F1 drivers renew calls for improvements to 'really bad' wet tyre

Pirelli was given a mouthful by drivers after Saturday's sprint event at Spa, with the latter criticizing once again the performance of the supplier's extreme wet tyre which GPDA director George Russell labeled as "pretty pointless" and "really bad".

Spa's manic weather on Friday and Saturday saw Pirelli roll out its grooved tyres in almost every session.

But the deluge that preceded Saturday's Sprint event forced the field to start the shortened  race behind the Safety Car and on the blue-rimmed full wet rubber.

However, the latter was ditched in short order by the entire field, with half of the runners switching to Inters at the outset when the Safety Car unleashed the pack, and the other half undertaking the change after the opening racing lap in a bid to encounter a less congested pitlane.

• Read also: Alonso explains cause of spin in Spa sprint race

Regardless of the timing, the move, which was also largely justified by improving track conditions, was a clear indictment of Pirelli's full wet tyre.

"Even behind the Safety Car they were overheating," noted Fernand Alonso.

Charles Leclerc agreed that improvements must be made, if only to make the wets the tyre of choice when it rains, which isn't currently the case as drivers prefer Inters even in very damp conditions.

"There’s some work that needs to be done there because we’ve got extreme [wet] tyres that are really slow, but are really good for aquaplaning," commented the Ferrari charger.

But we never drive in those conditions because of visibility, so whenever it’s driveable we need to go on inters.

"It’s quite tricky at the moment. I think the extreme should be faster and closer to the inters, so we run more on the extreme than the inters."

Russell took the drivers' criticism to the next level.

"The extreme [wet] tyre is a pretty pointless tyre," he said. "It’s really, really bad. It’s probably six, seven seconds a lap slower than the intermediate.

"The only reason you’d ever want the extreme wet is because you’re going to aquaplane on an intermediate, so that needs to be substantially improved.

"The aquaplaning with fairly little water is really substantial. I remember watching the old onboard videos of 2007 with [Felipe] Massa and [Robert] Kubica at Fuji [during the Japanese Grand Prix]. There was so much water but they were still pushing flat out.

"I remember doing test days here in Formula 3 and Formula Renault on Michelin, Hankook and aquaplaning wasn’t really a thing.

"I appreciate we’re doing well over 200mph and it’s not straightforward. But there needs to be some significant improvements."

Last year, Pirelli invested in the development of a better extreme wet tyre. But motorsport boss Mario Isola acknowledged that more improvements are necessary.

"We should work on the wet for the future in order to improve the performance further," he said on Friday evening at Spa.

"We already found an improvement with this wet compared to the old one, but we still miss a little bit of performance to have the right crossover with the intermediate.

"The circuit is so long that you have sectors or corners with different levels of water," he said, quoted by The Race, referring to Spa's specific challenges.

"You have some rivers because here it’s all uphill, downhill and there are very few places where you have proper standing water in this condition.

"If you can go through the rivers, then it’s better to use the intermediate because the performance is better.

"We’re now collecting all this data to analyse because it’s useful for us to understand how the two different tyres work for developing the tyres in the future."

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