Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Spa-Francorchamps, 2023

Pirelli proposes new “super-intermediate” to address wet weather tyre problems

2023 Belgian Grand Prix

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Formula 1’s official tyre supplier Pirelli has proposed introducing a third type of tyre for use in rainy conditions.

Drivers have criticised Pirelli’s wet-weather tyres for many years, and did so again following last weekend’s rain-affected sprint race at Spa-Francorchamps. George Russell said it was a “pointless” tyre and several drivers pointed out they only use it when running behind the Safety Car, when the rules mandate their use.

Although the wet-weather compounds reduce the risk of aquaplaning when there are large volumes of water on the circuit, they yield slow lap times. Drivers therefore seize the first opportunity to switch to the intermediate tyres, which are less resistant to aquaplaning.

F1 faces additional concerns over poor visibility in wet conditions. These have been exacerbated in recent years by the introduction of wider cars and tyres in 2017, and the new technical regulations introduced last year which allowed teams to generate more downforce using their cars’ floors, which leads to large volumes of spray when the track is wet.

FIA Safety Car, Spa-Francorchamps, 2023
The Safety Car was busy on Saturday at Spa
The need to improve visibility in races at all levels in single-seater motorsport has highlighted by the death of Dilano van ‘t Hoff in a wet Formula Regional European Championship race at Spa last month.

Pirelli motorsport director Mario Isola says discussions are needed to decide how F1 will address the challenges posted by racing in the rain, and how it wants their full wet and intermediate tyres to perform.

“Here in Spa, we had a clear feedback on the situation with intermediate and with wet,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “We need to sit down together with the FIA and the teams, and F1 of course. I would be happy if some of the drivers are willing to join the meeting and we need to decide what we want.”

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F1’s development priority for Pirelli’s wet-weather tyres has been targeted at enabling teams to use them without pre-heating. This has been completed, and the current tyres no longer require warming in blankets before use.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Spa-Francorchamps, 2023
It took a long time for visibility to improve
Isola said Pirelli have also improved the performance of their wet-weather tyres which were introduced this year. However he acknowledged the gap in performance between the full wet and intermediate tyre on the most demanding circuits, such as Spa, is too large.

“When we tested this wet without blankets, we found the performance in Fiorano and Paul Ricard was five or six seconds quicker than the old wet tyre, and the warm-up was not an issue,” he explained.

“That’s why I sent a request and all the teams voted to introduce the new wet during the season because the teams had the report from our test. It’s not just Pirelli saying that, but they have the data and they agreed that it was a good step to introduce the new wets.

“Now, the point is that maybe this performance is still not enough to generate the right crossover with the intermediate. But one of the issues that we have is that we can test the wet-weather tyres only in Paul Ricard [on its short configuration] and in Fiorano. They are two tracks with completely different characteristics compared to Spa, Silverstone or other circuits.

“We just discovered now, because we had the opportunity to compare the intermediate with the wet, that we needed to improve the performance of the wet. According to the data that we had from the past, the wet where also the crossover was around 115, 116% [of a dry lap time] that is a right number considering the crossover between intermediate and wet.

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“That means that with the data collected, we have to work on the performance of the wet tyres in order to achieve the right crossover with intermediate.”

Wet Pirelli tyre, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 2023
Pirelli introduced a new wet weather tyre this year
However Isola said the future development of its wet weather tyres will depend on how F1 intends to tackle the visibility problem. The FIA began tests of a ‘spray guard’ bodywork concept last month but it is not yet ready for introduction.

If that device cannot be made to work, Isola said one solution could be to introduce a new class of tyre positioned between the intermediate and full wet.

“If for the future the idea is to stay with the current situation, that means if there is a lot of water on track, a red flag or Safety Car and they are not going to run because of visibility, then in my opinion the best solution is probably to develop an intermediate tyre, let’s call it super-intermediate or intermediate-plus or whatever name you want to use, that is an intermediate that is more towards wet conditions. So we can cover with one product from the limit that is acceptable for visibility to the crossover with dry conditions.

“If the idea is to continue to look for a device that is able to reduce the spray, and therefore give them the possibility to run in full wet conditions, we have to keep the two products, stay with intermediate that we have now and the new intermediate that is running without blankets and improve the full wet tyre.

