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With a year of progress that saw WorldSBK teams adopt more tyre options, Pirelli now focus on development over the winter, in order to offer even more options for the new season ahead. Pirelli Moto Racing Director Giorgio Barbier caught up with WorldSBK.com to discuss the evolution of the Pirelli tyres used in the 2016 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship and in what direction the tyre manufacturer plans to work in next season.

In 2016 Pirelli focused on the advancement of their front slick offerings and Barbier was pleased with the season’s outcome, saying, “Well very good, [2016 season] because at the end we changed the minds of all the teams. They were used to having just a couple of solutions that they trusted and in the end we succeeded in changing their minds. We have new tyres now that will be available on the market at the same time in a couple of months for next year. So that’s good, and then we have a new soft rear that we worked quite hard on; the SC0 is the softest and now it’s ready for the market too.

“In WorldSBK and WorldSSP, we had quite an interesting test in Jerez after the race. We brought seven new solutions and the teams liked six of them. So we will work on those in the winter tests.”

Midseason saw ideas thrown around by Pirelli to perhaps introduce split compounds in Race 1 and Race 2. But no further developments were made to put this into effect. Barbier clarified with a gigantic grin that it was just an idea and didn’t confirm whether it would happen or not.

“What we are really thinking as usual, is to give teams the opportunity to change tyres whenever they like, explained Barbier. “It would be their choice. So if they would like to run with different tyres for the second leg of the race, then that’s fine for us, it’s no problems.”

On the tyres that Pirelli will be supplying for the new World Supersport 300 category, the Italian smiled and said, “WorldSSP300 will be a very interesting entry class, also for national championships too. We already did some tests in the Italian Championship, the Australian Championship and in Malaysia and we have quite an interesting product. It’s the Diablo Supercorsa in size 120 and 140 and we will use that in the class. It’s a similar compound to the Supercorsa that is used in WorldSSP. We will use a SC1 or SC2 on the back because they will probably have just two or three sets and no more, which they will have to develop all weekend.”