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Pirelli's wet F1 tyres much better but inters 'destroyed' too soon

Romain Grosjean says Pirelli has made big progress with its full wet Formula 1 tyre after early running at Barcelona, but says the new intermediate gets "destroyed" too quickly.

Pirelli has devoted the final day of this week's first pre-season test to rain work, having artificially soaked the track several times to simulate bad weather conditions.

Although it has been hard to keep on-track water levels consistent, Grosjean said he learned enough to get a positive first impression of the new wets.

"It is quite interesting, the wet," he said. "There is a lot of progress made from last year.

"We haven't had too much overheating with the rear and the temperature is staying in. The warm-up was OK-ish.

"The intermediates are really good for one lap and then they get destroyed a bit too early, so some work is to be done.

"But generally it's a good step from where we ended up last year."

Renault's Nico Hulkenberg felt the artificial soaking had not been ideal because the surface was drying too quickly in the sunshine.

He added that teams were reluctant to run too much in tricky conditions because they are light on spare parts.

"It wasn't the most efficient I think, but we tried at least," he said.

"We didn't do that much running because they had to wet the track and it really dried pretty quickly, so was straight into inter conditions.

"I went out one run on full wets and one run on inters to see how the car reacts and it went quite OK and I was happy with that.

"But obviously it's early in the season and it is always a bit of a risk for teams.

"We don't have that many spare parts and it is always a balance.

"We couldn't test very deeply regarding aquaplaning, so I think we will find out during a race weekend."

Zdroj: autosport.com