Here's the thing: Pirelli walked away from the Brazilian weekend with valuable data from both qualifying and the race, but the drivers' verdict on the machinery is brutal. As Motorsport.com Deutschland reports, while the field ran on inters for both qualifying and the race—with full wets making an appearance at the start of Saturday's wet session—the consensus from the cockpit is far from pretty.
Carlos Sainz didn't hold back his assessment. "I think the performance level of the wet and intermediate tyres is not good enough, and we must work together with Pirelli to find a better tyre," he explained. Sainz pointed out that in mixed conditions like Sunday's race, the rear intermediate is very weak, noting that by the time it finally warms up, the front tyre is already finished. Williams driver Alexander Albon echoed that exact frustration, calling the current rubber worse than its predecessors.
I think we would all have a bit more fun if the grip was better, and I think there were moments in qualifying where the first three laps in Q1 were quite dangerous,
Albon described the drive to the starting grid on Sunday as genuinely wild. "I could hardly believe how little grip there was," he said, adding that you never feel good at any point during a race. According to Albon, the inters take too much effort to warm up and then degrade far too quickly, while the full wet tyre overheats way too fast. Oliver Bearman chimed in with similar grievances, calling the new inters a bit worse than last year's version, feeling less forgiving, very stiff, and stubbornly difficult to get up to temperature.
Max Verstappen put his finger on the operational window itself. "The problem is above all that the operating window is a bit too small," Verstappen observed, noting that they feel hard like a stone when cold. Isack Hadjar shared those safety concerns from the cockpit, feeling there was too much aquaplaning during qualifying despite the water levels not seeming all that high. "I think we would all have a bit more fun if the grip was better, and I think there were moments in qualifying where the first three laps in Q1 were quite dangerous," the Red Bull driver stated.
Only race winner Lando Norris offered a slightly softer take, though even he admitted that cold tyres feel terrible on the way to the grid. "When they get into the correct temperature range, they are good," Norris said, pointing out that his squad seemingly struggled less with the warm-up phase. Even so, Norris warned that Sao Paulo is one of the easier tracks for generating heat, casting serious doubt on how these tyres will behave if it rains at the upcoming cold night race in Las Vegas.
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