Max Verstappen promised to assist Pirelli in testing F1 tires for wet conditions in order to develop stronger extreme wet tyres.
This comes after both the Singapore and the Japanese Grand Prix saw delayed starts due to bad weather, specifically rain. Teams decided against utilizing the extreme wet tires and waited until the weather was suitable to utilize the intermediate tyres.
The wets are designed to handle aquaplaning better than the inters, although they perform noticeably worse than the inters. Verstappen discussed the extreme wet conditions and his willingness to assist Pirelli after the Japanese GP.
“I didn’t want to take a dig out of everyone but I think we need better rain tyres. If you saw what we could do in the ‘90s or the early 2000s, with the amount of water on the track,” the recently crowned 2022 Formula 1 World Champion said.
“I’m very happy to have a few test days and try all different kinds of tyres but we need better rain tyres because I think the extremes are just slow and they can’t really carry a lot of water away.”
“That’s why everyone always tries to switch very quickly to an intermediate because it’s just so much faster per lap.”
“You could see from one to the other lap, we went from the extreme to the inter today and we immediately went five seconds at least faster and that is just too big and that’s why nobody really wants to run that extreme.”
According to Verstappen, teams at Suzuka could not have driven around the circuit more safely even if they had chosen the extreme wets. That wasn’t the case with the wet tires compared to 20 years ago. The Dutchman aims to assist return tires to their historical performance levels where they excelled in rainy conditions.
“When it rained like it did when the red flag came out, and you would have put extreme tyres on, I think it would still be really difficult to drive,” Vestappen added. “But then if you compare that to 20 years ago, that would have been perfectly fine.”
“So there must be a solution. But this is not criticism because I’m very happy to help out. We should look into it.”
“Maybe we can just organise more tests days in the wet and work together, to try and find better tyres to at least have an opportunity to really drive in the wet and not always only drive like two laps on an extreme, switch to intermediate and call it a wet race because a wet race is also normally driven with heavy rain.”
