Mention the word Multistrada and not many will connect it with a tyre brand, being a new player in the motoring industry the young company is making headways with being chosen to be the official tyre manufacture for the Sepang 1000km (S1K) race.

The Indonesian tyre manufacturer tarted with manufacturing Pirelli tyres back in 1994, moved on to continental before going on their own in 2000.

The first two tyre models are for passenger cars and a performance model, the Archilles was developed to cater for the local motorsports scene.

“The chosen to be the official tyre for the S1K race means a big advancement us as this will be our first start to be in the international racing scene,” said Pieter Tanuri, president director of Multistrada Arah Sarana Tbk.

According to him, the Archilles 123 which was launched two years ago is popular in the races such as the Super Production which is a Honda Jazz one make race, slalom or car park rally, drag and drift events in Indonesia.

“The Archilles 123 was developed along for the Sentul Circuit, we did a lot of testing on that circuit and thus the end result a high performance tyre for the circuit.

But when we arrived at the Sepang International Circuit (SIC) we realised that the performance demands on this circuit is higher.

The Archilles 123 can still cope with the demands but with this collaboration with SIC we will be improving  the tyre further.”

Pieter explained earlier that the Archilles was developed using the Sentul Circuit as the standard and now Multistrada will be using SIC as the new benchmark.

“We will be using the data collected from the tyres used in the S1K race in the next development and further tyre testing will be done in SIC in the future.”

He added that this collaboration will also add value to SIC as it will mention everytime we have an event or new tyre launched.

“I hope the drivers will be happy with the performance of the Archilles 123 and the collaboration between Multistrada and SIC will be long and fruitful one.”

One of the teams that did extensive testing for the S1K race is team R3. Team manager Tengku Djan Ley said they are surprised how the tyre performed.

“The tyres performed quiet well and it didn’t take us long before we found the right setting that will work with our drivers.

So far we calculated that we could actually get about 70 laps or three stints with a set of tyres, in fact we might not need to change the rear tyres,” explained Djan.

Multistrada is the third biggest tyre manufacturer in Indonesia for both motorcycle and passenger vehicle market, 80% of its tyre production is for export to EU, Middle East and even America.

The company manufactures tyre size ranging from 13 inch all the way to 24 inch.