Simulation software once reserved for motorsport—Formula 1, WEC, IMSA—has now become a cornerstone in the development of street-car tires. Engineers can virtually design and optimize a tire’s contact patch, construction, and materials before a single prototype is built. Racing’s demand for performance has also pushed innovations like asymmetric sidewall stiffness, refined belt angles, and advanced cap plies into the consumer market.
Michelin’s TameTire software, for instance, can simulate a tire’s real-time behavior and integrate directly into full-vehicle simulations used by both racing teams and automakers. Pirelli has taken a similar approach, with Coke noting that the latest P Zero was developed using AI algorithms and virtual prototyping. It enabled engineers to simulate tire behavior in many scenarios before any physical testing, speeding up development and improving precision. This allowed engineers to predict tire performance across countless conditions before any physical testing.
Combined with advances in manufacturing precision, tread-pattern optimization, and low-rolling-resistance compounds, today’s high-performance road tires now rival—or surpass—the capabilities of supercar tires from just two or three decades ago. The result: superior grip, efficiency, and safety.
There’s no single breakthrough that makes tires faster. As with the Carrera GT era, progress comes from incremental improvements across every facet of tire design—adding up to tires that deliver drastically quicker lap times.
