Pirelli focused on wet weather improvement in 2017

Pirelli is working on improving their wet weather compound for 2017, following criticism from many drivers.

When the heavens opened if often brought frustration to fans and drivers alike in 2016 with safety car starts in Monaco, Silverstone and Brazil. The main reason for that was deemed the extreme wet tyres which drivers didn’t trust in to provide the necessary grip.

Pirelli boss Paul Hembery stopped short of saying there was a problem with the 2016 compound but admitted more can be done.

For 2017, however, it hasn’t been as simple as improving the blue rimmed tyres drivers used in 2016. The new, wider tyres that will be used next season provide more problems Pirelli will have to overcome, as well as those that already existed.

“They’re much wider, so just to get the water evacuation to [2016] levels, for aquaplaning, has already been a challenge, which we believe we’ve achieved,” Hembery explained in an interview with GPUpdate.net.

“It’s an area we need to probably still do some work in, based on what’s changed over the last period of time, the standing starts and more running behind the safety car in the rain.

“Next year, we’re going to be throwing a lot of water up in the air with the tyres – we’re going to get 25% more water per tyre, which is a lot,” Hembery continued.

“The main area is to get the performance of the wet tyre improved, the warm-up, which will take it away from working in the dry, so it’s likely to be a tyre that you want to go off when it dries out.”

That would mean we would see a lot more use of the intermediate tyres next season, which Hembery says the drivers are happy with.

With all the variables surrounding wet weather tyres, especially with the compounds drastically changing next season, testing is essential, but not always possible.

“There are also very few possibilities for us to go wet tyre testing. All of the circuits are different, while the same circuit, on a day-to-day basis, can also be different,” he explained.

With so much criticism on the 2016 wet weather tyre, drivers will be happy to hear Pirelli are focusing on next season’s replacement, but we’ll have to wait and see if the tyre lives up to Hembery’s claims of improvement.