Dunlop Tire Test Concludes at Motorland Aragon

Twenty Dunlop teams from the FIA World Endurance Championship, European Le Mans Series and German championships have taken part in a comprehensive four-day test at the Aragon circuit in northern Spain.

The weather proved variable enough for the teams to successfully test the full 2016 specification range.

Rebellion Racing and ByKolles Racing fielded one car each, both teams working with the Dunlop engineers on set-up to begin optimizing the move onto Dunlop’s new LMP1 tires.

In LMP2, 13 cars were present from G-Drive Racing, Signatech Alpine, AF Racing, Extreme Speed Motorsports, RGR Sport by Morand, Baxi DC Racing Alpine, Strakka Racing, Thiriet by TDS Racing and Greaves Motorsport.

At least two cars for each manufacturer running on Dunlop tires in 2016 were present, the five different marques being Ligier, ORECA, BR Engineering, Alpine and Gibson.

Aston Martin spent time working on set-up to adjust to new tires following the announcement of switching to Dunlop last month.

The car was testing for Aston Martin’s WEC campaign where the GT category features open tyre competition.

Porsche and Ferrari rivals from the ELMS GT field also took part and, following the Beechdean Aston Martin tire test last year, Dunlop has data for all three manufacturers’ models competing in the one-brand category.

Three teams from the VLN, the newly announced Phoenix Racing Audi, the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG003 and the Walkenhorst BMW also tested, along with a pair of teams from the DMV GTC championship.

“We get to record a huge amount of data that helps us ahead of the respective championship seasons and the teams get dedicated time to working on the setups to optimize the chassis/tyre combinations,” said Mike McGregor, Dunlop Manager Testing & Track Support, Race Design & Development

“We’ve had very positive feedback. In particular the one-brand tires are more consistent and generally better in performance.

“Our new LMP1 teams possibly had the biggest job as it’s a completely new tire so we’ve now got much more data to analyze to help with the next steps.

“We have also made a big step with our LMP2 tire so the teams have been working on how to get the best performance and there is potential for a lot more improvement.

“It’s rare to be able to test wet, intermediate and all three slick compounds in one test so it was excellent from that point of view.”