Building on the development of racing tires designed to carry Prototype and GT class cars to endurance race victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 12 Hours of Sebring and Road Atlanta's Petit Lemans, Pilot Super Sport tires are designed to deliver consistent performance and longevity by blending Max Performance driving characteristics with extended tread wear.
While the importance of tire treadwear in endurance racing may not be immediately apparent, Michelin tires set records during the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2010. One of the 2010 LMP Class leaders completed 46 consecutive laps on one set of tires with an average pace just 1% off of the pole position qualifying time. That’s almost 400 racing miles on one set of tires at an average speed of 150 mph.
Additionally the overall winner used just 11 sets of tires to cover a record 3,362 miles, averaging nearly 140 mph and almost 300 racing miles per set of tires. That represented almost a 25% wear improvement compared to just one year earlier where the overall winner needed 14 sets of tires to cover 3,235 miles. By developing longer wearing racing tires without sacrificing performance, Michelin tires allowed the teams to run record race paces while converting some of the time previously spent changing tires in the pits into productive time covering more miles on the track.