The inaugural GT1 World Championship is due to kick off this April in Abu Dhabi, and the build-up to the new series saw the six carmakers entered for the series gather recently at Portimao, in Portugal, in order to benchmark the potential of the different cars. Michelin profited from the run to carry out wet weather tyre testing.

The FIA has just published the entry list for the new GT1 World Championship which will finally oppose 12 teams, with 24 cars representing six different makes due to contest the 2010 title. The eligible cars are a mix of 2009-spec GT1s equipped with a conversion kit (Aston Martin DBR9, Maserati MC12 and Corvette C6.R) and GT cars which comply with the latest 2010 regulations (Ford GT, Nissan GT-R and Lamborghini Murcielago R-SV).

Although this series permits open competition between tyre firms, Michelin will finally supply all the GT1 World Championship runners, despite the big differences in the technical specifications of the competing cars.

“We took this broad spectrum into account when putting our new customer competition ranges into place for 2010,” notes Michelin technician Franck Locci. “We have developed a new slick which is stiffer under cornering and even more competitive thanks to a new casing and a different, aromatic oil-free compound. This slick will need to cover a wide variety of conditions since the regulations allow just one compound for the entire season. We have also developed a new 30/68-18 front tyre.”

“At the same time, we have been working on a new rain tyre which we were able to test for two days at Portimao. There will only be one rain tyre for 2010, too, so it will need to be strong on both wet and drying surfaces. The regulations do not allow tread patterns to be ‘re-cut’.”

Michelin has also been busy developing environmentally-friendly, aromatic oil-free tyres for the GT2 and GT3 European Championships, and there will effectively be direct competition between tyre firms in these two series.

Official pre-season GT1 World Championship testing is scheduled for the end of February at Le Castellet, in the south of France.

GT1, Michelin