Reflecting on a treacherous 2022 Japanese GP, Vettel told F1TV: “The main thing about today is that nothing happened in these conditions; we had a tractor on the track that should never have been there. In these conditions on the wrong (Intermediate) tyres, which we are forced to put on because the extreme Wet is not good enough & too slow, there is stuff we need to learn and do better next time,”
But it was not the first time, as in Monaco the 4x F1 World Champion provided insight that takes on new meaning after the Pirelli tyre shambles on Sunday when he revealed: “As soon as you can go on the Intermediate, you do it. The extreme Wet tyres are far too hard for this track and even for Imola [also a wet race], they were too hard. In rainy weather, we know that the current cars have a lot of aquaplaning. Pirelli hasn’t worked on this subject for years & everyone knows it. So we have to wait until it stops raining to be able to launch a race.
I remember the days when we could have driven here in the rain, with no problem with this amount of water, but with these tyres it is impossible. Looking at them, the extreme Wet looks good but in fact, they’re useless,”