Milan, 15 December 2004 – Racing Italy on the attack at the
2005 Dakar. In probably the most spectacular and suggestive
category: truck.
Pirelli is back competing in the world’s most famous motor sport
marathon: almost 10,000 kilometres of unmade tracks and desert in
an environment that has always been hostile, all the way to that
celebrated beach in Senegal.
Pirelli has joined forces with a top class partner of great motor
sport tradition for its return to the African race: Iveco, which
will compete with the Motorsport Italia team. An all-Italian
operation, writing another chapter in a long and successful story,
which has linked the Pirelli brand and the Fiat Group in racing for
decades.

Drivers of the Pirelli-shod Iveco Eurocargos, which have long been
part of commercial vehicle transport’s and marathon rallying’s
history, will be two men who occupy a special place in the hearts
of the Italians: double world rally champion Massimo “Miki” Biasion
and Markku Alen, who holds a Finnish passport but is Italian by
association, having competed in and won world championship rallies
for many years at the wheel of Fiats and Lancias, almost always on
Pirelli tyres.
As well as having won two world rally championships with the Lancia
Delta Integrale at the end of the Eighties, Miki Biasion is also a
double World Tout Terrain champion, having won those titles with an
Iveco Eurocargo in 1998 and 1999. His co-driver/navigator will be
Giorgio Albiero.
Markku Alen is one of the top rally drivers of all time, with
successes in Fiats and Lancias to his credit on the special stages
of the world. Completing the two Iveco-Pirelli line-up – each
vehicle will carry a three man crew – will be Livio Diamante, a
Dakar veteran, and Toni Guido, who has competed in the event nine
times.

The two Iveco Eurocargo 140E24 WS trucks will be fitted with
Pirelli PS 22 Pista tyres of normal production and in size 14.00 R
20. Tyres able to deliver extremely high performance and a maximum
guarantee of resistance and reliability, as they have already shown
in a recent test session in Tunisia. The Pirelli PS 22 Pista, in
particular, demonstrated an excellent “floating” ability at
extremely low pressures in harsh environments on sand and an
undaunted resistance to tears and cuts: so an optimum choice with
which to take on an event like the Dakar.
Pirelli will also compete in the 2005 Dakar with two private
Spanish teams, which have chosen to race on its tyres: they are the
PROmotor-Les Comes and Tibau squads.

The Dakar will start from Barcelona on 1 January 2005. The route
will take competitors through Spain and on board ship bound for
Morocco for the first of the African special stages. After that
comes Mauritania, a number of stages in the Sahara Desert, then the
forests of Mali and on to Senegal for the finish on 16 January 2005
by Dakar’s celebrated pink lake.

The first outing of the Peugeot 307 WRC, great protagonist of the
World Rally Championship, with the Pirelli tyres which will fit
Peugeot during the 2005 season, could not have gone better. The
French-made car -driven by Marcus Gronholm, top driver of the
Peugeot team- made its debut during Bologna’s Motorshow at the
beginning of December. And its appearance could not have been more
positive.

Gronholm -twice World Rally Champion in 2000 and 2002- dominated
the competition held on Saturday 11th driving his 307 WRC with
Pirelli tyres, leaving Colin McRae’s Pirelli-shod Subaru in second
place. On Sunday 12th, during the “Memorial Bettega” final,
Gronholm was faced by another Subaru-Pirelli car driven this time
by Andrea Navarra: Gronholm won the first heat but then finished
second after retiring due to gearbox failure. The “real” debut of
the Pirelli shod Peugeot on the World Championship will be at the
Montecarlo Rally from 21 to 23 January.

MC 12s and P Zeros Score a 1-2 in the Final FIA GT Race
of the 2004 Season

Rome, Georgia, November 16, 2004 - Last weekend, more than
20,000 racing fans journeyed to the Zhuhai International Circuit,
situated in the fast-growing city of the same name, which faces the
Chinese Southern Sea. These Chinese enthusiasts attended the last
round of the FIA GT 2004 Championship, and they witnessed the
Pirelli-shod Maserati MC 12 of Mika Salo and Andrea Bertolini take
the overall win. This was the second victory in four races since
the car made its debut and the first in which the FIA allowed the
all-new Maserati to earn points.
The victory was all the sweeter because the second AF Corse
Maserati MC 12 of Fabrizio de Simone and Johnny Herbert finished
right behind the Salo/Bertolini car, giving the team its first 1-2
finish. Nineteen GT cars started, but, only the Bobbi/Gardel
Ferrari 550 managed to challenge the Maseratis during the
three-hour race..

After the race Mika Salo commented: ” We are very pleased to
have achieved these first points for Maserati. We also want to
thank Pirelli for providing us with great tires that allowed us to
carry out a double stint during the first part of the race,
allowing us to earn precious seconds against the Ferrari
550.”
The Maserati MC 12s used a new Pirelli P Zero front tire at Zhuhai.
These tires and the P Zeros run by some of the other competitors
were the model of consistency during the entire weekend. During the
race warm-up, the first six cars were all Pirelli equipped.
It was also a great weekend for Pirelli in the N-GT class. The GPC
Giesse Squadra Corse Ferrari 360 of Christian Pescatori and Jaime
Melo qualified first and took the win over a contingent of very
competitive Porsches.
Pirelli Tire North America specializes in the manufacture and
marketing of high performance car, light truck and motorcycle tires
and currently has three of its highly advanced MIRS (Modular
Integrated Robotized System) modules in operation in a new factory
near Atlanta, Georgia, to better serve the American OEM and
Replacement markets. For more information visit the companys
web site at www.us.pirelli.com.