Pirelli F1, Sebastian Vettel refutes criticism of wet tires[F1-Gate .com]

Pirelli’s F1 chief argued against Sebastian Vettel’s criticism of wet tires after the Monaco Grand Prix.

Due to the rain before the final, all drivers started with full wet tires at the Monaco Grand Prix, but everyone was waiting for the earliest opportunity to change to intermediate tires.

AlphaTauri F1 Pierre Guthrie first exchanged for Intermediate. The first few laps had a hard time gripping, but most of the rest of the field after that pitted in to replace it with an intermediate, proving that Guthrie’s decision was ultimately correct.

Four-time F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel said full-wet tires were “basically useless” and wanted to replace them quickly with intermediates.

“If you can run at the Inter, do it right away,” Sebastian Vettel told motorsport-magazin.com.

“Rain tires were too hard for this truck, and Imola was too hard.”

“We know that in the rain, many hydroplaning phenomena occur in today’s cars. Pirelli hasn’t worked on this subject for years and everyone knows it, so we’re raining. I had to wait to start the race until it stopped. “

“I remember the days when I was able to drive here in the rain without problems with this amount of water, but not with these tires.”

“When you look at the tires, it looks like” extreme wet “, but it doesn’t really help. If you can do it for the intermediate, I’ll do it right away.”

However, he disagreed with Sebastian Vettel’s assessment of Pirelli’s F1 director Mario Isola, claiming that wet and intermediate tires are similar in hardness. He also said the results of the shells’ tests showed that in the 2022 season the new 18-inch tires are similar to last year’s 13-inch tires.

“Regen compounds are different from intermediates, but not so stiff,” Mario Isola said.

“Past tests have shown that the tires have the same characteristics as last year. We wanted to keep the crossover time at the same level as last year.”

Mario Isola said it was related to the asphalt of the street circuit used as a public road, as to why Monaco made a difference in contrast to other trucks.

“I think the crossover time between wet tires and intermediates here in Monaco was quite different from other tracks,” said Mario Isola.

“We were testing wet and inter at temperatures even lower than these conditions.”

“It was mainly due to the type of asphalt. It’s a street circuit using real public road asphalt. Therefore, the roughness is much lower than truck asphalt and therefore the grip of rain tires is much less.”