IN PART two of our revealing interview with Dunlop’s operations manager Kevin Fitzsimons, we find out why the soft tyre has never been run in Adelaide, what went wrong at Phillip Island in 2017 and the potential of a special qualifying tyre for Mount Panorama..

WORDS: Richard Craill IMAGES: Mark Horsburgh / Supercars

IN THE first part of our extensive chat with Dunlop’s Kevin Fitzsimons, taken from his appearance On the Grid Podcast earlier this week, we covered off the challenges faced by his team in getting more than 9,500 tyres on the road and into the hands of Supercars teams.

This time we tackle more big-picture items, including Dunlop’s role within the forthcoming Gen III regulations.

‘Dunlop should have brought the Soft tyre..’ is a constant refrain in paddocks when the racing turns flat and drivers moan about a tyre too hard for the conditions.

The Adelaide Parklands circuit, home of the Adelaide 500, has been included in discussions like that but as Kevin explained it’s not necessarily the circuit that prevents the Soft from running on Adelaide’s streets.. it’s one corner.

“The current tyre is incredibly versatile. At most tracks the compound will work hands down, you won’t get cold graining.

“Adelaide is an interesting one. Every time we go there they say ‘Oh you should run the soft tyre’, the only handicap running that tyre at Adelaide is the shredded rubber off the things – the marbles – around the outside of Turn 8 would be horrendously dangerous. There’s nowhere to go, the rubber hits the track and has nowhere to go so that’s why we shelved the idea of doing that one.”

One of the most controversial moments in recent Supercars history was the dramatic weekend at Phillip Island in 2017, when tyres popped left, right and centre. Initially, Dunlop’s new-for-2017 tyre was named as the culprit, but as always it’s never that simple.  

“We had a development in 2017 which came up with an exceptionally good tyre, but the problem with it was that it had a very, very narrow working window. Because of the limited amount of testing everyone was able to do, guys were trying to find the limit of the tyre at the race meeting and we had quite a few failures at Philip Island and more at Eastern Creek. It wasn’t ideal.

“The tyre was fine: the tyre was tested in America and came back with some amazing figures, but unfortunately one of the figures it came back with – and I’m talking 100GB of data, it was insane – showed that the more camber you put on, the more grip it made.

“So of course, everyone started cranking it on and we had guys racing with over nine degrees of negative camber at the front on the inside edge of the tyre.. that makes it difficult..”  

“We went back to the 2016-spec, which is what we have now.

It’s not bullet-proof but it’s close enough to it and it works everywhere we go. That’s the benefit of what we’ve got.”

With Supercars’ new Generation III regulations in the pipeline, Dunlop is actively engaged with the process and working on their own contribution towards the series’ stated aims of improving the racing product – including identifying where the current rubber could be improved.

“One of the things we have to get away from is the front tyre gets very, very hot following another car and the grip goes away. That’s why you’ll see a car reel someone in hand over fist, get right up behind them, but all of a sudden stop dead.

“It’s because it’s cooked the front tyres, they lose their front grip and we need to find something a bit more heat resistant.

“It’s something that the factory has been spoken about. It’s excessive, very, very noticeable.

“The TPMS (Tyre pressure monitoring) sensors we run inside the wheels give us temperature and pressure and you can actually see it when you’re look at all the cars in the Supercars data hub. It’s one of those things where it loses front grip, whether it’s aero or tyre, you start losing the thing and it starts understeering, which pushes tyre temperature through the roof.

“The factory has some ideas about what they think they can do to assist that and we’ll have a crack.

“The plan is to start testing first quarter next year. We will go to the Phillip Islands, Winton’s of the world, back to Sydney, to test.”

Another regular discussion point is the potential to add a ‘Super Soft’ tyre into the mix – one that degrades even quicker than the current Soft tyre. While offering more one-lap performance and grip, it would degrade quicker making for more challenging racing conditions and, in theory, better racing. Kevin confirmed that not only had there been discussions, had Covid-19 not gotten in the way, it might have been a thing sooner, rather than later.

“There has been (discussions). The day we got the ‘exit Melbourne’ phone call I was meant to be at Queensland Raceway doing a tyre test up there. But because Queensland had already shut their borders from the previous Friday and everything else it was decided it’d be a good idea that we didn’t go.

“The tyre we tested back in 2016 and 2017 was designed around that, designed to last about the 60km mark. Unfortunately the tyre that we had sent out here turned out to be better than what we’ve currently got, it didn’t drop off anywhere near enough so it was ‘back to the drawing board fellas, that one didn’t work’.

“It was a very, very good race tyre and that may end up being a Gen 3 spec tyre, it was trucking along nicely after 30 odd laps, but not what we wanted – to be dead in the water at 18.

“Ideally Supercars would love a tyre that doesn’t last a tank of fuel, so you can’t have guys stretching it out. That’s for future planning. It means more cost: drivers would love it, engineers would love the challenge, team owners would hate it because they pay for it!

“It’s definitely been discussed having a super super super soft tyre.”

Finally, what of the potential for a special tyre for the famous Bathurst top-10 shootout? Kevin confirmed it was floated..

“I floated the idea with Supercars last year. We should have the Dunlop Top 10 for Armor All pole position… and they said it was too long for TV!

“I thought something up for the shootout for Bathurst, it would be really, really good!”