Michelin has announced it will end its tyre supply in Super GT's top GT500 class at the end of the 2023 season. Here's what it means for partner squad Nissan, and for the championship as a whole with only Bridgestone, Yokohama and Dunlop remaining ⬇️
The French firm made the shock announcement on Wednesday, signalling the end of its relationship with Nissan and the works NISMO team, which it has supplied continuously since the 2013 season.
The statement made no mention of plans to curtail its involvement in the GT300 class, where it supplies the Team Studie BMW M4 GT3. Michelin has won four GT500 titles, two with the MOLA Nissan squad in 2011-12 and then two more in 2014-15 with NISMO.Michelin’s departure has wide-ranging ramifications for both Nissan and the championship as a whole.
But there’s a catch - Bridgestone already supplies 10 of the 15 GT500 cars in the field, up from nine last year. The Japanese firm is already thought to have baulked at supplying that many, and was only placated by ARTA sacrificing its Bridgestone-shod GT300 entry to get its new-for-2023 second GT500 car on the benchmark rubber.
And so, that brings us on to the alternative: Yokohama. On paper, it doesn’t look like a great match; no car has won a race in the GT500 class using ‘Yokos’ since 2016. But that would be to overlook the strong progress that Kondo Racing in particular has made recently.
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