Michelin hosts Pilot Sport Experience

More than 60 staff, an estimated budget well north of $7m, a fleet of racing and rally cars, one of the world’s premier racetracks and a Le Mans 24 Hour winner... These were just a few of the key components of one of Michelin’s highest profile events.

Underway now and running through to the end of August, the Michelin Pilot Sport Experience (MPSE) is an event most petrolheads would kill to get a ticket to… Centred on the Sepang Grand Prix Circuit just outside the Malay metropolis, Kuala Lumpur, it delivers nearly two months of single-day high performance experiences to nearly 750 participants.

MPSE is aimed at the French tyre giant’s retailers and high profile customers and just two days are reserved for media. Attendees experience a full immersion in the world of Michelin – with the emphasis at the very pointy end of the company’s range, hence the moniker.

Michelin markets three key Pilot Sport road tyres across the globe, with the Pilot Sport Cup 2 the most extreme. OEM fitment on Porsche’s latest 918 Spyder and supercars like Koenigsegg One:1, the Cup 2 is an asymmetric, dual compound tyre that is track focussed but road legal.

Next step down and intended for cars like BMW’s M4 and Porsche 911, the Pilot Super Sport is more road biased but still offers track-friendly performance, says Michelin. It too features an asymmetric tread design and dual compounds where the outside of the tyre features a harder formulation to reduce wear, while the softer, inner half maximises both dry and wet weather grip.

The last Pilot road tyre available locally is the Sport 3. Michelin suggests this is a tyre of choice for the hot hatch, EVO and WRX brigade and their ilk.  

The company says racing is its laboratory. Thus the MPSE is designed to deliver the opportunity to experience the latest racing tyre technology, which Michelin says delivers innovation to the Pilot road range.

motoring.com.au was one of just three Australian outlets at this year’s event. Hosted by Michelin’s regional marketing director, Tony Menard, the day’s activities are best defined by his own term: “experiential”. Indeed, most of the day was spent behind the wheel – although one passenger ride crowned off the event.

MPSE 2015 kicked off for motoring.com.au with drives of the brand-new RenaultSport Clio Cup IV on Sepang’s South Circuit. The latest model in a long-line of racers from RenaultSport, the Clio Cup IV is a pukka racing hatch.

Like many racers, including the latest Porsche Carrera Cup car, the Clio Cup IV is a three-pedal car but is equipped with a proper racing-spec paddleshift gearbox. The button-style racing clutch is used to get away from a standstill and then it’s all paddles. Unassisted, non-antilock brakes mean you need to push hard to stop hard but also mean feel is important.

Without huge reserves of power (around 170kW), momentum is your friend in the 1000kg Clio – a fast lap requires commitment, corner speed and faith in your tyres.

I’ve raced on the same size and compound Michelin slicks that the Clio Cup rolls on so there’s some familiarity but as a part-timer it still takes a couple of laps to recalibrate your brain to the level of feel and grip proper slick race tyres deliver.

Within a couple of laps, however, I’m getting to sixth on the short straight, braking at silly distances from the slowest second gear corner and staying almost flat in fourth gear through the left-right complex that delivers the Clio back to start another round. I could get to like this car.

Great fun...

But not the highlight of the day...

Keeping the French theme going, it’s into Citroen C3 Racing R1 production rally cars next to sample the latest Michelin Gravel Rally tyre.

With high sidewalls, a complex tight tread pattern and a compound that feels almost sticky to touch, on the harder packed sections of the short rally course in Sepang’s backblocks, the Michelin rally tyres are laying blue lines – on the dirt!

This should be fun…

Until, that is, the water truck goes out just before my first stint.

Even the best rally rubber doesn’t save me from lap-one turn-one chronic understeer. A grab of the handbrake turns the car into roughly the right direction but we just sail metres off the track sideways. But there’s nothing to hit (here!), I’m grinning like a loon and my Malaysian co-driver (with the unlikely name, Ray) is laughing heartily… The water truck had been extra conscientious, it seems.

By my second stint the whole track is grippy enough to get some reasonable pace and attitude in the C3 R1. Weight transfer is the key here, but it’s not too long before we’re decently sideways for most of the track’s longest sweeper.

More giggles…

In the conditions the tyres are designed for I’m amazed at the braking, drive and cornering traction generated. On the mixed surface track, in many ways these are the most impressive tyres on the day.

