Lewis Hamilton wants to see F1's drivers allocated more wet tyres for use in Practice sessions to avoid a repeat of Friday's situation at Silverstone.
Lewis frustrated after limited running in front of packed grandstands
Lewis Hamilton wants to see Formula 1's drivers allocated more wet tyres for use in Practice sessions to avoid a repeat of the situation witnessed at Silverstone on Friday when teams heavily restricted their running.
The opening day of the British Grand Prix was beset by frustrations for all concerned as the persistent rain caused havoc for thousands of fans getting to the circuit while the teams themselves were left with little option but to limit their time on the track owing to the restricted number of intermediate and full wet tyres made available to them under the regulations for the entire race weekend.
Although teams have access to a 'free' set of intermediate tyres on a Friday should the sessions be declared wet, the dire nature of the conditions at Silverstone were such that the shallower rubber was not an option for the vast majority of the day.
With tyre conservation therefore in mind, the onset of worsening conditions in Practice Two prompted all the teams to stop running entirely for over half an hour before the rain eased again.
Speaking to
Sky Sports F1 during the stoppage, Hamilton told Natalie Pinkham that he sympathised with the paying supporters in the packed grandstands. The frustrated McLaren driver conceded that the teams simply didn't have enough tyres available and suggested that the FIA could make it mandatory for teams to run in such conditions.
"I think it's a real, real shame to be honest that they're just sitting there and we're not going out," Hamilton commented.
"The problem is we don't have enough tyres and the drainage here is not that great at the track so there's lot of standing water, and obviously the weather is not spectacular.
"If we had more tyres, I think a lot more people would be out. It's a shame it's not mandatory that we have to go out."
A slight improvement in conditions towards the end of the second session eventually opened up a window for drivers to complete some more sustained running and Hamilton, who gave the by then sodden British crowd something to cheer, later told
Sky Sports News: "I had to get to the limits to find out whether the car was comfortable today or not.
"So I feel quite happy with it and tomorrow it's about making sure you get through Qualifying and the most important [thing] is the race."
However, while Hamilton has urged change, team bosses took the view that spending too much time on track in such conditions was not a risk worth taking.
"As a team, we obviously feel very, very guilty that we're not out there running for the spectators. But on the other hand we don't gain anything from it," Force India Deputy Team Principal Bob Fernley said.
"With all due respect, even if we'd had the tyres we wouldn't have run because the risk to reward is the wrong ratio for us.
"It's more to do with our side of it in terms of the risk and the benefit and are we going to learn anything. Until the last half-hour of today, there wasn't any benefit in running."
Yet according to Pirelli's Paul Hembery a lack of wet tyres was not the problem given that, in his estimation, a set of full wets can last for as many as 60 laps.
Rather, Hembery explained that it was more down to a performance drop-off that can lead to drivers trying to conserve the three sets of full wets allocated if they think a weekend washout is on the cards.
"If you've got three sets you can do 180 laps. You can't say you haven't got enough tyres," Hembery said.
"If you're saying it disadvantages me if my competitor doesn't go out and I want to follow suit, then it's a slightly different challenge. It's a little bit more complicated than saying 'We haven't got enough sets of tyres'.
With Pirelli forced to scrap 200 sets of unused slick tyres, Hembery also said there was a cost involved in catering for continued bad weather.
He asked: "How many three-day wet races have we had in the last five years? One? So do you go and spend half a million or a million Euros a year to cover an eventuality that happens once every five years?"
A record attendance for a Practice day of 80,000 had been expected at Silverstone on Friday, but while the lack of track action in the wet has clearly proved a talking point for F1 in the future, by far the biggest fall-out from the opening day for the organisers was the travel chaos that ensued on the surrounding roads amid the sustained poor weather.
Thousands of fans became gridlocked in traffic jams on the bypass leading to the circuit due to delays parking cars on hardground in official carparks and campsites, with both becoming full to capacity while second practice was ongoing.
Silverstone Director of Communications Katie Tyler later explained that the problem had been exacerbated by large numbers of campers turning up without booking in advance.
She added that temporary grass parking had also been saved for the remainder of the weekend but "it will be slow getting people out".
Looking ahead, Tyler said: "There will be a problem. If we get more rain we have to be honest about it, it will be slow and there will be problems.
"We've loaded all the hardstanding car parks today but we have used some of the other car parks that aren't hardstanding that may well be in a bad state tomorrow. So again we are looking at all sorts of alternatives for tomorrow."
