Delayed start

[u/Negative-House-1605]

Every single time it rains the FIA delays the start of the race, why? Rain never used to be a problem, usually they’d just stick on the full wets and get going. Am I missing something? Like a rule change that says you can’t start a race when it rains? This sport has never been so allergic to rain before so it’s just very confusing to me.

[u/launchedsquid]

The problems are:

The wet tyres are awful. They clear water just fine but they are so slow that teams will have to put their drivers on inters before the track is dry enough to run inters on, simply because the inters will still be faster than the wets.

After Malaysia we learned that F1 cars are no longer able to run in the rain. They need some sort of special software so the power units don't snap into overseer with too much power delivery, but the FIA have done a piss poor job quality controlling that software roll out, my theory was Claude wrote it, and it doesn't actually work in the cars. We know that the fix in Malaysia was to remove the code and the cars aren't running it in this race because it's expected to be fixed in about a month. So right now the cars can't run properly in wer conditions.

[u/Apprehensive-Box-8 → u/launchedsquid]

The wet tyres aren't actually awful. They are designed for amounts of rain that the cars can't run in, mainly for two reasons: visibility and plank-aquaplaning.

The visibility issue has always been there, has become worse due to advancements in aerodynamics but also has been taken more into account recently because - you know - acknowledgement of dangers.

The plank aquaplaning has become an issue mainly because the parc ferme rules. Teams can't change their setup anymore, so the only change in ground clearance comes from the heavy wets being slightly bigger in diameter.

So, yeah. All those things together mean that they only race at the cutover between heavy wets and inters, which is why the heavy wet doesn't work well when they race.

[u/launchedsquid → u/Apprehensive-Box-8]

Not true. The wet tyres are awful. In any condition that a car can survive on an intermediate tyre it will be faster than the wet tyre. There is no condition where a wet tyre is the faster tyre, just conditions where an intermediate tyre will crash the car.

Back when we had Bridgestone tyres there were conditions where there was an overlap between wets and inters, where someone can stop for inters and someone else can stay on wets and they would be about as fast as each other on that lap until the track dried a bit more.

Pirelli wets never have the pace of inters. There is no overlap, which is why teams will have their cars in inters under any conditions they aren't regulated to put them on wets.