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Pirelli Partners With Aqua Blue Sport

  • Ron 

A few months after its return to the cycling world, Pirelli signs its first technical collaboration agreement with with the Irish Pro Continental team Aqua Blue Sport.

The official event to mark the comeback of Pirelli tires to professional bike racing will be the forthcoming edition of the Amstel Gold Race, the tough one-day Ardennes classic, where the choice of tires will surely make a difference.

Top-level racing has always been part of Pirelli’s DNA and, to make its comeback to pro cycling, the company has chosen a team that has made a reputation for its daring technical choices.  Innovation and vision are, in fact, two traits that Pirelli has in common with Aqua Blue Sport, the only team at professional road cycling level to use a 1x group-set on their 3T Strada bikes, a choice that has managed to amaze and almost defy the cycling world.

With this first collaboration agreement, Pirelli brings to cycling its unique approach to technical partnering. As it has done with all its top-notch sports partners, with the Aqua Blue Sport team Pirelli has entered into an agreement that is meant to serve first and foremost as an opportunity for growth and R&D work on the product. Pirelli’s role in sports partnerships, in fact, does not consist solely of providing branded tires, it entails genuine technical collaboration and an on-going exchange of feedback with the teams, leading to the development of specific and unique tire solutions.

Therefore, while it is a first “public” appearance for Pirelli bike tires in a competitive context, Amstel Gold Race won’t be the final destination but rather a significant step in a journey of research and development which is bound to continue throughout the season. At this race, and the ones that will follow, additional new solutions will be tested in actual racing conditions, to provide increasingly performing tubulars to the team. A close technical collaboration will make it possible to collect valuable data and feedback for the development of the tubulars that Pirelli will eventually present to the market.

For Aqua Blue Sport, Pirelli has developed a new, specific tubular tire, which the team has been testing in recent months, in various contexts and on-road tests. It is a 28 mm tire, specially developed to maximize the aerodynamic characteristics of the 3T Strada. When training, instead, the Aqua Blue Sport team uses the 28 mm PZero Velo tires already available on the market.

Like the PZero Velo clinchers, the new Pirelli tubulars for Aqua Blue Sport have been developed with the aid of a proprietary technology, and the compounds are produced by Pirelli in their Slatina plant, in Romania, where the tires for F1 single-seaters are also made.

“Pirelli’s comeback to the racing bikes is the natural consequence of the company’s return to the world of cycling – points out Antonella Lauriola, COO of Velo Pirelli Business Unit – and we are happy to be back with Aqua Blue Sport as our partner.  They are a team with great personality and technical preparation, with whom we share values and vision. We have undertaken a joint R&D program that is highly constructive and, we hope, will lead to new wins for the team and quality improvements for the consumer tires we are going to launch in the near future.”

“We are proud to forge this new and exciting partnership with Pirelli, a brand that stands for the highest standard of quality in the tire manufacturing universe. As we strive to continue to blaze a path in technical innovation in professional cycling, this new collaboration brings further momentum to our vision and hopefully pave the way to great results on the road,” said Stephen Moore, General Manager at team Aqua Blue Sport.

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