Max Verstappen has offered to take part in wet tire testing if he can help Pirelli develop better tires for wet weather.
The postponement of Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix has reopened debate over whether F1 needs to rethink its cars to better cope with bad weather.
The most important aspect of wet weather safety is making sure the tires can handle excess water on the track and there is no risk of aquaplaning.
However, there is a difference between Pirelli’s current wet-weather tires, with intermediate tires performing significantly better in a wider range of track conditions than full-wet tires.
After the rain-hit Suzuka circuit, Max Verstappen said he would like to work with Pirelli to try new ideas to improve things.
“I don’t want to put people down, but I think we need better rain tires,” said Verstappen.
“I’ll be happy to try different types of tires over the next few days of testing, but the Extreme is just slow and doesn’t really spit out much water, so we need a better rain tire.”
“That’s why everyone always swaps to the intermediate right away because it’s so quick lap after lap.”
“As you can see lap by lap, today we went from the extreme to the inter and immediately we were at least five seconds faster.
Due to the contrast between intermediate and extreme wet performance, most drivers chose to start the first F1 Japanese GP at Inter before the red flag came out.
Max Verstappen believes that even the current extreme might not have been able to handle Japan’s worst weather, but he believes the tires in the past have been excellent and have been able to do so.
“I think it’s really difficult to drive even with extreme tyres, when it rains like when the red flag comes out,” said Verstappen.
“But compared to 20 years ago, there were no problems at all, so there must be a solution.”
“But this is not a criticism. I am happy to help. We need to look into it.”
“Maybe we can organize and cooperate with more test days in the wet. Usually wet races are called wet races because they are run in heavy rain, so we always do two extreme laps. So, not to switch to intermediates, but to find better tires so that at least we have a chance to run in the wet.”
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc believes checking how much water his current tires spit is one of the key aspects needed.
“I think the big problem with these cars is just visibility,” said Leclerc. .
“Anything we can do to improve visibility, especially behind the car, and to minimize the splash is very beneficial.”
“I think depending on the track conditions you can actually run Ukedo, but just because of the poor visibility it’s very dangerous to be behind and you can’t run at all because you can’t see anything.”
“For some reason you have to try to find a solution to minimize the splash.”
Category: F1 / Max Verstappen / red bull / Pirelli