And the new World Champion is....

[Tom]

OK, this is annoying me a little, first it is not funny or clever regardless which car it was, second Kimi and Liuzzi agreed it was a racing incident, an acident, no ones fault and finally, how the hell can Alonso be blind? It really annoys me that when a driver does well he gets picked on because of it, Alonso has driven faultlessly for the whole season, Michael has been exceptional reacently aswell, if you suggest Alonso is blind you must be too because you can't see the names at the top of the championship table.

[Saribro]

I thought the same thing. But, it looks that we were wrong. The way it was explained to us, the viewers, is that when on wet tires, you need to go on the wet surface. That is what the tires were designed for and that is where they should go. Watching the race, it was not very hard to notice some of the drivers looking for water on purpose (especially down the straight).

So, if Liuzzi was to move off the dry surface to allow Kimi to go there, Kimi would be forced to put his tires on the surface for which they were not designed for, destroying them needlessly!

You're mixing things up a little here. Intermediates have better grip on dry surfaces just like any other tyre. The reason drivers diverting to wet strokes on occasion is to cool the tyres down, not for better grip, because intermediates are indeed designed for wet surfaces, and thus, colder temperature ranges. By your logic, Liuzzi wouldn't even have been driving where he was, nobody would.

[f1.redbaron]

You're mixing things up a little here. Intermediates have better grip on dry surfaces just like any other tyre. The reason drivers diverting to wet strokes on occasion is to cool the tyres down, not for better grip, because intermediates are indeed designed for wet surfaces, and thus, colder temperature ranges. By your logic, Liuzzi wouldn't even have been driving where he was, nobody would.

No, I'm not! I think that you misunderstood my reply. Intermediates are designed for rain (which means cooler temperatures), so driving them on a rapidly drying surface just increases your wear rate. By keeping them cool (i.e. looking for water), you are prolonging their lifespan.

Similar situation is with the winter tires. Just because they are designed to give you grip in snow, doesn't mean that they will give you a "bad" grip on dry and warm road. However, put those same tires on your car and drive down a highway during a summer, and you will see how long they last (btw, this is not from a personal experience )

Reread my reply and you will notice that I've only mentioned the wear rate and not the grip levels!

[Saribro]

It seems you yourself aren't realising what you are saying. The last line of my previous reply still stands. There's a big difference between occasionally cooling down tyres, and trying to stay off of the racing line because it is dry.

[f1.redbaron]

It seems you yourself aren't realising what you are saying. The last line of my previous reply still stands. There's a big difference between occasionally cooling down tyres, and trying to stay off of the racing line because it is dry.

OK, let's try this again...

I remember that, during the last GP, this situation was commented on. So, I watched the parts of the race again, and this is what I heard...

With about 38 laps to go (shortly after re-start), one of the commentators (Steve Matchett) mentioned that Massa, who was on full wets, had no choice but to look for wet parts of the track, otherwise "he would tear them to pieces" if he tried to drive on the dry line (which to me suggests that the compound is just way too soft for any kind of dry road. So the logical conclusion is that the intermediates would also get torn to pieces, only not as fast as when on full wets). Moments later, another commentator (Bob Varsha), said something about the rules when it comes to overtaking backmarkers in the wet conditions. He said that "the rules change, and that the backmarkers need to move on the dry line, leaving the prefered wet line to the driver overtaking it" (or something along those lines). I'm gonna assume that he was commenting on the Raikkonen/Liuzzi incident. As for the word "rules", I don't know if it is an actual rule or the "gentleman's agreement". Either way, I've never heard these guys making something up, so I'm gonna take their word on that.

So, if the dry line is not the prefered route, why is it there? Simply because that dry line wasn't dry when it all began, and while it was wet, that was the best path from one coner to the other, so that is the path most drivers took. Eventually it dried, and some of the drivers found it useless.

Also, I had noticed that some drivers did not just occasionally go on the wet part of the track...some of them were actually on it as much as possible (but it was most obvious on the driest part of the track - the straight...that is why I mentioned it).

The bottom line is that, as I said, my posts are based on the words of respected F1 commentators.

[Saribro]

I can't comment on full wets, as they undoubtably behave differently to intermediates, but very few people were using those, and only in the 1st stint. In any case, people like Massa, Kubica and many other drove their 2nd and 3rd stint on the same set of intermediates on an increasingly dry track. They didn't take extraordinary measures to choose wet lines, they took the ideal line in most cases, and seeked out wet areas in places where it didn't affect lap times, such as the home straight. Notice that their tires most definitly did not tear to pieces, hell, they lasted much longer than the usual set of dry tyres.
The same goes for the "rules", whilst valid on areas like the home straight, where it doesn't affect lap times. It is completely senseless to loose precious time, to overtake a backmarker by taking the slower line on the track.
Yes, wet weather tyres (both intermediate and extreme) must be cooled down on a drying track, but intermediates are developed for this exact circumstance. Drivers don't have to sacrifice good racing lines on these tires. I would expect that the manufacturers also have different models of intermediates, to cope with differing amounts of cooling opportunities on different tracks.