The start of the Saturday sprint event at Spa was delayed by rain, and when it eventually got underway the cars ran on full wet tyres behind the safety car – as mandated by the rules – before the field was released.
Half the cars then came straight in for intermediates, with the rest following suit at the end of the first flying lap. It was only double stacking and pitlane traffic considerations that stopped everyone from coming in straight away.
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Drivers were quick to point out afterwards that the full wet tyre is “pointless”, as GPDA director George Russell described it, with Spa demonstrating once again the catch-22 is that if it’s raining hard enough for the wet to be required, then visibility issues mean that the cars cannot run at racing speeds.
The discussion prompted Pirelli to tout an idea it had been pondering for a while of ditching the full wet and instead having a single "super intermediate" that would work across all wet conditions - in effect allowing drivers to go from safety car running to racing with the same tyre.
Over its stint in the sport, Pirelli has been obliged to put a huge effort into wets and intermediates. One useful recent development has been the move to blanket-free wets, first raced in Monaco, and which will be joined by intermediates in 2024.
"I believe that we have to first of all to divide two problems,” said Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola. “One is the performance of the wet. One is the visibility. Performance-wise, what I can tell you is that when we were developing the [blanket-free] tyres, we found a result in terms of performance that was much, much better than the old wet tyre.
“It's not enough, maybe, but we did a step. In Fiorano and Paul Ricard, we found them [to be] five, six seconds quicker than the old wet, in cold conditions, because the main issue was to understand if without blankets they were struggling with the warm-up.
Source: Autosport