Nothing makes or breaks a car like tires. Seriously, a good set of tires can make even a middling car feel great while the wrong tires can make a supercar feel sketchy or slow. Lamborghini is well aware of this, and so it has once again partnered with Bridgestone to offer bespoke tires for its new technological terror, the recently announced Temerario.
When I say “bespoke tires” I don’t mean that there are wizened old tire-making masters in aprons painstakingly laying down each layer of rubber one at a time. I mean that Lamborghini’s chassis engineers have spent a ton of time working with Bridgestone’s tire engineers to create special versions of existing tires that perfectly complement the vehicle to which they’re fitted.
So, while the standard tire for the new Temerario may be badged as a Bridgestone Potenza Sport, it’s definitely not the same tire you’d get if you went down to your local Pep Boys and had Part-Time Pete and the fellas slap a new set on. Marked tires, as the ones on the Temerario are known, are usually sold through dealerships and they’re almost always more expensive than the generic versions that share their name.
What makes the bespoke Potenza Sport, Potenza Race, and Blizzak LM005 snow tires (snow tires on a 1,000 horsepower car? Yes please!) different than the off-the-shelf versions? We don’t know exactly, but given my personal experience with various flavors of Huracan with similarly special rubber, I’d bet they are freaking awesome.
One thing we do know about the development of these tires is that Bridgestone did a ton of it using its proprietary Virtual Tire Development (VTD) technology. Uninspired name aside, this tech allowed Bridgestone and Lamborghini to do a ton of the work required to get in the ballpark of a final tire spec without spending countless hours making iterations and testing them in the real world. Bridgestone claims designing a tire with VTD is 50 percent faster, requires 80 percent fewer physical tests, and negates the need for around 200 physical prototypes. Pretty cool, huh?
Personally, I’m extremely curious how these tires will cope with all of the bananas headline figures that the Temerario will throw at them, but I’m perfectly fine with regularly pestering the folks in Sant’Agata until I can find out in person.
