Friends reunited: Pirelli back in GT racing until at least 2028

An important question to contemplate, without getting too existential about it: why does motorsport exist? Entertainment, thrills, and endeavour for sure, but there's also a more beneficial wider purpose: creating a mobile test bed to develop technology that can benefit everyday motorists in the future. And one of the motorsport series that has the most direct link to roadgoing products is GT racing, as it uses cars that are very similar to the supercars we all desire in the world's most prestigious showrooms.

That's why GT racing is so important to Pirelli, having already exclusively supplied the GT World Challenge and other GT series for more than decade in various different guises. And now this important partnership is set to run for at least another five years, following the renewal of the agreement with championship organiser SRO until the end of 2028.

The coming years are going to mark a period of important change for the series, as the headlining GT3 category – the most popular class, with more than 10 manufacturers producing eligible cars – gets a shake-up in 2025. The new rules package is designed to be simpler and attract even more manufacturers to the grid, while the new cars will also be eligible for the famed Le Mans 24 Hours.

So GT racing is now becoming more popular than ever: even reigning world Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen is talking about setting up his own GT team in 2025, and one of the biggest stars of the show currently is bike legend Valentino Rossi. No surprise that the GT race at Monza, for example, attracts the sort of crowds that are normally more reminiscent of a Formula 1 weekend.

What makes the series so appealing is relatable cars that look just like ones you can drive on the road, as well as very close racing and an intriguing element of strategy during endurance races. Car manufacturers use GT racing to develop specific evolutions for their corresponding road cars (such as the Mercedes-AMG GT) and Pirelli does exactly the same with the tyres. There's an important difference though. When it comes to making tyres for high-performance road cars, Pirelli develops the tyre from the outset to suit the exact characteristics of each model: what is known as the ‘perfect fit' strategy. In GT racing, there is just one tyre that has to suit every car model and every circuit. In fact, Pirelli has gone one stage further by creating a single tyre that's suitable for both the main GT3 and lesser GT4 category, as well as the more powerful GT2 class, demonstrating the adaptability of the concept to a very wide variety of machinery and conditions. That's the single biggest challenge of making tyres for GT competition, as every car – shared by up to four drivers – is very different. There's a massive number of variables to accommodate within one black and round package. High-technology engineering is key to it: one of the main reasons why Pirelli was chosen as tyre supplier.

As well as giving tyres to the different series, Pirelli is also supplying a name. The Intercontinental GT Challenge – held over epic circuits on nearly every continent – is already known as the ‘Intercontinental GT Challenge Powered by Pirelli' and now GT2 adopts a similar nomenclature: ‘GT2 Series Powered by Pirelli'. This reflects the fact that around half of all the world's supercars are supplied with Pirelli tyres as original equipment, with some makes – such as McLaren – using Pirelli tyres exclusively. Pirelli is synonymous with performance, and the association with GT racing sums that relationship up perfectly. In fact, GT racing is Pirelli's biggest championship: certainly by volume. The very first major win for Pirelli came in a grand touring race more than a century ago, when Prince Scipione Borghese drove from Peking to Paris in 1907. And the event for which Pirelli supplies the most tyres is the epic Spa 24 Hours, with around 15,000 covers brought to Belgium for all the different categories, attended to by more than 100 Pirelli personnel. That's the tip of the iceberg. There are national GT championships all over the world, as well as the famed GT World Cup held in Macau next month, for the first time since 2019. The GT scene has never been in better health – and Pirelli is once more at the very heart of it.