Anyone who’s raced or taken an interest in racing knows how important tires are. Pick the wrong compound, and your race strategy is toast. Get them too hot, and you’ll shred them in a few laps. Push it on cold tires, you’re probably going off. But just as much thought goes into creating those tires as race teams put into selecting them.
Michelin, a company that produces some of the most durable road tires on the market, is unsurprisingly involved with a lot of endurance racing. They provide the rubber for IMSA’s Sports Car Championship, which features endurance events like Petit Le Mans, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and the 12-hours of Sebring. Their rubber is obviously good enough to get the job done, but the iconic French company is always seeking to improve. Here’s how one of the world’s most successful tire manufacturer uses cutting edge technology, groundbreaking compounds, and some of your favorite races to develop its tires.
Simulations are more common now
As with many other industries, simulations have become pretty important for tire development. They allow for quick prototyping and testing, doing what would have involved years of work and million dollars in a few hours for “free.” Michelin has a lot of data on tires, it comes with being in the business for over a century. The company also knows what different configurations and compound compositions should do.
Put it all together and you can basically “design” a digital tire and put it through its paces thousands of times digitally. The “-virtual tire model” is now a key stage in the design process. That already excellent process is constantly being refined too, partially due to the large stack of data Michelin gathers from every single race it’s involved in. Given they have a deep partnership with IMSA, and their tires being used for the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship (LMDh/GTP, LMP2, GTD),Michelin Pilot Challenge, and the VP Racing SportsCar Challenge — a lot of data is coming their way. They also support iconic races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
But track time is still paramount
No matter how good the sims get, you’ll always have to see how a tire works in the real world. While its general tires undergo extensive testing in a number of real world conditions, the cutting edge stuff is still on track. As mentioned, they work closely with IMSA and provide tires for most of its races. The data from those races doesn’t just go into the simulator.
An endurance race is pretty much as brutal as it gets. In addition to the general stresses of racing, cars are out running for up to 24 hours. Obviously tires are changed in that time, but balancing increased durability (and fewer tire changes) with grip and performance is one of the main pillars of race strategy.
Michelin obviously provides several compounds, and closely monitors how they perform throughout the racing season. In addition to the stresses of high speed and harder braking, IMSA’s race season also provides a variety of weather conditions both competitors and the tiremakers will have to grapple with. So they don’t just see how the rubber performs under high stress, they see how it handles the humidity of Florida, the dry heat of California, and the occasional street circuit somewhere like Detroit.
We know what goes into them, but the exact compound is a secret
Imagine if you were a world class baker. What goes into your cake might be pretty obvious, but your oven settings and the exact ratios of ingredients are a closely guarded secret. The same goes for tire manufactures.
So while we know Michelin’s endurance racing tires include natural rubber, silica, resins, natural oils, synthetic rubber, steel, and “carbon black,” we don’t know what the exact mix is or how it is “cured.” Pretty much all performance tires have that ingredients list (just as pretty much all cakes contain flour, sugar, milk, and eggs) but the ratios and the curing process is what ultimately makes the difference.
What we do know is, Michelin’s processes are at the cutting edge. Their most recent set of endurance tires (the ones made for 2026) boast reduced wear rates, increased durability, quicker warm ups, and a likely increase in grip as lap times are continuously improving on the new rubber. All this has been achieved despite what can only be described as a self-induced and highly drastic recipe shakeup.
It’s a testbed for Michelin’s environmental future
Michelin has been a little laser focused on the greener side of tiremaking for a while, but testing is obviously a bit of a bottleneck. You can’t just change out your established tire compounds for more eco-friendly versions without being sure performance isn’t going to degrade too.
So, what better place to make sure your new “eco-friendly” compounds can do the job than a racetrack. The conditions are more extreme than anyone is going to face on the road. Which is probably why Michelin is really pushing it when it comes to environmentally friendly racing tire compositions.
Michelin’s current crop of endurance racing tires are made from 50% recycled or renewable materials. This is significantly more than the 30% currently in the company’s road tires. The French tire manufacturer is ultimately pushing to 100%, with the motorsport branch of the business leading the way.
In terms of recovered materials, the “carbon black” which protects and reinforces the tires (along with giving them their distinctive color) is recovered from other recycled tires. A greater quantity of natural rubber is used, along with “bio-sourced” resins and oils. The steel used in the tire’s construction is also sourced sustainably.
Ao, as with many aspects of motorsport tech. The stuff ripping around the track at the moment is probably going to feature on whatever you’re driving in a few years’ time.
