Bridgestone tailors Potenza for new Lamborghini

NASHVILLE — Bridgestone has been selected as the exclusive tire supplier for the new Lamborghini Huracán STO, the luxury Italian manufacturer's road-homologated super sports car.

In addition to custom-designed Potenza Sport tires, the Lamborghini Huracán STO also can be fitted with custom Bridgestone Potenza Race semi-slick tires. These tailor-made Potenza Race tires offer excellent dry grip for outstanding lap times and reliable cornering, braking and handling on and off the track, the company claims.

Bridgestone said the Potenza Race tires "have been designed to enhance the incredible capabilities of the Lamborghini Huracán STO and let drivers experience true high-performance."

Building on Bridgestone's long heritage in Formula One racing and high-performance vehicles, the premium Potenza Race semi-slick tire has been customized for the first time for the Lamborghini Huracán STO. As such, the tire's tread is lined with the colors of Italy's il Tricolore – a nod to the fact that both the tire and vehicle have been designed in Italy — and features Lamborghini's distinctive markings.

The Potenza Race tire promises excellent dry grip, thanks to an optimized tread compound, pattern and sporty tire profile, which increases grip and handling in dry conditions, the company said.

The tire also boasts long-lasting on-track performance and outstanding lap time ability — a result of maximized contact area and even pressure distribution, which enhances braking and cornering. And with a carcass design that enables high-performance on normal roads, the tire is engineered for both the road and track, the company added.

The company said development of the tire relied heavily on Bridgestone's virtual tire modeling and simulation technologies, which enable a digital twin of a tire to be developed and tested. In this project, virtual design and simulation enabled Bridgestone and Lamborghini to find the Huracán STO's optimal match to maximize the tire's contact area and distribute pressure evenly under the most severe cornering, braking and traction conditions.

The company said the use of the virtual technology reduced development time while offering increased flexibility. Overall, Bridgestone said virtual tire development can cut product development time and outdoor and fleet tire tests by up to 50%.

The virtual environment enables many more variants of a given tire to be tested, thanks to the extreme speed of modifying the digital twin of the tire and immediately submitting it to a subjective test on the driving simulator, to ultimately cut the vehicle's time to market.

The use of virtual technologies also ensures that the chosen tire is the ideal fitment, as many alternatives have been assessed during development, and it helps to deliver various environmental benefits: both natural resource use and exhaust emissions are cut as fewer prototype tires are required to be built and physical testing is reduced.

Bridgestone notes, on average, around 200 tires are saved for every project where Bridgestone's virtual tire development is used. This can lead to savings of around 60% on raw materials and CO2 emissions during the tire development phase.