How to relieve Formula 1’s extreme wet-weather caution

An unwelcome hat-trick for Formula 1 in 2022 was completed last weekend. The Japanese Grand Prix adds to the races in Monaco and Singapore where this season alone, the pinnacle of motorsport has been made to look flat-footed and excessively cautious in the way it dealt with wet weather.

Where previously a cloud burst presented a chance for drivers to deliver a hallowed virtuoso performance in a dramatic and unpredictable bout, now it seems there’s a greater chance of a delayed start, safety cars and red flags. Or perhaps no race at all.

Modern F1 often falls short in the eyes of those wearing rose-tinted spectacles - the ‘better back then’ crowd. But when it comes to dealing with adverse conditions, certainly there’s a case that the topflight has taken a retrograde step over time. As Max Verstappen alluded to at Suzuka, it’s hard to imagine that such slam-dunk classics as the 1996 Spanish GP or the 2008 British GP would run uninterrupted today. Let alone the famous 1976 Niki Lauda-James Hunt title decider at Fuji.

After events at Suzuka ran into the three-hour time limit following a 127-minute pause between the red flag and racing resuming, Verstappen said: “When it rained like it did [in Japan] when the red flag came out and you would have put extreme tyres on, I think it would still be really difficult to drive. But then if you compare that to 20 years ago, that would have been perfectly fine. So, there must be a solution.”

Top 10: Ranking F1's greatest wet-weather drives

Of course, F1 can’t play God and control the weather. Nor should it run in the rain without fail, because that would be to treat low-grip conditions with reckless abandon. But what can it realistically do to avoid major delays and the increasing trend of the full-wet Pirelli tyres being bypassed almost immediately in favour of intermediates?

Where coastal circuit Suzuka is concerned, the events of 2014 and now 2022 must surely lead to moving away from an October race date. Granted, as the calendar for next season proves, it’s extremely hard for some locations to budge on their slot in the schedule.

But by visiting the Japanese region at the tail end of its typhoon season, the championship is asking for trouble. Previous calls for an April weekend need to be revisited hastily, otherwise the long delays and poor show can only be viewed as the series getting what it deserves.

The time has now surely come for the Japanese GP's date to be moved forwards in the year to avoid typhoon season

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

There are much bigger brush strokes, though, that can help address all wet-weather races. The first port of call must be improving the tyres. As a result of the drive to create the fastest breed of F1 car, from 2017 the rear rubber grew massively from 380mm to the fat 405mm tread width we have now. That means a bigger surface area to catch standing water and aquaplane, as per Carlos Sainz last weekend. Since many now also bemoan the porky new 798kg ground-effect cars, the time has surely come to revert to smaller rubber for better behaviour in the wet with the byproduct of reduced strain on the scales.

A solution to the spray and poor visibility is less obvious. That is, if F1 is to retain the sanctity of open-wheel racers (despite the Mercedes W196 ‘Streamliner’ Stromlinienwagen winning three GPs), then wheel covers and rain guards probably have to be left on the drawing board.

The inherent obstacle is that the better the tyres are at clearing water, the bigger the rooster tails they create to impair the vision of the chasing cars. Visibility, more than grip, is the problem. That has created a headache right the way through the past three decades that Verstappen has in mind. Sight lines might have become worse, but it's not a new issue - see Michael Schumacher careering into David Coulthard at Spa in 1998. Revisiting narrow tyres would help here to a degree also.

In cases such as Monaco or Singapore when the GP start is delayed, to hurry things along, for the sake of the millions watching at home, we can skip the parade of VIPs allowed onto the grid

Nevertheless, visibility is where Verstappen’s call for a return to the standards of the Nineties and Noughties somewhat falls over. Some of the current caution can simply be attributed to changing attitudes to safety.

This writer has always taken umbrage with those that say F1 is too safe. In every scenario, it’s better to be writing opinion pieces on conservative approaches to rain than it is news stories of major crashes and injury. As such, if there must be reduced running in inclement conditions then so be it. But still, there seems to be plenty of scope for improvement before we get to that point.

A more obvious way in is that the traits of the extreme wet tyre need to be refined. Verstappen, who starred in the sodden 2016 Brazilian GP, has offered his services to manufacturer Pirelli. The Red Bull driver said: “I'm very happy to help out. Maybe we can just organise more tests days in the wet and work together to try and find better tyres.”

If the extreme wet compound is made better at clearing water and, crucially, isn’t quite so much slower than the inter as it is at present - a trait that prompts teams to switch to the green-walled rubber sooner to leave many asking why racing couldn’t have started earlier - perhaps F1 can find its feet in the damp once again.

Teams were tripping over themselves to get rid of the ineffective extreme wets as quickly as possible at Suzuka

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Another factor in the quick crossover, it seems, is the elongated start procedure that commences 40 minutes before the formation lap. As advanced as forecasting systems are, there’s an understandable reluctance to give the green light until conditions are suitable for racing. That’s safer than taking the weather radar as gospel to effectively make an educated guess about when the event can begin to pre-emptively have cars ready to form on the grid.

The long start procedure eats into the period of when extreme wets might be used before the move to inters. In cases such as Monaco or Singapore when the GP start is delayed, to hurry things along, for the sake of the millions watching at home, we can skip the parade of VIPs allowed onto the grid. Even if some guests have the power to approve lucrative deals for F1, perhaps they can be invited back another day to cut down on the lengthy build-up that robs time from the wet running.

There will of course be the freak occurrences, such as the 2021 Belgian GP, where racing looks wholly unrealistic regardless of the tyre spec and duration of the start procedure. However, when it comes typical wet-weather days, there’s plenty of capacity for F1 to up its game. This doesn’t have to come at the expense of safety, just a greater scope for what is acceptable as a wet race so that by the time the cars are rolling, the track doesn’t look dry and inters are the go-to tyre.

F1 has scope to up its game so that wet weather running isn't bypassed until conditions become appropriate for inters

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images