To be the single make tyre supplier to the WorldSBK championship for 18 years is a demonstration of the trust and mutual respect between both Pirelli and the WorldSBK organisers , plus of course the sports governing body , the FIM . The first major tyre company to adopt a single make tyre supply strategy at full world championship level , Pirelli has done things its own way from the start . In many ways following its own path is still inherent in Pirelli ’ s attitude to WorldSBK . The Italian based multinational company has employed the feedback from the world ’ s best riders of production-derived machinery to make constant improvements to its range of race tyres . And given the close relationship between Pirelli ’ s track and road products , both created from standard production processes rather than exoticprototypes with no relevance to the real world , the end users and customers get the full benefit of all the experience and technical advances that originate on the circuits of the world . As well as never being satisfied to merely supply the championship with a small number of tyre solutions , Pirelli is unique in still bringing not just slick and then rain tyres ( full wets , in some conversations ) but Intermediates are still on each Pirelli roster at WorldSBK races . As the name suggests , Intermediates are the tyres between full slicks and rain tyres . Cut with water-dispersing grooves a bit like wets or road tyres , they are also designed to still work and be both functional and safe on damp and drying track conditions . The kind of conditions that would overheat the very soft and very heavily grooved rubber on rain tyres in relatively few laps . ‘ Wet ’ tyres or ‘ Rain ’ tyres are well-named . No matter their source , Rain tyres only work in fully wet conditions . At the first round of the season , Motorland Aragon in May , several riders were persuaded to use Intermediate tyres , which most prefer not to try as on a drying track slicks will soon work best , and if the rains are expected to come back sometime soon , then many prefer to start on wets if they have any chance of making them last . But not always , and not even all the way through the first round of 2021 , as recent evidence showed . At Motorland , as Pirelli Moto Racing Director Giorgio Barbier said , “ What we really learned from the first round at Motorland was that the track had a lot of grip in wet conditions . When I say wet I do not mean damp . In one of the sessions when it was raining the WorldSSP riders who used the intermediate tyres were in better shape than those who used the full rain rear . I said to all the WorldSBK teams , ‘ Please keep this experience and use the intermediates ’, but they said , ‘ but the track is wetter than yesterday , wetter than this morning , so we have to use the rain tyres !’” Many of them did use the Intermediates - ‘ Inters ’ as they are called at times - and found the benefit in their results . And as many riders said , they were pleasantly surprised by their performance , given that they are