“But if the full wet tyre is used only behind the Safety Car, I agree with drivers that at the moment it is a useless tyre. So we have to decide which is the direction we want to take for the future in order to develop the product that is needed for F1.”

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Conditions during the sprint race meant that although the track became very wet it also dried quickly – in marked contrast to the scene two years earlier when persistent rain made racing impossible for F1 on Sunday.

Drivers almost always use the intermediate tyre in wet conditions
“Because of the Safety Car for the first four laps, we know that the track here is drying quite quickly,” said Isola. “In 11 laps, we had the track moving from full intermediate condition to almost dry conditions. So in four laps, the track was moving from full wet to intermediate, but the four laps were under Safety Car.”

Pirelli could develop a tyre which gives better performance in wetter conditions, said Isola, but it depends on F1’s priorities.

“We need to decide which is the direction. Do we want it to develop a different tread pattern able to work in a wider condition? Okay, we focus on that and we do that. But obviously [then] we are not working for improving the current wet tread pattern.”

“We cannot cover any direction because we have very limited possibilities of testing, and if we waste time in testing many different stuff without a clear direction, the risk is that we don’t achieve any target,” he added. “The idea of this super-intermediate is something that we were discussing [after the sprint race] looking at the results of the sprint and I would say all the weekend.”

In response to the criticisms drivers made of the performance of the new wet-weather tyres, Isola said they performed well at circuits which do not put them under the highest loads, but need to be improved for tracks like Spa.

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“We used a wet tyre in Monaco and they were okay is the conclusion,” he said. “But I don’t want to anticipate any conclusion because we are going to analyse the data. In general Monaco is a low-severity circuit, Fiorano is a low-severity circuit, Paul Ricard – considering that used the short one, the three kilometres one that is just four, five corners – is another low-severity circuit.

“So in general it seems that the new wet tyre, the one without blankets, is working well on a low-severity circuit. But when you run on a real fast and high-severity circuit like Spa and maybe also Silverstone, then it lacks performance. So we need to improve this aspect of the wet-weather tyres.

“That is a possible direction. But if we have to work in this direction, obviously we have to postpone the development of a different tread pattern, or we can go in this other direction and see what happens. But it has to be a common decision, not just a Pirelli decision.”

Following the Belgian Grand Prix, Pirelli stayed at Spa and spent two days testing wet and intermediate tyres with McLaren and Aston Martin.

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2023 Belgian Grand Prix

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54 comments on “Pirelli proposes new “super-intermediate” to address wet weather tyre problems”

  1. How about the opposite, scrap the inters and just have wet and dry tyres. They will then be used and it will be a greater challenge for drivers to keep tyres cool whilst the track dries

    1. That is like in the past i am not sure if that is going be nice to watch….

    2. This would push drivers to start running slicks far wetter conditions, and is almost certain to cause more accidents.

      Unless, of course, it is put in the hands of race control, so they make a call that the track is wet and drivers must use wet tyres until they declare it safe to go back to slicks. I don’t think we really want to see that, though.

      1. Good point there @drmouse.

        If the issue is aquaplaning we have the current wet tyres. But then they have the issue of throwing up so much water that at some tracks it means issues with visibility. The Inters are much faster, but have less grip, cool more and are a bit more prone to aquaplaining.
        They can do a new rain tyre sitting between these with a changed profile that gives better performance and possibly less water displacement, but that costs time and money to develop. And it means having more tyres when the push was for less tyres to haul around.
        If we just have the wets and the dry tyres, we will either have to see more races ran longer behind the SC, change rules so that the FIA can mandate running on the wets or risk drivers crashing on slicks when it is still very risky.

      2. Having the stewards decide the moment when drivers can switch to wets will invariably favor drivers who are approaching the pit entry at that moment, and heavily disadvantage those who have passed it. And that will simply create more controversy and conspiracy about favoritism about the stewarding. They have enough complaints about that already.

        1. *switch to slicks, not wets

        2. I think there are many reasons we don’t want race control deciding when it’s safe to go to slicks. I think it’s the only way we could safely run with just wet and dry tyres, assuming we are talking something similar to the current wets. But for me, that’s why it shouldn’t be done.

  2. That was a no brainer but the inters should if they lost their tracks not turning into softs so no contine driving on a soft but a cliff of super hard C -10 so continue on those should lose atleast 10-20 seconds compaired with the hard slicks.

