At 24 Hours of Le Mans 2025, Tyres & Accessories spoke with Michelin motorsport global director, Matthieu Bonardel; and Serge Lafon, Michelin’s president of business line automotive OE; as well as racing team crews themselves plus the indispensable tyre technicians; and heard their first-hand experience of the critical nature of tyres to racing teams from the racetrack and the pitlane and from there to the roads. Over the next couple of weeks, we’re publishing excerpts from those interviews here online ahead of complete coverage in the forthcoming July edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine.
In the high-octane world of motorsport, where every millisecond counts, vehicle manufacturers, teams and drivers alike agree that tyres play a critical role in their overall performance. And nowhere is that more apparent than at arguably “the toughest race in the world for tyres” – the 24 hours of Le Mans. As Mathieu Bonardel, director of Michelin Motorsport, told Tyres & Accessories, “Motorsport is the Kingdom of performance.” His words go some way towards capturing the essence of a motorsport domain where engineering precision and raw speed converge. Here, not only are tyres the only thing keeping a vehicle in contact with the ground, tyres are also the crucial link between ambition and achievement. The interaction between “the rubber and the world,” as Bonardel described, determines a car’s ability to grip the track, accelerate, and corner with finesse – and a lot more. In races like Le Mans, where consistency is the king of the aforementioned motorsport kingdom, tyres must deliver lap after lap, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. As Bonardel emphasized, “it’s going to be the tyre that will be the limit of the performance,” underscoring their pivotal role in defining a car’s potential.
Motorsport is more than a spectacle, it’s a crucible for innovation. “Investing in motorsport helps us reach the limit of what the tyre can deliver,” Bonardel explained, highlighting how the relentless pursuit of speed and performance drives broader technological breakthroughs. On demanding tracks, where cars and drivers push equipment to the edge, tyres are tested to their breaking point, revealing insights into physics and chemistry that propel development forward. That in-turn accelerates learning, which can subsequently be applied on the road: “Motorsport is essential, not just because you have the best driver and the best equipment, but because everything goes fast.” “Fast” refers not just to the rapid pace of top-flight motorsport such as Le Mans, but also tyre development since data from a single 24-hour race can equate to six years of typical driving.
Central to this process is the collaboration with elite drivers, whose expert sensitivity and precision offer invaluable feedback. “The interaction we have with those drivers helps us to understand what prevents [better performance] and when it’s faster,” Bonardel shared. These drivers, described as “extremely talented, sensitive, and accurate,” are basically a unique category in terms of their ability to provide reliable insights into how tyres perform under extreme conditions.
Today, the human element is being fused with at least two types of data-driven development for maximum impact – data capture via tyre and vehicle sensors; and pre-production simulations, which are then tested in virtual conditions by human test drivers prior to reaching the track itself.
And that in turns makes the motorsport development and production process both more efficient and more sustainable. Unlike the past, when teams tested dozens of tyre variants in a single session, modern development uses the lessons learnt in simulation to narrow the shortlist of real-life products. Not only does that reduce the number of tyres that need to be made and tested it also halves tyre development time down from a year to around six months. Yet, the principle remains: drivers push tyres to their limits, identifying what works and what doesn’t. This feedback loop, refined through real and virtual testing, guides engineers towards crucial improvements that are transferred back to the track and, from there, to the road.
This article is a preview of the full interview, which appears in the next edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine. Not a subscriber? No problem, click here to become one.
