Bearman asked the right question. Green or blue tyres. Intermediates or full wets. Verstappen answered him, according to RacingNews365: “It depends how wet it is. But normally it’s very slippery when it rains.” He was joking. I took it as a spec sheet.
Sepang is in my sim. I set the rain, seventy per cent humidity on the track, and did ten laps on each compound. I did it again this morning. Result: the greens are one point eight seconds a lap quicker as long as the track isn’t aquaplaning. After that, the blues. So, it depends how wet it is. Verstappen is right, and he didn’t even need ten laps.
The problem is what Bearman says next. He hasn’t done a single proper lap on these tyres this year, and he has heard they are difficult to drive. The teams have little experience with them. At mine it’s simple: the wet tyre model comes with the game, update included. In real life, nobody has the file.
He also says the heat at Sepang might perhaps help with tyre management. That’s a variable my sim doesn’t handle well: it gives me rain and thirty degrees, and the track dries as if I didn’t exist. In real life there are too many variables. The heat, for one.
And Bearman has never raced at Sepang. Neither have I, but I have two thousand four hundred laps of Spa, which makes me a wet-weather specialist on principle.
If it rains at post 14, we don’t reset. We put the waterproofs on.
Conclusion of my test: if it rains, it’s wet. In theory.
It’s true, we checked: RacingNews365.