    1. Wets & Inters are softer than slicks by design, they wouldn’t work if they were rock hard as proposed.

      1. @hollidog I meant beneath the soft wet & Inters if the tread is gone it change into a very hard slick.

  3. Lets not go back down the super, ultra, hyper route again! That was painfully stupid. If no ones going to use the wet tyre scrap it and make a new one that can be used when they have to be behind the safety car and still be fast enough to be used once that safety car pits so teams don’t have to immediately pit for inters.

    1. We still have that system the big difference is they’re just called C1/2/3/4/5 and they’re labeled/colored Soft, Medium and Hard each weekend. But the range of tires is still around the same.

  4. So on one hand we’re trying to reduce the numbers of tyres used (or not used in the case if a dry weekend). And on the other hand, Pirelli want more wet tyres?

    Maybe the answer is this newer type of intermediate should simply replace the current wets as a race option, then keep one set of full wets per car that is explicitly used for track clearing behind the SC, but can’t be used for racing.

    During such track clearing, cars are deliberately told to spread out by 5-10s, then at the end of such a SC period, they all pit, rave neutralised to fit these new intermediates, then formation lap in grid order for a rolling start.

    Better than the “start” being a pit race.

    1. Given that the current wets are only used for clearing standing water behind the safety car, this isn’t a bad call.

    2. Coventry Climax
      3rd August 2023, 13:11

      The silliness of bringing more tyres where the FIA is seeking to reduce the number, was my first thought as well.

      Another silliness is that Pirelli knows their test tracks are different from Spa, Silverstone and maybe others. Don’t these guys ever think in advance? Simulate? Or talk to the FIA about this when it’s too difficult for them otherwise?

      Lastly, your solution, Euro Brun, is one I can support. To bring new intermediate tyres for that however, probably isn’t even needed. At Spa they already ran behind the safety car until it was ready for the inters they currently have.

      I guess it depends on under which circumstances they declare the race too wet, or just wet and ready to race. For this, like I said before, don’t depend on the judgement of people, but measure it. Markers on track, and use the onboard camera’s with software to determine if the markers are visible yes or no.

      The advantage of your suggestion, is that it is easily and quickly implemented, and then they can figure out later what to do with the balance between quality of the tyres, the spray and visibility, and – bottom line- how much of full wet weather racing is still desirable (and safe). And without producing and wasting more pointless rubber that needs to be hauled across the world.

    3. + 1. A pretty good solution.

  5. No point developing any new tyre or improving the old full wet – the teams will still always change to the fastest tyre at the earliest opportunity regardless. Waiting too long just means losing time to those who pitted earlier.
    Spa was the prime example – as soon as the drivers could see (which was the point they were allowed to start racing), the current inters were totally fine. And as they don’t compete when they can’t see, there’s simply no need for any other wet weather tyre.
    Team don’t do extra pitstops for the fun of it anymore – the (strategy) computer says no.

    There’s no problem to solve in F1 that involves the wet tyres. They can’t race in the wet until they massively change the fundamental design of the cars.

  6. What’s wrong with renaming the wet weather range intermediate (current intermediate), wet (new proposed “super” intermediate) and extreme wet (current wet)?

    1. Because, technically, a new intermediate (as described) wouldn’t be a wet tyre – it would be an intermediate.
      It would use the exact same construction philosophy as the existing intermediate – ie, a dry tyre with a grooved tread pattern.
      If there’s anything to be learned from F1 over the most recent decades in particular, it’s that naming conventions are usually technically accurate – and rarely sensible.

    2. Intermediate, wet, monsoon

  7. I don’t understand. What Isola is saying is that whichever way you want to call them, if a tyre is only fit for purpose at the very end of the “wet” espectrum, which realistically we never race on anymore because of other faults with the car, then they need to scrap that and make that tyre work in a window much closer to where the inters peak performance is.

    Isn’t that like the most logical and extremely obvious thing to do? why talk about “optimal crossovers” or anything? just make a tyre that they can actually use! what’s the delay? they’ve been switching the wets for inters as soon as possible for years now, they hardly use the wets… surely you don’t need more than 10 people and tests in Fiorano to see that. Make the wet just a slightly deeper grooved inter (the super intermediate he mentions) and work from that instead of creating such a massive gap between both tyres.

    1. why talk about “optimal crossovers” or anything?

