represent the spirit of intense collaboration that joined Pirelli and Maserati in competition for over 20 years: a collaboration that played an important part in creating the racing tradition of Pirelli tires. Juan Manuel Fangio was perhaps the greatest expression of the partnership between Pirelli and Trident: the Argentine driver in his 250F won with impressive consistency on Pirellis, up to his final triumph in the 1957 World Championship, repeating the final victory in 1954.

The roots of this technological leadership developed on the racetracks, when the tires were called Pirelli Stella Bianca and in 1933 accompanied Giuseppe Campari and his Maserati 8-cylinder to victory in the French Grand Prix. The accord between Maserati and Pirelli lasted over 30 years, the same period in which tires were rapidly evolving toward the radial. Then came the victories of Villoresi and Farina, until Fangio's star burst on the scene in the 1953 Italian Grand Prix.

But meanwhile the technological know-how Pirelli had built up over the years with Maserati and Alfa Romeo allowed it to add another " jewel to its crown" : Ferrari. Its first Grand Prix won in 1949, with Ascari in the Ferrari 125. Then a long series of 22 GPs, in those years 1952-53 when Ascari and Taruffi, in the Pirelli fitted Ferrari 500, dominated the World Championship, winning it twice
And it was Ferrari in the years that followed that drove experimentation on the Pirelli P Zero racing, taking it to compete in the long, grueling IMSA Championship in America with the 333 SP Scandia Motorsport of Fermin Velez, winner of the title in 1995;or again with the

F40 of Team Ennea in the BPR, and now on the circuits of the FIA GT Championship. This where the P Zero not only learned to manage power but also to manage it over the course of long races.

This year 2002 also marks the tenth anniversary of the Ferrari Challenge, born of the brilliant idea to create a mono-mark, single-tire championship where Ferrari owner-drivers have found a logical partner in Pirelli: the same supplier of the road P Zeros that equipped its F40, and then the F348, the F360, the Maranello. The Ferrari Challenge is the ideal synthesis of racing activity, increasingly a social phenomenon as well as a sporting event, to gauge the potential and limitations of providing utmost safety for everyday drivers. Today, that almost emotional tie that unites sports-car drivers to their tire brand is ready to return with the Maserati Trophy.

Roadholding, handling and thus safety are the most evident characteristics of the Pirelli P Zeros, both road and racing models. But the racing tires offer another quality, highly important on the track: duration and stability of performance over time. The Pirelli P Zeros mounted on the cars of the Ferrari Challenge and the Maserati Trophy, like those of the 360GT and the future P Zeros of the Trident cars for GT racing have, and will always have, this additional weapon: they will be fast and safe for many, many laps around a track, always pushing back the physiological deterioration of performance under extreme utilization.