Macau winner Da Costa praises Pirelli's F3 tyres on their debut

Pirelli also breaks GT lap record

Macau Grand Prix winner Antonio Felix da Costa has praised Pirelli’s Formula 3 tyres, which took him to victory in the FIA Formula 3 World Cup race over the legendary Guia circuit today.

The track also hosted the FIA GT World Cup, where Pirelli broke the GT lap record in qualifying with Edoardo Mortara, who set a time of 2m16.862s in his Audi R8. Pirelli previously supplied the FIA GT World Cup last year, but this year marked an absolute debut for the F3 World Cup.

“The tyres are very good,” said the 25-year-old Da Costa, who previously won in Macau in 2012. “They bring another challenge to Macau as these tyres have more peak when they are new and then they degrade a bit. That also adds to the show, which is exactly what is needed here. For me, this second win perhaps feels even better than the first.”

Pirelli’s tyre supply agreement for the Formula 3 World Cup was only confirmed seven weeks ago, with the previous supplier having been in place for 33 years. Nonetheless, the P Zero DM tyres – as seen on a number of other junior single-seater championships worldwide – coped well on their debut at the unique six-kilometre Macau street circuit, which requires maximum precision.

As is usual in Macau, there were plenty of incidents – with Audi GT driver Laurens Vanthoor making what is likely to be motorsport history by becoming the first driver to win a race and championship title on his roof.

Pirelli brought its well-known P Zero DHC tyres to Macau for the GT World Cup, as seen on the Blancpain GT Series as well as many other international GT championships this year. These broke the track record in Macau twice, with Mercedes driver Maro Engel beating the benchmark in practice, before Mortara lowered it again in qualifying.

Pirelli’s racing activity manager Matteo Braga commented: “Despite the short lead time, we are satisfied with the performance of our F3 tyres in Macau: a truly unique venue. As a result, we’ve accumulated plenty of data that will be very useful for the future. Congratulations to Antonio Felix da Costa and Carlin especially, but in fact all the drivers assimilated the characteristics of our tyres very quickly and were able to work with their teams to find a variety of different approaches. The GT race was more unusual, but the fact that we lowered the lap times in the majority of sessions and broke the lap record underlines the effectiveness of the P Zero DHC on a wide variety of cars and conditions. It also shows the ability of teams to work with the tyres to optimise the performance of their cars. I’d like to congratulate all the teams and the FIA, as well as the local organisers, for working together so successfully to create such a spectacular event.”


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