      The crossover point from Full Wet to Intermediate is the main concern with the existing wet tyre. That’s exactly what all the fuss is about.

      just make a tyre that they can actually use! what’s the delay?

      They have tyres they can use right now. They just don’t like the crossover point.

      Make the wet just a slightly deeper grooved inter

      But that isn’t the problem – and simply doing so would just lead to another (worse) problem. Aquaplaning, mainly, and secondarily not getting warm enough in wet conditions.

      And they still wouldn’t be on the track anyway, as the drivers still wouldn’t be able to see.

    2. It’s because they use the F1 cars to clear the standing water from the track. A wet tyre closer to inters wouldn’t be able to do that as well, or at all at times.

  8. Just one wet tyre, and call it Bridgestone.

    1. Which everyone would soon realise isn’t anywhere near as good as they thought it would be.

      1. I’d love to see a comparison of the 2006 Bridgestone vs. the current inter. I wouldn’t dare betting against the older product. It’s a miracle what competition can do for you. Throw a second tyre manufacture in the mix and you’ll suddenly see Pirelli building tyres that are ten seconds a lap faster.

    2. Coventry Climax
      3rd August 2023, 13:16

      ;-)
      +10!

    3. One does wonder why Pirelli seem to find everything so difficult.

  9. The wet tyres were even overheating behind the safety car.

    And Pirelli points out a sore spot. The complete and utter lack of testing.
    Which is a very ridiculous rule that has come into place. A sport you can’t practice for is not really a sport.

    1. In fact Pirelli is testing a lot. They have 20 cars that are doing hundred laps each weekend. They are alowed to test between races on tracks that can be watered. There are simulators and computers. They don’t build better tyres because r&d is expensive and without competition there’s no incentive for them to spend money

  10. Pirelli… lets have a new qualifying format so we don’t have to bring so many tyres anymore.

    Also Pirelli.. lets introduce another tyre type and fly it all over the world for it to be barely used..

    1. That’s not what he is proposing (if I read it correctly):

      “If for the future the idea is to stay with the current situation, that means if there is a lot of water on track, a red flag or Safety Car and they are not going to run because of visibility, then in my opinion the best solution is probably to develop an intermediate tyre, let’s call it super-intermediate or intermediate-plus or whatever name you want to use, that is an intermediate that is more towards wet conditions. So we can cover with one product from the limit that is acceptable for visibility to the crossover with dry conditions.

      “If the idea is to continue to look for a device that is able to reduce the spray, and therefore give them the possibility to run in full wet conditions, we have to keep the two products, stay with intermediate that we have now and the new intermediate that is running without blankets and improve the full wet tyre.

      It seems that there are two options:
      – no spray guard: develop 1 ‘wet’ tyre which is in between the current inters and wet
      – spray guard: keep the 2 tyres (inters and wet)
      Thus we might end up with 1 less tyre compound/design, rather than more (unless FIA introduces the spray guard at some circuits and not at others).

      1. Saw those spray guards, and I have to tell you they look like accidents waiting to happen. True it was a tentative first attempt, but those things hanging off the back of the wheels don’t look safe to me.

        1. Coventry Climax
          3rd August 2023, 13:22

          I think so too. They’ll get hit and fall off, create hazard (and more and more severe hazard the ‘stronger’ they make them), and hence create extra safety car periods, of which we already have more than enough.

          But I’m OK with them testing it, as long as the results are communicated transparently.

      2. The third option is for the wet tyres to be specific for doing their job. If we know that 405mm wide fat-boy tyres are great in the dry but produce enough spray to block visibility, then why not change the dimensions of the trye? It can sit on a 18″ rim like the others but maybe take it down to a 250mm spec instead. You can still have a tread block deep enough to let them race in the wet and then you can have the inter as it stands.

        I agree that the biggest challange is that Pirelli don’t get enough testing to get the product right.

        The problem has been the short-sightedness of the FIA, when they mentioned bringing in 405mm tyres and ground effects cars did no one notice that spray from water would (potentially) become an issue?

    2. I legit don’t understand why they are flying over wet tyres for the middle east races. They should only bring intermediates and clarify with the FIA that in the very unlikely event that it’s wetter than suitable for intermediates, the race would be red flagged.

