Pirelli delighted with the performance of its wet-weather tyres

Following the tough Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Formula One's sole tyre supplier Pirelli has been delighted by the performance with its intermediate and wet-weather tyres in treacherous conditions.

After thunder and lightning hit the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace ahead of the start of qualifying, Formula One was forced to postpone the qualifying for the F1 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Although the Sao Paulo F1 Sprint took place in nice weather conditions on Saturday, it started raining very heavily about 45 minutes before qualifying was due to begin. With thunder and lightning around too, qualifying was delayed by 15-minute intervals.

Although the storm passed the Sao Paulo circuit later on, the rain remained, which forced the sport to postpone the qualifying session for Sunday.

It meant an early start for Sunday as track action began at 7.30 with qualifying. Conditions improved compared to Saturday, but he rain played its part, with no drivers able to use dry weather tyres. The extreme wet featured in the first part of qualifying, before the Intermediate came into play. There were no fewer than five interruptions caused by drivers crashing, in a session that therefore lasted almost an hour and 45 minutes, with the rain varying in intensity several times.

Commenting on the condensed nature of the race day, Pirelli's motorsport director Mario Isola said: “What can I say, that was a really busy Sunday! It’s true it has happened before that we have had qualifying and the race on the same day, even in this period since Pirelli has been the Global Tyre Supplier to Formula 1.

"But never before has it taken place so early in the day and in such a compressed time format, with many of the Formula 1 family hearing their alarm clocks going off well before dawn! I feel we should applaud all those who made it possible to ensure that the entire weekend programme was completed, despite the weather complicating matters since yesterday afternoon.

"There was an extraordinary crowd of almost three hundred thousand spectators at Interlagos and I’m sure that they and all those watching on television and on the various social platforms were rewarded with a very exciting show, both in qualifying and the race. They would have experienced a whole range of emotions, which is often the case when rain come along to lower adhesion while highlighting the skills of the drivers.

The race was rescheduled to start at 12.30 and apart from it being red flagged towards the halfway mark because of heavy rain reducing visibility to a precarious degree, it went ahead with just a few Safety Car appearances. Over the 69 laps (the race distance was reduced by two laps due to the two aborted start procedures) the Intermediate did the lion’s share of the work.

Only five drivers – Sergio Perez, Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda, Zhou Guanyu and Nico Hulkenberg – also used the Extreme when the rain got heavier, but then the red flag reset everything, and for the restart the Intermediate was clearly best suited to the track conditions. There were 33 tyre changes, including those under the red flag and a total of 51 sets were used, five of them for extreme wets. Of the drivers who finished the race, only four used two sets of Intermediates, namely Valtteri Bottas and the three drivers who finished on the podium.

Speaking of the performance of Pirelli's intermediate and wet-weather tyres in treacherous conditions, Isola reckoned that both tyres worked as expected in unusually tough conditions.

"From a technical point of view, we leave Interlagos having picked up plenty of useful information. In today’s qualifying we saw both the extreme wet and intermediate tyres at work and could therefore clearly verify their operating windows.

"In the race, there was a point when one could have made a direct comparison between the two types of tyre over a long stint, but in fact the neutralisation caused when visibility was deemed too poor, meant we only saw this for a handful of laps.

"One should also bear in mind that the rain varied in intensity several times and on a brand-new track surface, the grip levels in the wet were very limited, partly due to the oily layer that it created. All things considered, I believe both tyres proved to be up to the job in hand.”