DIABLO Superbike Slicks Lead Army of Darkness to Summit Point Raceway Series Finale Victory and 17th National Championship
ROME, Ga. (September 15, 2021) – Pirelli Tire North America congratulates the Army of Darkness (AoD) racing team of Chris Peris and Ben Walters on capturing the WERA/N2 endurance victory at Summit Point Raceway and their 17th national endurance championship. The AoD Yamaha YZF-R1 relied on the performance of Pirelli’s DIABLO Superbike 125/70R-17 SC2 front and 200/65R-17 SC1 rear slicks to take the race win and secure the Heavyweight and overall championships for the fourth consecutive season.
Endurance racing is definitely making the most of a lot of variables together to give the team the best chance to win in the long run,” said Oscar Solis, senior racing manager, Pirelli. “Army of Darkness have managed to do this both on and off the track this year. We applaud them for their tenacity. This not only proves Pirelli as a great tire for a single race, but also for an endurance of four hours. It has been great to work with the team to secure the championship.”
Peris managed to put in an incredible time during qualifying that saw him take pole position with 1.5 seconds to spare on his nearest competitor. Peris would go on to set the fastest laps of the race and was backed by his teammate Walters’ strong, consistent laps and the team’s quick pit stops, making it too much for their competition to overcome.
“There have been 18 WERA/N2 endurance races over the last four years and I’ve been privileged to be a part of AoD winning 13 of them,” said Walters. “There are thousands of things that can go wrong with the bike, track, or another competitor and then we still have to bring a fast platform to the track and turn the lap times and, after all that, still have perfect pit stops. If you told me at the start of 2018 that we were going to win over 70 percent of the races going forward, I wouldn’t have believed it. We have had very strong competition each year, but racing fortune is smiling upon us and we keep pulling off the late-season rally to win the championships. It’s like a storybook ending each year!”
In addition to the national endurance championship, Pirelli has consistently proven the performance capabilities of its DIABLO Superbike range throughout the 2021-racing season, capturing more than five absolute motorcycle track records as well as countless victories in regions across the nation. Whether racers are looking for an endurance race tire, the performance needed in a traditional race, or even going all out for a single lap, Pirelli remains the go-to option for racers competing at events that do not require the use of a spec tire.
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ABOUT PIRELLI
Pirelli was founded in Milan in 1872 and today stands as a global brand known for its cutting edge technology, high-end production excellence and passion for innovation that draws heavily on its Italian roots. With around 30,000 employees, Pirelli is a major player in the tire industry and the only global player focused solely on the consumer tire market, which includes tires for cars, motorcycles and bicycles. In particular, Pirelli is a global leader in the production of racing and high performance motorcycle tires both for on and off road applications. Pirelli has a long link with motorsport and the multitude of successes include a record of seventy-two world titles gained in the FIM Motocross World Championship thanks to the performance of its mx product range. In road-racing, since 2004 Pirelli has made the FIM Superbike World Championship for production-based motorcycles the ideal proving ground to develop not only the products used in competition, but also tires used daily by motorcyclists all over the world. Inspired by the philosophy now become a motto “We sell what we race, we race what we sell”, Pirelli has managed to bring to fruition all the experience acquired in this championship, applying some of the patents and materials developed for racing activity to the product portfolio dedicated to road use.
