ROUND 14: ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ช Belgium


FORMULA 1 ROLEX BELGIAN GRAND PRIX 2024


Circuit stats


  • Circuit name: Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
  • First Grand Prix: 1950
  • Number of laps: 44
  • Circuit Length: 7.004 km
  • Race Distance: 308.052 km
  • Lap record: 1:46.286 Valtteri Bottas (2018)
  • 2023 winner: Max Verstappen

Track Map


4 points

Could someone help me since Iโ€™m a newish fan? They never seem to actually use the wet tire. It goes Dry -> Inters -> Red flag.

Why is that?

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5 points
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You got some answers about visibility and safety, but let me add some details about the tires.

Wet tires are meant for conditions where itโ€™s absolutely pouring down. They can disperse 85 liters (~22 gallons) of water at 300 km/h (~186 m/h) per second per tyre. Thatโ€™s a crazy amount of water, and conditions arenโ€™t bad enough usually to warrant this.

And then if it is warranted, you can ask yourself whether itโ€™s still safe due to visibility and low grip due to cold tyres.

Intermediates can displace about half of the water at 300 km/h per tyre, and this covers it most of the times.

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3 points
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Thanks everyone! Kinda nice to ask a question somewhere online and get a nice reasonable answer without being torn apart. ๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿป

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4 points

This is only guess and speculation

  1. visibility. When its wet enough for the full wets, the drivers canโ€™t see well enough to be safe. They are not going to slow down just because they canโ€™t see.
  2. general safety. When it is wet enough for full wets, the cars are so low they can still easily aquaplane unexpectedly.
  3. the show. If its wet enough for full wets, theyโ€™re going to be fighting more with the car than each other and the spray will make the cars hard to see.
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2 points

Visibility is the main reason. These ground effect cars create huge rooster tails in wet conditions which completely ruins visibility. Combine that with a wet tyre that has a very narrow operating window (something Pirelli has been criticized for over the past few years) and youโ€™ll get the situation you describe: the window where the full wets are actually faster but itโ€™s still raceable is vanishingly small.

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1 point

Mostly itโ€™s down to stubbornness. But under the guise of visibility. As Martin Brundle once said, they could always just go slower if they canโ€™t see. But thatโ€™s not how racing drivers are built it seems. So they all go flat out in the wet, complain that they canโ€™t see shit and then the officials red flag.

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1 point

Going too slow (currently) doesnโ€™t heat up the tyre enough to get grippy, so that would just cause a literal slide-show.

You can point to Pirelli for that one, but it doesnโ€™t change the current situation

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Does Checo actually want the seat after all? He appears to have found a bit of form.

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