F1: Barcelona track being soaked for afternoon wet tire test

During the lunch break Friday in Barcelona, water trucks are soaking the track so teams can test Pirellis new wet F1 tires for 2022.

“We want to test the wet and intermediate tire before the start of the season because the changes were so big that it’s not clever to start the season without any testing on them – although we tested them with the mule cars,” said Pirelli motorsport chief Mario Isola (pictured above) told the assembled media.

“Consider also that now we will have the small deflector on the front tires that are very close to the tire and the wet tire, for example, the diameter is 10 millimeters bigger than the slick.

“We need to be sure that we don’t have any contact between the deflector and the tire, so there is not any unexpected issue that it was impossible to predict with the new cars. That’s why we want to test in wet conditions.”

“We have organized with the track to have a high number of tankers to try to replicate a full wet condition,” said Isola.

“We will use all the hour of the lunch break to wet the track; the idea is they start in full wet conditions, so they can test the wet tire, then obviously, with 10 cars on track, you will dry the line.

“And they have also the opportunity to better understand the crossover between the wet and intermediate. They’ll test the intermediate and then, hopefully late enough in the afternoon depending on how quick the track is drying, to test also the crossover between the intermediate and the slick.

“That is the general idea of the wet test this afternoon. We are not imposing any run plan. It’s up to the teams to decide what to do.

“I think it’s useful for us, but it’s useful for them to understand how the wet tires are working.

“Maybe we don’t have wet conditions in Bahrain or Saudi, but for the rest of the year, we will have races in wet conditions. So, it’s good to get some data on that.”