Dunlop achieves the 24h 'Grand Slam'
- Six 24 hour victories on Dunlop Tyres in 2017
- Dunlop success in every 24h race with open tyre competition.
- Focus on 'Enduring Performance' yielding victories and championships.
Winning a 24h race is a test of durability, performance and consistency for any tyre manufacturer. This year, Dunlop Tyres have been chosen by teams to win six 24h marathons, adding last week's Bol d’Or World Motorcycle Endurance Championship to an impressive roll of honour.
This year, in every 24h race in the World where Dunlop faced open tyre competition, the winning car or motorcycle has been Dunlop shod. This is an incredible achievement in the most demanding form of motorsport, which pushes competitors, machines and tyres to the absolute limit.
The Dunlop march to the ‘Big Six’ Grand Slam began in April with victory in the Le Mans 24h Motorcycle race where the GMT94 Yamaha team took victory. Significantly, they chose to race on commercially available Dunlop KR106 and KR108 track tyres.
A few weeks later, the company’s car motorsport team headed to the same iconic French circuit and took two wins. The Jackie Chan Jota team won the Le Mans Prototype LMP2 category and Aston Martin were the top GT team, beating Corvette in a sensational last minute dash to the line.
In between the French hat-trick, on the daunting Nurburgring Nordschleife in Germany, a circuit that was declared too demanding for Formula One in the 1970s, the Land Audi R8 GT3 team switched to Dunlop on the eve of the 24h race. It proved to be a smart move as the Audi took victory in unseasonably hot conditions that placed even more strain on the tyres around the tortuous 28km/17m lap.
Back on two wheels, the Barcelona 24h race saw another Yamaha/Dunlop combination on the top step of the podium , before the GMT94 team headed to the Bol d’Or to win on the high speed Le Castellet circuit in Southern France.
PARTNERSHIP FOR SUCCESS
In each of these events the teams have an open choice of tyre company. “It is significant that across the six major ‘tyre war’ events, Dunlop has a 100% success record. This comes from working closely with car and motorcycle teams to offer the service and engineering support to maximise the performance of our tyres. It’s a true team effort, with a cross functional team in Hanau, Germany; Montlucon, France; Birmingham, UK and Colmar Berg , Luxembourg working on designing, manufacturing and servicing the race winning tyres.” stated Xavier Fraipont, Managing Director, Motorsport and Motorcycle EMEA.
HERITAGE OF WINNING
Dunlop chose to compete in endurance racing as it offers a demanding test bed for new technologies. As a result of this commitment to developing tyres with enduring performance, Dunlop is the most successful tyre manufacturer in the history of the Le Mans 24h , Nurburgring 24h and the FIM Endurance World Championship.