The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., recently announced that its US subsidiary Yokohama Tire Corporation (YTC) will be supplying racing tires from its global flagship ADVAN brand to support teams competing in the 104th Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC) to be held in Colorado, USA, on June 21.
Yokohama Rubber has participated in the world-famous Pikes Peak hill climbs for many years, and cars fitted with YOKOHAMA tires captured the PPIHC overall championship in 2020, 2022, and 2023. Robin Shute, the overall winner in 2022 and 2023, has selected ADVAN A005 tires newly developed by Yokohama Rubber especially for hill climbs to use on his personally designed machine, as he aims to reclaim the overall championship in his first ADVAN-colored machine since 2023.
Yokohama Rubber will supply its ADVAN tires for cars driven by more than 20 competitors in various divisions of this year’s PPIHC, including such top-class drivers as Cole Powelson, Robb Holland, and Dai Yoshihara, a Japanese driver active in the United States. In addition, Yokohama Rubber will supply its ADVAN A052 street sports tire for the 9th straight year as the control tire to drivers vying to win the Pikes Peak GT4 Trophy by Yokohama, which features GT4 cars by several leading car makers.
The Pikes Peak Hill Climb is a hill climb race with a long and illustrious history dating back to 1916. It is also known as the “Race to the Clouds,” as the course starts at 2,862 meters above sea level and covers about 20 kilometers before reaching the finish line at an altitude of 4,302 meters.
To strengthen the brand power and awareness of the ADVAN brand in the North American market, Yokohama Rubber is participating in popular races such as the PPIHC as well as supplying ADVAN tires as the control tire for several other races. ADVAN tires are the control tire for one-make racing series featuring premium sports cars, including the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America by Yokohama and two other Porsche one-make racing series, as well as Ford’s Mustang Cup.
The consumer tire strategy in Yokohama Rubber’s three-year (2024–2026) medium-term management plan, Yokohama Transformation 2026 (YX2026), aims to maximize the sales ratios of high-value-added tires by expanding sales of YOKOHAMA’s global flagship ADVAN brand, the GEOLANDAR brand of tires for SUVs and pickup trucks, winter tires, and 18-inch and larger tires. Yokohama Rubber positions participation in motorsports activities as crucial to its effort to further strengthen the ADVAN and GEOLANDAR brands. Yokohama Rubber therefore is again participating in a wide variety of motorsports events around the globe, from top-category to grassroots events.
