December 08, 2019 |
Michelin in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship’s “Season 6”
Michelin is introducing motor racing’s first connected tyre, incorporating an embedded sensor, for the 2019/2020 FIA Formula E Championship.
This year, for the first time, Formula E grids will comprise of 12 teams and 24 drivers and season 6 will run from November 2019 to July 2020, with a schedule of 14 races at 12 different venues.
The MICHELIN Pilot Sport tyres used are the third-generation of Michelin tyres developed especially for Formula E, and along with Michelin Track Connect, form a connected solution that fits perfectly with Formula E’s avant-garde positioning.
Group Michelin uses Formula E as a laboratory to foster innovation that will help to achieve its sustainable, mobility-related objectives in the interests of all, namely, enhanced safety, increasingly sustainable materials, expansion of electric mobility and accelerated connected mobility.
Michelin will also be a partner of the Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy series for the second season running.
Sustainable mobility is in the Group’s DNA and reason underpinning its involvement in Formula E and the eTrophy series.
Michelin is committed to a long-term sustainable performance strategy that applies to all the products, services and solutions it markets, whether in the world of motorsport or in everyday use.
Michelin’s VISION plan has set the entire group a stimulating challenge as it works on reducing its environmental footprint. By 2050, 80% of the raw materials used to manufacture Michelin tyres will be sustainable, i.e. recycled or bio-sourced, with the latter accounting for half of this target. To achieve this goal, Michelin is using both its unique expertise in the field of raw materials and its culture for innovation, which covers many areas, not only tyres.
Formula E allows Michelin to put promising new materials through their paces in extreme conditions to ratify design choices that make more efficient use of materials and resources, while at the same time delivering high performance and energy efficiency throughout the tyres’ working lives. The aim being to lessen the environmental impact, extend their useful lives and reduce energy consumption.
A concrete example is the current MICHELIN Pilot Sport, the fruit of more than five years of painstaking research. Not only lighter and more efficient than its predecessors, it also has many features in common with road tyres, in addition to being connected.
The MICHELIN Pilot Sport EV, and its successor the MICHELIN Pilot Sport EV2, have made significant progress in terms of energy efficiency and design during the championship’s first four seasons. That experience was used to develop the MICHELIN Pilot Sport, which was launched at the start of Season 5, and which will continue to be the championship’s official tyre in 2019/2020.
The MICHELIN Pilot Sport stands out as the most accomplished Formula E tyre yet. Compared with Season 1’s tyre, it weighs 25% less, but gives far superior performance, and has yielded lap-time savings of as much as several seconds at some circuits.
Source: Michelin
