Pony cars and exotics don’t usually have much in common. They both prioritize driving enjoyment, sure, but their missions come about in different ways: front- versus mid-engined, steel and aluminum versus carbon fiber, reasonable financing versus robbing a mint, etc. But at the 2023 Goodwood Festival Of Speed, we learned that the 2024 Ford Mustang and Pagani Utopia share one crucial element to high performance – Pirelli P Zero Trofeo RS tires.
Debuting at the event in West Sussex, England, the P Zero Trofeo RS is Pirelli’s latest flagship tire, building upon the Trofeo R already found on such hypercars as the McLaren 765LT. Although Pirelli will continue to offer the R alongside the RS, the latter benefits from the latest advancements in digital modeling, allowing the tire manufacturer to experiment with a variety of contact patches, tread patterns, and compound mixes virtually to give the tire maximum performance. Pirelli says the RS boasts improved cornering response and stability thanks to those advancements.
Like the Trofeo R, the RS is a semi-slick, track-ready tire, albeit one that’s street-legal. As such, it’s not ideal for consistently wet conditions, and the tire will lose traction when ambient temperatures get near freezing even if the road is dry. But the P Zero Trofeo RS will likely be worth such concessions for those who take their Utopias and Dark Horses to the track.
Curiously, the Mustang Dark Horse will only offer the Trofeo RS as an option in North America. Global Ford Performance Motorsport Director Mark Rush said that the European market will receive the Dark Horse fitted with regular P Zero tires only. And in yet another plot twist, Ford was hiding Pirelli’s newest hot-and-heavy rubber in plain sight – although Pirelli didn’t officially announce the Trofeo RS until last week, the Mustang Dark Horse’s debut images betrayed the new tire as early as last September. The Pagani Utopia’s official debut showed it wearing P Zero Corsas, so put a notch in the Ford column for being so sneaky.
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