  11. I think if they cannot make spray guards work properly, they should replace full wets with this super-intermediate tyre they’re proposing, maybe still call it wet, except that it will have a range closer to intermediates, suitable for a situation like canada late q2 of this year, when drivers said it was almost extreme wet conditions: in that case it wouldn’t have been possible to improve the times done on inters earlier on, but such a tyre obviously wouldn’t be that many seconds slower than intermediates, so that wouldn’t force everyone on intermediates when the track has little water on it.

    If you check suzuka 2014 for example, intermediates were pretty similar to full wets in those conditions, it’s not clear to me which was doing better, and then you have brazil 2016 where inters weren’t significantly faster and too much of a risk to crash, so basically everyone was on full wets, and this was still with pirelli, it looks like they had a closer working range before, or maybe that was because they let them race with more water on track.

    1. Coventry Climax
      3rd August 2023, 13:28

      And those cars weren’t ground effect cars, ran a different tyre size and weighed less, so took less force to get around a corner, so required less downforce so created less spray.
      It’s all part of the vicious circle called FIA.

      1. I never really understood why they increased the size and weight of the tyres. Just for marketing purposes it seems and now it’s resulting in more problems for the race tyres.

        1. typical whack-a-mole situation ;)

        2. Coventry Climax
          3rd August 2023, 17:41

          Road relevance I believe it was. So, looks. Or Volkswagen setting a condition for joining F1.
          Therefor, it won’t be long before an F1 car is equipped with a tow hook, caravan, roof rack, park assist, lane assist, rear view cam, collision alert, central locking, climate control (silly name), entertainment system, central lock, navigation, heated seats etc. Don’t however expect general public road cars to ever feature ceramic or carbon brakes, inboard dampers, brake balance adjust, diff adjust, and a million more. Road relevance: Just a hoax. Road maybe, but certainly not relevance.
          Remember how all of a sudden all road cars featured fake diffusers? While having underside airflow disrupted by fixed rear axles and diffs, cables, dampers and whatnot. Ridiculous. Similar to painting a stripe on it and call it a sports pack.

          Anyway, there is an advantage to having larger rims though, and a lower sidewall; the old tyres, with the high sidewall, were considered part of the suspension, therefore deformed on bumps, but also in corners and they often created the oscilation that especially the slo-mo cameras had the hots for. Engineering wise, it’s better to have all that travel and motion within the real suspension, as that is easier to design and allows for better control.
          Unfortunately, they also made the diameter of the tyres larger, which some drivers were heard complaining about limiting their view, also on the apex’ of curves.

          So, not sure if the tyres actually weigh more now, although Pirelli has also made them stronger a couple of times, which means more material, but the combination of rim and tyre, together with the lovely Hyundai Pony style wheel covers they use these days, have made the wheels heavier.

          1. Don’t however expect general public road cars to ever feature ceramic or carbon brakes, inboard dampers, brake balance adjust, diff adjust, and a million more. Road relevance: Just a hoax. Road maybe, but certainly not relevance.

            Ceramic brakes are an option on several road cars and have been for more than a decade. Brake balance is automatically adjusted via EBD/stability control systems (and can be done manually to a degree, with specific brake pad choices), and most real 4WD’s do have user-adjustable diff settings/presets (as did Mitsubishi’s lovely Evo Lancer for quite a while).
            However, the reason other cars don’t have these (or offer them as standard kit now) is simply cost.
            It’s not that those systems aren’t relevant, but they are simply too expensive for most consumers.

            Those ‘fake diffusers’ do often actually affect airflow coming off the back of the car to reduce drag.

  12. I think this is one of the possible reasons to kick Pirelli out of the sport. Incompetent wet weather tyres.

    1. Funny rumours while Bridgestone put down a very good offer the FIA is going to choose Pirelli as they worked so fine with them………… (this is more then a rumour but i forgot who said this)

  13. As others have said, the obvious answer is to develop a new intermediate plus tyre which is closer in performance to the current inters than the current ‘wet’ tyre. Then to use this when it is too wet for the current inters.

    They could keep sets of the current ‘wet’ for track clearing in extreme conditions. But the regular option for wet races would be the new intermediate plus.

    I think F1 would be better off instructing Pirelli to do this and spending the money there. Rather than these proposed spray guards which seem quite dangerous to me and will only cause different types of problem e.g. not being set correctly or falling off and creating a hazard.

  14. I won’t take what the drivers say that much into account. Wets are slow, and that’s fine, they are slow because they are used under bad conditions, not because they are inherently slow.

