Pirelli developing new wet tyre it'll need permission to introduce

F1's tyre supplier held two dedicated wet tests in 2017, with Red Bull running at Paul Ricard in June, and McLaren at Magny-Cours in July.

Currently, rules prevent the official tyre supplier from modifying its products after the start of the season, but Pirelli is hoping the FIA will grant special permission for the new wet to be introduced during the year.

Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola confirmed that any 2018 tyre will need to be homologated by December 1 but he hopes the FIA will allow a delayed introduction if it proves to be better.

"We are developing a new wet tyre,"he said.

"We did a few tests this year, but we need to make some further development before changing the current one.

"So, we have some ideas we are testing - more than testing, we are making some simulations.

"If we find a wet-weather tyre that is a big improvement compared to the current one, I would ask Charlie [Whiting, Formula 1 race director] to consider the introduction of a new wet tyre during the season.

"For me it's nonsense that if you have a better product available for the wet, where it's a matter of safety and so on, why we shouldn't introduce it, considering that at the end of the day all the teams have the same problem? We're not making a special tyre for anybody.

"I can understand the rule on the dry tyre, because you can change the balance inside the championship, you can give an advantage to one team or the other.

"But we are talking about wet tyres or intermediates, which we don't use very often during the season.

"If we have a real improvement we should ask, at least, and then we'll see what happens."

Pirelli triallied a prototype intermediate tyre in FP1 at the United States Grand Prix last month, although the track dried quickly.

The company was hoping to get more running with it in Brazil, and prototypes were mounted for all cars in anticipation of rain, but Friday running was held in dry - so the tyres had to be scrapped.

"We were able to test the new intermediates in Austin," said Isola. "It's a softer compound, but same construction.

"The result was in line with our expectations - warm-up was better, grip was better, but the result is that the compound is much softer than we were expecting.

"The gap between the current intermediate and the prototype is bigger than what we expected."