The introduction of a softer wet compound tyre in Supercars next season could lead to fewer rain cancellations.
As first reported by Speedcafe.com yesterday, an improved wet weather tyre has received sign-off ahead of a rollout under the Gen3 ruleset, a point which Supercars later confirmed.
Control tyre supplier, Dunlop, has developed a softer version, with the current wet weather tyre labelled as too hard, thus not offering enough grip on a wet circuit.
The new compound will greatly improve safety, with feedback from testing indicating it will give drivers more confidence in damp conditions.
Supercars’ Head of Motorsport, Adrian Burgess says it could lift the threshold for what conditions are deemed raceable.
In 2021, the Sunday night race of the second Sydney event was cut short due to a storm, while another race later in that quartet of rounds was cancelled altogether due to heavy rain.
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More recently, the Top 10 Shootout at the Repco Bathurst 1000 earlier this month was abandoned following a downpour of rain, with rivers running across the track.
Notably, in the aforementioned examples, there were a number of contributing factors that led to a washout, of which the make-up of the current wet weather tyres was only one.
However, Speedcafe.com has been told by multiple sources the new wet compound will alleviate numerous concerns which have led to such situations.
“Hopefully, we can have some great wet races and we don’t have the situation like we had in SMP when we didn’t want to run because it just wasn’t safe,” Burgess told Speedcafe.com.
“So this will hopefully allow us to run more comfortably in damp conditions and not have to red flag races.
“It just allows you to race in those conditions [more safely] and at the end of the day, safety is paramount — but putting on a show and racing in the wet is always great as well.”
A reduction in downforce as part of Gen3 allows for softer compound tyres to be run in both wet and dry conditions.
Burgess explained: “The car has got significantly less downforce than the current car and it weighs a lot less than the current car.
“So you need to have a softer tyre and our good friends at Dunlop went away and came back with a [wet] tyre that performed really, really well.
“Kudos to those guys for being proactive, thinking ahead, working with Supercars, and coming up with such a great tyre.
“When we ran the tyre at Sandown, the driver feedback straightaway was, ‘this is a great tyre’.
“They could feel the grip, they could load the front tyre up, even in the rain, and it actually responded.
“Whenever you design any new car, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right tyre to go with it.
“That’s why even on the dry tyre with a Gen3 car, we will be generally softer in compound than we are with the current car.”
As Burgess mentioned, there will be greater flexibility in the use of softer compound dry tyres at some circuits.
One of those is Mount Panorama, with Supercars and Dunlop investigating using the soft tyre at Bathurst next year, a venue where the hard tyre has been the go-to.
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