    The issue with not using the blue tires is that FIA simply don’t let them run in wet conditions. When FIA allows them to run, of course the wet tires are not good, that’s simply because they waited for better conditions.

  15. In general Monaco is a low-severity circuit, Fiorano is a low-severity circuit, Paul Ricard … is another low-severity circuit. … But when you run on a real fast and high-severity circuit like Spa and maybe also Silverstone, then it lacks performance.

    The normal approach to testing is to devise a test which puts the object being tested under the worst conditions likely to be encountered, and to see how it performs. If it passes the extreme tests then it is generally considered to be suitable for more normal circumstances. We now discover F1’s tyres are being tested at circuits that don’t cover the full range of conditions likely to be encountered during a season. I suspect this was common knowledge within F1 circles, which leaves us wondering why something wasn’t done sooner.
    What needs to happen is Spa should become one of the test circuits, or if that isn’t practical, then a test circuit chosen which offers the same or slightly more severity than Spa, to test tyres on.

  16. Neil (@neilosjames)
    3rd August 2023, 21:11

    I started writing a comment after the criticism of the Pirelli wets at the weekend, saying they needed a third tyre between inter and wet because the purposes of the two existing ‘rain’ tyres are too far apart to make them sensibly cross over. The wet is designed for conditions they never seem to race in these days (but which F1 insists on having tyres for), while the inter is a designed to suit a far lower level of wetness. If they only have two rain tyres, and one of them has to be a water-clearing monster for use in ridiculously wet, non-racing conditions behind the Safety Car, that only leaves them with one racing-capable tyre, the inter. So a third one in the middle would make sense.

    Then I deleted it and went to do something else, because the idea seemed utterly absurd given that reducing tyre waste is the current low-hanging fruit of choice for a sport trying to look all environmentally friendly and green. It was so silly it was entirely unthinkable, and I felt a bit daft having written it.

    Maybe not.

  17. The prominence of tyres now is beyond tiring & is now ridiculous!

  18. My opinion, since a few years back now, is to keep inters and wets – but shift them quite heavily closer to the dry range. So my new “wet” tire would be somewhere around 20%-ish more wet than the current inter. And my new inter would be in-between that new wet and a slick. If there’s more water on the track, they simply won’t race anyway because of visibility. And I have very low expectations for the spray guard bodywork they are trying to develop, I can’t see that ever working well enough, because of physics.
    My new inter would cover truly damp conditions, when the track is just “greasy” or simply too cold for slicks to generate enough working temperature. The new wet would handle enough water for a bit of rain. But probably not standing water, but at that point it doesn’t matter – because of visibility.
    There is absolutely no need for a third tire. That would be an absolute waste of resources.

  19. This may be a silly question, but what if the wet weather tyres were, say, 4cm bigger diameter than the dry tyres, which would increase ground clearance by 2cm, and reduce aquaplaning. Sure, the cars would have to go a lot slower, but wouldn’t that enable them to race in much wetter conditions than at present? I think you’d have to legislate that teams couldn’t change ride height during the race, and perhaps also require a set tyre pressure to prevent teams underinflating them to reduce ride height that way.

    Is it also possible for a wet tyre to be designed to clear the water in a more sideways trajectory, instead of as a rooster tail, to improve visibility for the car behind?

    Noting comments above about FIA needing to mandate cars run the wet weather tyre, and the possible benefit it gives to cars nearest the pit entrance, suppose they were on lap 18 and the track looked safe enough, they could send out the message that cars which have completed 19 laps on wets may change tyres for lap 20 onwards.

    1. The current wets and inters do have larger circumferences than slicks for the exact reason you describe.
      Drivers should just drive slower when the conditions call for it – but despite it being the same situation for everyone, they simply don’t want to go slower, so they complain about the tyres instead.
      Teams can’t change ride height during the race anymore, and all tyre pressures are controlled by the FIA at all times with very strict minimums.

      Wet tyres do throw water to the sides as much as is practical, but the speed of movement and aerodynamic flow around the cars tends to focus the spray mostly back to the centre. Neither is an ideal scenario anyway, as the more spray there is in the air, the more visibility is an issue. In some ways, focusing spray into the smallest area possible is actually better than spreading it further out.

      1. S, thank you for the clarifications. Always good to hear informed comment.

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