Article from an interview with Steven Cho (Representative of Hankook Tire & WRC) and Sam Tickell at Rally Islas Canarias
From its genesis as the Chosun Tire Company more than eight decades ago, Hankook Tire has traced an arc from local Korean manufacturing stalwart to a truly international player within the fiercely competitive landscape of motorsport. That transition has been anything but linear, shaped by a persistent drive towards technical innovation, premiumisation, and global relevance.
The decision to engage with motorsport was never simply a marketing exercise. “Motorsports is a really important part of Hankook Tires’ strategy, as well as a part of our culture all the way down from, you know, our senior executives to our chairman. We see motorsports as a really important tool to, on one hand, develop technology and to stay on the cutting edge and continue to challenge ourselves and push ourselves; on the other side, the marketing aspect, you know, of course, we’re able to market and advertise while utilising our product, which is different than just other sports marketing or other kind of brand marketing activities. So there’s a clear synergy there, right?” Representative of Hankook Tire & WRC Steven Cho remarks. It soon became clear that this duality – technical development and brand building – would be the lens through which Hankook navigated racing. Motorsport was not merely a spectacle; it was an environment for rigorous R&D, creating a proving ground for new compounds, constructions, and design philosophies that would ultimately trickle into the road-going product line.
Hankook’s involvement with motorsport accelerated in the early 2000s,
following its first competition tire development in 1992 as the company sought both visibility and technical challenge. Landmark entries in European and Asian rallying and circuit racing underscored Hankook’s intention to play among the industry’s titans. Endurance racing, too, provided fertile ground for experimentation: “What we’re building there is sort of our ability and our experience to bring new products to market very quickly. So when you’re doing Nürburgring or when you’re doing an open tire championship in rally or in sports cars, the development cycles are very fast. We’re only producing prototypes just to extract performance. And so going through that exercise, of course, builds our internal culture. It builds, it trains our people. It allows us to figure out how to most efficiently go from problem, solution, concept, prototype, validation, very quickly. And so through that process, through those learnings, over time, it becomes ingrained in the culture and in new processes. And then that’s the basis for what allows us to take on larger projects like this,” Cho explains.
| Year | Achievement / Event | Description / Series |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Super 6000 Class Double Titles | Won both team and driver championships |
| 2022 | Formula E Official Tire Supplier | Debuted in Season9 (2022/23) as tire supplier, performance records, lap time reductions, indoor land speed record |
| 2023-ongoing | Lamborghini Super Trofeo Official Partner | Provided tires, praised for performance; global expansion with 38 races on 16 tracks, multiple continental and class titles |
| 2024 | TCR Italy Champion (Misano) | Nicolas Taylor from PMA Motorsport crowned TCR champion at Misano |
| 2025 | FIA World Rally Championship Supplier | Began supplying WRC as control tyre supplier |
| Ongoing | Formula Drift Pro Championship | Chris Forsberg (Hankook-Chris Fordberg Racing Team) won in 2014 and Fredric Aasbø (Papadakis Racing Team) secured second place |
| 2000s | Le Mans (GT2 class podiums) & Nürburgring 24Hr | Farnbacher Racing Team and Hankook-KTR team notable results |
| 2023 | Guinness World Record Indoor Land Speed | Formula E car with Hankook tire: 218.7 km/h |
If the company’s early competitive results
—such as the wins at the Nürburgring 24 Hours with Farnbacher Racing, and prominent presence in the Japanese Super GT—were impressive, it was the process underpinning them that most shaped the company’s strategic direction. Hankook was steadily moving upmarket, pushing towards larger rim diameters and premium performance characteristics. As Cho details, “If we look back to the strategic direction that the company has been on, it’s to go more premium, to invest into technology, to make sure that we are, you know, again, it sounds like a cliché, but to make sure that our technology is on the cutting edge, to continue to be on the premium side. You know, the automotive market has headwinds everywhere, I guess. But for us, we can see that our key performance indicators are all going in the right direction, and a lot of that shows by going into more premium product, larger inches, more premium segments.”
The cultivation of technical achievement within Hankook went hand-in-hand with a transformation in company culture. Motorsport, with its relentless cycle of competition and rapid development, became a crucible for confidence and ambition. “When you’re involved in an open competition championship, of course, the parameters are different than supplying a world championship here as a sole supplier. But basically, what we’re building there is sort of our ability and our experience to bring new products to market very quickly,” reflects Cho. In essence, motorsport equipped Hankook not only with advanced technical capabilities, but also with the resilience and decisiveness needed for large-scale operations at the global level.
Such experiences foster organisational courage
—a willingness to face failure, embrace competition, and see adversity as opportunity. “Motorsport in general, whether it’s a championship like this, where there’s lots of eyeballs watching how well or how less well you’re doing… if you do a tire competition, then you’re going up against other respected brands that are also pushing and so putting yourself out there, I guess it takes a little bit of courage to do that, because it could go the wrong way. But again, that’s kind of as a company, we make that commitment to do that, put ourselves out there, because in those environments is where we learn the fastest, and we build our technology the fastest,” Cho shares. This blend of humility and resolve has underpinned Hankook’s incremental ascent in motorsport.
Hankook’s story, thus far, is not one of overnight transcendence but of methodical growth, learning through both triumph and adversity. Its motorsport endeavours have not only expanded technical expertise, but imbued the organisation with an abiding belief in its capacity for further achievement—a conviction that nothing should be considered out of reach, provided there remains the will to persevere and adapt.
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