In fact there was not only one Diablo night in Italy, there were exactly five and all party guests were having a wonderful and unforgettable evening.

The selected locations for this occasion were: La Divina Commedia in Milan, Gasoline in Rimini, Henry Cow in Roma, La Sacra Birra Saloon in Turin and the Campus in Verona.
Although the parties began before 21:30 in the evening people started going home late at night or even in the early morning hours.

After two years of successful collaboration, Pirelli and
Ford Rallye Sport partnership comes to an end

Milan, December 13, 2002 – After two years of successful
collaboration, the partnership between Pirelli and
Ford Rallye Sport in the FIA World Rally
Championship comes to an end.

Together the partners have won six WRC races,
three in a row in 2001 (Argentina, Cyprus and Greece) and three in
2002 (Argentina, Kenya and Greece). ” We have enjoyed two
successful years with Pirelli and thank them for their support.
Together we have made some major improvements and this has seen us
finish runner-up in the world championship for two years in a row
as well as winning six rounds during this time” , said Ford Rallye
Sport Director Malcolm Wilson.

At the end of the 2002 season both parties had the opportunity
to re-discuss the partnership and it was decided in the interests
of both parties to follow different strategic directions.

Pirelli has a long and successful Motorsport history and in
particular in the world rally championship. ” The WRC has always
been considered in Pirelli a fundamental source of technology
creation for the development of road tyre products, in fact a
genuine Reserch and Development test bed”, said Pirelli Motorsport
Director Paul Hembery. ” These last two seasons
with Ford Rallye Sport, together with Colin McRae
and Carlos Sainz – with whom Pirelli has already
won in the past three world drivers championships -, has allowed us
to increase and expand our sporting experience and know how of
competition tyres” .

” For 2003 we are pleased to strengthen our successful
collaboration with the Subaru World Rally Team” ,
added Paul Hembery. ” Our intensified development programs,
together with the Prodrive engineering excellence,
give us belief that we will provide the ideal platform for
Tommi Makinen and Petter Solberg
to excel in the coming WRC season” .

Pirelli and Ferrari Maserati Group: three grand Italian
marques re-united on the track

Only one name: Pirelli P Zero. Exclusively with Maserati on the
track, with the Trofeo in the single-marque championship and,
beginning in 2004, with the program in the GT races. The framework
agreement till 2005 also includes the Ferrari Challenge and
the technological partnership with the Ferrari 360 GT.

Milan, November 15th 2002 – Pirelli has signed a co-operation
agreement with the Ferrari Maserati Group in exclusive for all the
racing programs of Maserati and the renewal of collaboration for
the Ferrari Challenge. The agreement is valid until 2005, with an
optional two-year extension to 2007.
According to the agreement, presented today in Milan by Marco
Tronchetti Provera, chairman of Pirelli SpA, and Luca Cordero di
Montezemolo, chairman of the Ferrari Maserati Group, Pirelli will
become the exclusive technical partner of Maserati in racing,
starting in January 2003, and supplier of reference for the
Ferrari-marque GT competitions.

The eagerly awaited Maserati Trophy, to begin in the spring of
2003, will therefore be raced on Pirelli tires, while Pirelli will
the exclusive tire for the new Maserati GTS car scheduled for 2004.
Regarding Ferrari, the framework agreement confirms the exclusive
supply of Pirelli tires for the 200+ cars in Italy, Europe and
North America that participate in the existing Ferrari Challenge,
and also confirms Pirelli’s role as exclusive original equipment
supplier for the Ferrari 360 GT.

” The commitment to the world of motor racing, in its various
forms, has always been so constant and effective as to become a
characteristic of our company, of Pirelli notoriety and spirit,”
Marco Tronchetti Provera stated. ” And in the glory years of racing
it was precisely the collaboration first with Maserati and then
with Ferrari that made Pirelli a success and a

household name around the globe. This collaboration is as valuable
as ever from the standpoint of technical and technological
development, the maximum expression of active experimentation along
with the continuous research activity in the Group’s laboratories
worldwide. Today this return to racing with Maserati and Ferrari is
a significant milestone that for a company like Pirelli, always
projected toward the future to remain competitive, represents a
point of departure towards new challenges.”

