Rusujuur wrote:I have a feeling the wets have an extremely small operating window. From last year and also today you can see drivers complaining it is too wet and then suddenly go intermediate just a few laps after that even though it is still almost as wet as before. Is the tread too small or is the tyre too hard/soft i have no idea, but they could at least try to improve things.
Or could it be, that the current formula just isn't capable of driving in the wet as well as before. It could be aero related or driver positioning. I remember seeing a video that showed the drivers point of view and you could hardly see anything at all. Maybe the spray is taking that small bit away and before the drivers were somehow better (Higher?) situated in chassis.
I believe that Hembery has admitted that Pirelli's intermediate tyre definitely has a smaller operating window than the Bridgestone intermediate that came before it (the Bridgestone intermediates could operate in both wetter and drier conditions that Pirelli's tyres currently can). As to the question of the difference between the two tyres, on their website Pirelli mention that they have altered the construction of the wet tyres so they are closer to the intermediate tyres, which might explain why the difference in performance between the two tyres has narrowed.
From what I can recall, Pirelli's wet tyres also displace slightly less water than the Bridgestone tyres could - according to Pirelli, the wet tyres can disperse around 60 litres a second at high speed (the intermediates disperse 20 litres a second at the same speed), whilst off the top of my head I believe that Bridgestone were quoting figures closer to 80 litres a second for the full wet tyres under similar conditions.
Overall, I think, but may be mistaken, that the tread depth was slightly greater on the Bridgestone wet tyres and the design of the tread pattern itself was also somewhat different, enabling it to be used in more severe weather conditions. After all, the conditions today seemed to be more moderate than, for example, the 2007 Japanese GP, 2008 Italian GP or the 2009 Chinese GP's, so perhaps there is a question over the effectiveness of Pirelli's wet weather tyres.
