Pirelli Developing New F1 Wet Tires for 2026 Season

According to Pirelli, current F1 wet tires can displace 85 liters of water per second at racing speeds — however, their usage remains very limited due to visibility issues.

Mario Isola, Pirelli’s motorsport manager, confirms that development of new wet tires for the 2026 season is progressing well. The intermediate tire has been nearly defined, while the extreme wet tire still requires further validation.

“We want to make the extreme wet tire more usable — not just behind the Safety Car, but as a proper race tire,” explained Isola.

Recent testing was conducted at the Fiorano circuit with Charles Leclerc and Zhou Guanyu using mule cars to simulate loads that will be generated by next-generation vehicles.

Currently, the crossover point between intermediate and wet tires stands at 118% of dry lap times. Pirelli aims to reduce this figure to around 115-116% for the 2026 generation tires — a significant improvement for wet weather performance.