The new World Superbike season is upon us, but activity on the track has begun and 2022 is already starting to come alive. Nobody is caught unprepared, not even Pirelli, who already has news in mind for this new championship to bring to the track to make the races even more exciting. Some teams are already sharpening their blades for next season, with Kawasaki starting very strong in the Jerez tests, with the aim of getting back on top and ousting Yamaha and Toprak Razgatlioglu.
Precisely on the occasion of the tests on the Andalusian track, Pirelli announced that for 2022 it will bring a new tire that can be used at specific times of the weekend: it is the SCQ, an innovative compound that has been designed mainly to be used during Superpole. Race. The 10-lap sprint race on Sunday morning will therefore have its own special tire, while until last year all the riders used the SCX, which guaranteed greater performance without thinking too much about wear, given the short format of the race.
Giorgio Barbier, Pirelli Motorsport Director, explains: “The aspect on which we are focusing more for 2022 concerns that of tires related to the Superpole and Superpole Race. The new tire will take the name of SCQ and will simply be linked to these two moments. This tire is capable of 10 laps, as was the case with the SCX tire two years ago. Now everyone uses the SCX in all conditions, so we had to do something new ”.
In addition to the new SCQ tire, new solutions have already been tested in the December tests and will also be brought to the track in the next tests, scheduled in Portimao in two weeks: “In the December test we already had a couple of new solutions on the rear and a couple of new ones for this test and in Portimao. From here and from Portimao we expect to have enough information to prepare something for the first race scheduled in Aragon, then Assen and probably also Estoril ”.
Not only SCQ: Pirelli has already planned several new features, some already tested but not fully approved by the teams and riders who mounted them. For this reason, the sole tire supplier of the Superbike World Championship is working on some modifications in order to receive the ok: “The SCQ will be the first tire for the beginning of spring in Europe, then we will consider something for the hot season in the summer. The one with the SCQ at the rear will be the most important work for next season, then we will move forward on the front, in the wake of the last test we carried out during the last European rounds last year. The tests we carried out at the end of 2021 went well, BMW told us that it was not satisfied with the result and so we made the new solutions. In these two tests we expect to receive good feedback in order to have, by March, all these solutions tested by everyone ”.
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