ROUND 14: 🇧🇪 Belgium


FORMULA 1 ROLEX BELGIAN GRAND PRIX 2024


Circuit stats


  • Circuit name: Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
  • First Grand Prix: 1950
  • Number of laps: 44
  • Circuit Length: 7.004 km
  • Race Distance: 308.052 km
  • Lap record: 1:46.286 Valtteri Bottas (2018)
  • 2023 winner: Max Verstappen

Track Map


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  • Kurzweil@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Could someone help me since I’m a newish fan? They never seem to actually use the wet tire. It goes Dry -> Inters -> Red flag.

    Why is that?

    • Donut@leminal.space
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      4 months ago

      You got some answers about visibility and safety, but let me add some details about the tires.

      Wet tires are meant for conditions where it’s absolutely pouring down. They can disperse 85 liters (~22 gallons) of water at 300 km/h (~186 m/h) per second per tyre. That’s a crazy amount of water, and conditions aren’t bad enough usually to warrant this.

      And then if it is warranted, you can ask yourself whether it’s still safe due to visibility and low grip due to cold tyres.

      Intermediates can displace about half of the water at 300 km/h per tyre, and this covers it most of the times.

      • Kurzweil@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Thanks everyone! Kinda nice to ask a question somewhere online and get a nice reasonable answer without being torn apart. 👌🏻

    • Saff@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Mostly it’s down to stubbornness. But under the guise of visibility. As Martin Brundle once said, they could always just go slower if they can’t see. But that’s not how racing drivers are built it seems. So they all go flat out in the wet, complain that they can’t see shit and then the officials red flag.

      • Donut@leminal.space
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        4 months ago

        Going too slow (currently) doesn’t heat up the tyre enough to get grippy, so that would just cause a literal slide-show.

        You can point to Pirelli for that one, but it doesn’t change the current situation