Laps in a Renault-powered Signatech F4 reinforce two things: I’ll never be a single-seater racer and despite track temperatures approaching 55-degrees, the Michelin slicks easily cope with braking and side loads that has me straining to keep my helmeted head level and pointing in the right direction.

With some aero, the 1.6-litre F4 is flat for much of the lap, it’s only in the slow turns one and two that there’s any breakaway and that’s progressive and fun – even after the rally car angles.

But as a layman in single-seater terms I have very little to judge this performance upon. That, I guess, is a factor in Michelin’s favour, but given the same car had done dozens of laps of Sepang’s North Circuit on the same tyre set even before I got in it, I was still impressed.

But not gobsmacked – that comes with the last on-track exercise in a Corvette Racing Chevrolet-powered Oreca LMP-3 Le Mans prototype. This time I’m not driving. Instead, behind the wheel is 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, Kiwi Earl Bamber.

Bamber has a long association with Michelin and MPSE – in fact, just two years ago, the KL resident was an instructor at the event. He’s gone on to become a SuperCup star and Porsche factory driver. Let’s just say the young bloke can steer.

The LMP-3 cars cockpit is impossibly tight for two, but there’s no way I’m missing out. Shoehorned and strapped in, an Oreca technician motions for me to cross my arms and grab the loops under the ‘dash’.

“Hold on,” he mouths. Even with helmet and earplugs, the big racing Chev V8 is LOUD!

So I do — for one and half laps of the full Sepang layout while Earl does his stuff.

Sure, I would have loved more laps but the queue of media waiting limits the ride time and, truth be known, I probably couldn’t have kept myself out of Earl’s side of the car for more than a few more corners.

The G-forces generated by the full aero LMP-3 car are massive and the tyre grip immense. As fast as it is, however, Bamber reckons his LMP-1 Porsche would be 10-12sec a lap faster here at Sepang.

The lap time gap at Le Mans is around 30sec!

Le Mans is dominated by Michelin and the tyres on the LMP-3 car are exactly the same as the hoops supplied to the teams at the French classic. They are far from two-lap wonders.

Michelin claims it spends more on research and development than any other tyre company. According to marketing boss, Menard, the budget is in the region of Euro600m per annum.

Racing tyres are at the bleeding edge of that development, but says Menard, the company’s racing R&D is not purely about laptimes. Indeed, he talks passionately about the Pilot Sport EV tyres Michelin has developed for the inaugural season of Formula e.

Unlike almost every other international open-wheel racing class, Formula e cars are only allowed to use one set of tyres per car per event. And the tyres must work in all weather and temperature conditions. They are also 18-inch tyres so much more closely link with road car rubber. Even F1 still uses 13-inch wheels and tyres.

The tyres look almost identical to the Sport Cup 2 supercar rubber, yet incorporate some of the technology Michelin uses in its low rolling resistance Energy range used on cars like Renault’s Zoe EV hatch.

“The development we do, the racing we do, must be inline with our DNA,” he told motoring.com.au at MPSE.

“That is why we are not in F1. I spend hours encouraging our team and retailers to highlight the additional mileage that our [road car] tyres deliver – it is the customers’ return on investment. How can we be credible and talk about this if it is not reflected on the track?” he asked.

“In F1, we [the race teams] must replace tyres after ten laps. There is no challenge in this – nor benefit for our consumers.

“Formula e tyres last the whole race weekend. Next year our WRC teams will use 40 per cent less tyres [with no loss in performance]… At Le Mans our tyres did up to four stints – over 730km at average speeds in excess of 225km/h.

“Development is a long-term investment… This [performance] is totally aligned with our DNA,” he explained.

At the end of the LMP-3 hot laps, the Sepang circuit is quiet for the first time all day.

It’s a hot, physical environment in the LMP-3 car, even for a super-fit factory racer. Bamber said he was pretty warm too...

At the end of the 50-plus passenger laps, the young Kiwi steps from the car fresh, but it’s obvious he’s done some work. The Oreca sportscar too is ready for some care and attention…

It’s almost trite, but true, to suggest the one set of components that still seem totally ready for more are the black rubber bits. The same sort that won Le Mans…

It’s undoubtedly a function of the day of indoctrination (one day is too short to develop Stockholm Syndrome, right?) but I can’t help but suggest that this Michelin mob knows its stuff.