At the basis of the agreement with the Ferrari Maserati Group is
a name well-known for years throughout the tire world: P Zero. This
is the insignia of Pirelli’s racing tires, from high-performance
road tires to the racing series for track use to the rally models.
Behind the P Zero name stands all the know-how Pirelli has
accumulated in almost a century of motor-racing competition:
virtually since the birth of the automobile.
Created for Ferrari in the mid-80s, the extraordinary epitome of
power and technology that is the Pirelli P Zero has evolved over
the years in the role of a veritable laboratory-product. Today P
Zero racing are the tires Maserati has chosen for its on-track
activity and are fitted on the Ferraris that enlive since ten years
the championship dedicated to the Ferrari clients.

So, beginning in 2003, the Pirelli P Zero will be supplied as
exclusive original equipment on the Ferrari 360 GT that competed
with success with the private team JMB Racing in the 2002 FIA N-GT
Championship. And Pirelli P Zeros will also be the exclusive tires
of the Ferrari 360s that will do battle in the 2003 edition of the
Ferrari Challenge.
That valid idea a decade ago that launched the Pirelli-tired
Ferrari reds on the track is now bearing fruit: it will again be
the P Zero that exclusively equips the white-and-blue Coup
that will vie in the Maserati Trophy beginning next spring.
And then, along with the future Maserati GT, Pirelli is ready to
resume its top-level American adventure in the Endurance races in
USA.

Pirelli P Zero: at the origins of a name dedicated to
racing

” The automobile is not just a hunk of steel but a living
creature with a beating heart that enjoys, feels good or feels bad
according to how it is treated. If you want it to respond to all
your demands on the road, you must be thoroughly familiar with it
and help it express its personality”
Juan Manuel Fangio

Fangio’s words properly represent the spirit of intense
collaboration that joined Pirelli and Maserati in competition for
over 20 years: a collaboration that played an important part in
creating the racing tradition of Pirelli tires. Juan Manuel Fangio
was perhaps the greatest expression of the partnership between
Pirelli and Trident: the Argentine driver in his 250F won with
impressive consistency on Pirellis, up to his final triumph in the
1957 World Championship, repeating the final victory in 1954.

The roots of this technological leadership developed on the
racetracks, when the tires were called Pirelli Stella Bianca and in
1933 accompanied Giuseppe Campari and his Maserati 8-cylinder to
victory in the French Grand Prix. The accord between Maserati and
Pirelli lasted over 30 years, the same period in which tires were
rapidly evolving toward the radial. Then came the victories of
Villoresi and Farina, until Fangio’s star burst on the scene in the
1953 Italian Grand Prix.

But meanwhile the technological know-how Pirelli had built up over
the years with Maserati and Alfa Romeo allowed it to add another ”
jewel to its crown” : Ferrari. Its first Grand Prix won in 1949,
with Ascari in the Ferrari 125. Then a long series of 22 GPs, in
those years 1952-53 when Ascari and Taruffi, in the Pirelli fitted
Ferrari 500, dominated the World Championship, winning it
twice
And it was Ferrari in the years that followed that drove
experimentation on the Pirelli P Zero racing, taking it to compete
in the long, grueling IMSA Championship in America with the 333 SP
Scandia Motorsport of Fermin Velez, winner of the title in 1995;or
again with the

F40 of Team Ennea in the BPR, and now on the circuits of the FIA
GT Championship. This where the P Zero not only learned to manage
power but also to manage it over the course of long races.

This year 2002 also marks the tenth anniversary of the Ferrari
Challenge, born of the brilliant idea to create a mono-mark,
single-tire championship where Ferrari owner-drivers have found a
logical partner in Pirelli: the same supplier of the road P Zeros
that equipped its F40, and then the F348, the F360, the Maranello.
The Ferrari Challenge is the ideal synthesis of racing activity,
increasingly a social phenomenon as well as a sporting event, to
gauge the potential and limitations of providing utmost safety for
everyday drivers. Today, that almost emotional tie that unites
sports-car drivers to their tire brand is ready to return with the
Maserati Trophy.

Roadholding, handling and thus safety are the most evident
characteristics of the Pirelli P Zeros, both road and racing
models. But the racing tires offer another quality, highly
important on the track: duration and stability of performance over
time. The Pirelli P Zeros mounted on the cars of the Ferrari
Challenge and the Maserati Trophy, like those of the 360GT and the
future P Zeros of the Trident cars for GT racing have, and will
always have, this additional weapon: they will be fast and safe for
many, many laps around a track, always pushing back the
physiological deterioration of performance under extreme
utilization.