Another Attempt for F1
Hankook Tire has placed a 1 trillion won (US$900 million) bet on the supply of Formula 1 (F1) tires. The Korean tire giant had to give up supplying tires to F1 events in 2014 due to a shortage of product development time. Now the company will make another attempt to supply its tires to F1 events in four years.
According to the tire industry on September 26, Hankook Tire recently submitted a tender to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for the supply of tires to F1 events from 2020 to 2023.
Hankook Tire has proposed to invest a total of about 1 trillion won for four years in the development, production and supply of F1 tires. The company plans to invest approximately 300 billion won in the first year of supply to install production lines, and then invest roughly 200 billion won every year.
Hankook Tire will compete with Italy's Pirelli for F1 tire supply from 2020 to 2023. Pirelli has an advantage as the fifth largest company in the global tire market and the current F1 tire supplier.
On the other hand, Hankook Tire, the seventh-largest player in the global tire market, joined the competition with its know-how and large-scale investment strategy in supplying tires to high-performance motor sports.
Regarding a bid for F1 tire supply, experts in the Korean tire industry is paying attention to the fact that Hankook Tire has aggressively invested in marketing with the start of new management led by a new president who is a grandson of the founder of the company. Cho Hyeon-sik, who became vice chairman of Hankook Tire World Wide early this year and Cho Hyeon-beom, president of the company has been directly orchestrating the move to take part in the bid to supply tires to F1 events.
The FIA will review Hankook Tire's product development technology, sponsorship amount, production capacity among others and select and announce the final successful bidder at the end of this year.