At the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Pirelli unveiled A Stir of the Soul: Pirelli’s 500 GPs in the F1 World Championship, a commemorative volume edited by the Pirelli Foundation and published by Marsilio Arte. The book celebrates Pirelli’s 500 races in the World Championship through a rich sequence of images and texts, with many materials drawn from the Pirelli Historical Archive. Presented on 12 June 2026 during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, the volume also coincides with the 75th anniversary of the Formula 1 World Championship.
The presentation brought together Marco Tronchetti Provera, Pirelli’s Executive Vice President and Chairman of the Pirelli Foundation, Stefano Domenicali, President and CEO of Formula 1, and former F1 driver Nick Heidfeld, who served as one of Pirelli’s earliest test drivers ahead of its 2011 return to the sport. FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem contributed via video message, and Jean Todt, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety and former FIA President, also took part. Journalist Tom Clarkson moderated the discussion, held in front of an audience that included senior F1 figures such as Mattia Binotto, James Vowles and Alan Permane.
Tronchetti Provera: “A continuous tension towards overcoming limits”
Tronchetti Provera framed Pirelli’s Formula 1 programme as an industrial commitment as much as a sporting one. “I consider Formula 1 Grands Prix as the most complex test benches within the open-air workshop represented by sporting competition,” he said. “This experience expresses a deeper value, translating into a continuous tension towards overcoming commercial and technical limits. We operate by drawing on the skills and energy of the women and men of our group, with the clear intention of constantly looking to the future. Even knowing that absolute perfection cannot be reached, it shows us the right path to follow.”
With Pirelli’s partnership with Formula 1 already extended through 2028, he added a simpler observation on the relationship: “When they ask you to stay, you stay — because it means you’re doing well, and the story can continue.”
Domenicali: “The single element between power and asphalt”
Domenicali began by thanking Pirelli’s leadership team by name — Marco, Giovanni, Mario, Dario and everyone working behind the scenes — before turning to the technical significance of the tyre supplier’s contribution to the sport. “Everyone talks about thousandths of a second, but in the end the connection between the cars, engine power and the asphalt is represented by a single element: the tyres,” Domenicali said. “The facts have proven, and continue to prove, that Pirelli is the only company capable of tackling this incredible technological challenge. Many are good at talking, but when the time comes to truly demonstrate one’s worth, things become much more difficult.”
The Italian F1 chief also framed the milestone in cultural terms, pointing to Pirelli’s continuous presence across seven and a half decades of racing. “In the world of competition, it is never a given to stay at the top. Pirelli has been able not only to look inward, but also outward — to draw information, absorb methodologies, develop materials. Our joint path has been incredible. This book tells a story made of people, images and emotions that trace the journey of Formula 1 and Pirelli from 1950 to today.”
Looking to the sport’s technical future, Domenicali added: “New sporting challenges await us. We will need to continue finding the right balance between performance, spectacle and the possibility for drivers to push to the maximum. Hiding problems has never been the right approach, and it has never been so far. That is the spirit that has brought Pirelli to its 500th Grand Prix, and that will need to accompany us in the next 500 as well.”
Ben Sulayem and Todt: safety, sustainability and legacy
FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, contributing via video, framed the anniversary in the context of the sport’s technical evolution. “Throughout the historical development that spans decades of the top category, from the inaugural Grand Prix of 1950 to the current technological era of hybrid power units, Pirelli has confirmed a constant presence — demonstrating the ability to translate rubber development into speed performance, compound management into strategic choices for the teams, and individual competitive events into global entertainment for millions of fans around the world.” The FIA President added that the collaboration between Pirelli and the governing body reflects “the shared willingness to raise standards of safety, environmental sustainability and product innovation, leveraging industrial progress and scientific excellence.”
Jean Todt, whose UN mandate on road safety runs parallel to his lifetime in motorsport, connected the sporting achievement to the wider question of tyre technology on public roads. “All my life I have been close to motorsport, and over those decades I have seen what happens when technology is not up to the challenge. What Pirelli achieves in Formula 1 does not stay in Formula 1 — it becomes the foundation of the tyres millions of people drive on every day. That transfer of knowledge is what makes motorsport a legitimate industry, not just a spectacle.”
A book that spans seven decades and 75 years of world championship history
The book traces the story from Silverstone on 13 May 1950, the day the World Championship was born, through Pirelli’s three distinct periods in the sport — from 1950 to 1958, from 1981 to 1991, and from 2011 to today as Global Tyre Partner of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship. Legends from Alberto Ascari and Juan Manuel Fangio to Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are represented alongside the engineers and mechanics who make every Grand Prix possible. A contemporary photographic reportage by Darren Heath, shot at the 2025 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, forms a visual bridge between the historical archive and modern Formula 1. A companion website at pirelli500gp.fondazionepirelli.org accompanies the project.
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