Former Pirelli Star Driver Elfyn Evans won Rally Portugal for Toyota, with three different manufactures finishing in the top five overall. Pirelli's Scorpion KX gravel tyres were used in action on a World Rally Car for the first time since the end of 2010, with the teams are gradually learning how to get the most out of the all-new Scorpion KX over the duration of the three-day race, which included extremely difficult stages and challenging conditions.
The winning tyre
The Pirelli Scorpion KX in the soft compound was the key tyre in Portugal. For Portugal the soft compound has been chosen as the second option of just eight tyres, as opposed to 24 of the hard compound. The weather conditions, however, with a mixture of dry and moist periods and soft surfaces with more cold temperatures, made it the best choice for a great number of rallying events. As a result, the teams used this extensively, for example, The M-Sport Ford reached 165 km on Saturday with a series of four soft tyres about double the life that these tyres were originally intended for.
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Terenzio Testoni, Pirelli rally activity manager
“Portugal was the first big exam of the year for us with gravel tyres: the first contact that the teams had with the new Scorpion KX in competition, and our first opportunity to see how the different cars interacted with these tyres against the clock. We’re satisfied with their performance, and above all with the collaboration with the teams and drivers, under challenging circumstances that required extensive use of the soft tyre.
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"After a first day of getting used to everything on Friday and analysing data, we were able to give more targeted technical advice and indications throughout the weekend that enabled all three manufacturers to get the most out of the tyres: with a fight to the finish between two of them, and all three represented in the top five at the end of the rally. We take away a lot of information from Portugal that will be extremely useful for the future as we continue to optimise our product for the fastest rally cars in the sport’s history and look forward to our home rally in Sardinia.”
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The most important challenge:
Portugal was the absolute debut for the current Pirelli Scorpion KX on gravel and so both Pirelli and all the various teams were challenged in the learning process to make the best of it. For all three days, the engineers of Pirelli collaborated with the various teams, optimising the car setup in order to take full advantage of the new Scorpion's capability. The weather also brought strong focus on the soft tyre, so the other dominant challenge in Portugal this year was to maximise their lives and ability.
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