Dunlop tyres take to the undulating roller coaster that is the Spa Francorchamps circuit for the next rounds of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and Le Mans Series at the Spa 1000 km on 7 May.

Spa features as the second round on both series’ race calendars and is the final event for teams before the world famous epic that is the Le Mans 24 hour in June.

Although the Spa race is ‘only’ 1000km long, and will take around a quarter of the time of its illustrious bigger brother, the 7.0 km Spa circuit provides one of the biggest challenges in motorsport.

“Spa is one of the finest circuits in the world,” says Jean-Felix Bazelin, Dunlop Motorsport’s General Manager. “But it is a circuit which needs a lot of respect from a tyre designer.

“In particular, the compression forces put on a tyre through the Eau Rouge / Le Radillion combination are greater than experienced at any other circuit in the world.

“This means we need to pay particular attention to the strength and structural integrity of the tyre construction which at this point is working at the extreme of its operating window.”

Dunlop will supply almost a third of the bumper 60 car grid for Spa, and it’s a wide range of tyres required.

“As if the challenge of the circuit itself was not enough, we also have the factor of the Ardennes and the notoriously changeable weather,” says Bazelin. “Visiting the circuit in May, we could have hot, cold, dry, wet, fog or any combination of those, even during the course of a lap.

“This means we have to bring a wide variety of compounds of tyres for all our teams to cope with possible track temperatures which are generally in the range of 10ºC to 30ºC.”

Dunlop will take over 2400 tyres to Spa and the data and feedback accumulated over the course of the event will be vital to Dunlop’s preparations for Le Mans.

“The beauty of Spa is that there are so many different aspects to a lap,” says Bazelin. “The start is interesting as cars head into the very low speed La Source and immediately make very big traction demands on their tyres as they accelerate at the exit, heading downhill when the tyres are still not up to full racing heat.

“Finding a good balance is very difficult as there are the high speed corners such as Eau Rouge, Le Radillion, Blanchimont and Pouhon which contrast with the slow speed corners such as La Source, Rivage and the Bus Stop.”

Dunlop supplies teams in the LMP1, LMP2, GTE Pro and GTE Am categories at Spa.

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