Pirelli are working on new intermediate and full wet tyres

Rain races have always been a part of Formula 1. When the heavens open, it provides a spectacle. Formula 1's tyre supplier, Pirelli, is working hard to improve its wet-weather tyres in the coming years. Mario Isola explains in an exclusive interview with GPblog.com.

Pirelli has been supplying tyres to Formula 1 teams since 2011. Most of the time, the Italian manufacturer's dry-weather tyres are used, but for wet conditions, Pirelli has two options: intermediates and full wets. For the near future, Pirelli is working hard to get these tyres even better to race better in those conditions.

''We are working to develop both the products with two different targets. For the extreme wet, we want to improve the performance, especially on the high-severity circuits. The most difficult part of our job is to develop the extreme wet tyres or the intermediate tyres on high-severity circuits because, unfortunately, we can’t test in controlled conditions. With the sprinklers wetting the track, only in Paul Ricard, the short circuit, and in Fiorano. And both those circuits are low-severity circuits.

''We can understand the warm-up, we can understand if the tyres are working well in low severity circuits, but then when you move to a high severity circuit with extreme wet, we realise that, for example, we overheat the tyres easily because of the energy that you put into the tyre and the heat generation that you have into the tyre.

''For the intermediate tyre, the situation is different. We have a good tyre; we don't need to change it because of performance improvement or something like that, but the target is still to supply an intermediate tyre able to work without blankets. So you remember that maybe some time ago, the target was to remove blankets for all different products. We did it with the extreme wet. We are still working on the intermediate.

''For the moment, it has been decided not to change the situation on the slicks, also because in 2026, we have a complete change in regulation. We have to design a new product, we have to design a smaller tyre, able to work on a car with similar performance compared to the current cars. That's why we still have the blankets on the slicks. But for the intermediate, we would like to remove them.''

Apart from improved full wets and intermediates, Mario Isola also sees another solution to improve future racing in the rain. In recent seasons, there has been a lot of testing with mudguards. Isola, however, thinks adjustments can also be made to the tyre itself.

''If you talk about the tread pattern, we had discussions in the past about the opportunity to supply only one tread pattern for wet conditions, a sort of, let's call it super intermediate tyre or something like that. That means an intermediate tyre able to work with more water on track, so with a better aquaplaning resistance, because we know that in heavy rain conditions, the biggest issue is visibility. Visibility is very poor. It's not just because of the tyres that are spraying water in the air, but also the diffuser.

''But the reality is that safety is important. To guarantee safety, the race director has to red flag the session in case of heavy rain or standing water on track. So one idea was to move to a single tread pattern, but we still have, and we discussed that obviously with all the stakeholders, and it was decided to stay with two different tread patterns, the intermediate and the full wet.''

For the upcoming United States Grand Prix, it's set to be mostly sunny in Austin. Therefore, it's unlikely we see the intermediates or wets this weekend. At the Brazilian Grand Prix next weekend, though, there is historically a good chance of rain during that weekend.

This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon

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