Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Pirelli has warned that a wet Canadian Grand Prix could expose a major weakness in its 2026 rain tyres, with chief engineer Simone Berra saying Montreal may be the “perfect storm” where the intermediate is so hard to keep in its operating window that the full wet could become the better option.
Ahead of the race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Berra said the problem is the combination of cold weather and a circuit that does little to generate tyre energy. Forecasts pointed to air temperatures of just 11 or 12C, and he admitted the tyres were never built for that scenario. “We never had these conditions and we never designed the tyres for these conditions because it's very cold,” Berra said, adding that it would be “more tricky on the intermediates and a little bit less tricky with the full wets.”
His concern went beyond the usual struggle to switch a wet tyre on. Berra said the real risk is what happens after the opening laps, even with the FIA and Pirelli raising blanket temperatures for the intermediates to 70C and setting the full wets at 40C. If a driver can stabilize the tyre after around five laps, that is manageable. The bigger danger comes once temperature drops away. “If you start losing temperature, and you never find a way to generate the temperature or to regain the temperature, then it becomes a problem because you start to struggle and you have no grip,” he said. “So basically, you cannot run [the intermediates] with these low temperatures.”
That warning matched what drivers had been saying across the paddock. Mercedes driver George Russell, speaking after taking pole in Montreal, said the FIA had already reduced battery deployment in wet conditions from 350 kilowatts to 250 kilowatts, but he made clear the bigger concern was elsewhere. “I think what everybody is alluding to is just the tyres. That's going to be the biggest challenge,” Russell said. With race temperatures expected around 12 or 13C, he said it would be “really challenging to get that rubber softened to give us the grip.”
Some of the strongest criticism came from drivers who had already sampled the tyres in wet running. Red Bull junior Isack Hadjar, who took part in Pirelli’s test programme, said, “I don't think these tyres are made for a race with 22 cars,” because “there is no grip and it is very difficult to reach the right temperature window.” Alpine driver Pierre Gasly, after wet testing at Magny-Cours, said he “would not be surprised” if a wet race turned into “a bit of an elimination game.”
The uncertainty is bigger because Formula 1 still has no proper race-weekend reference for these cars in the wet. No official wet session has taken place so far in 2026, leaving teams to rely on limited testing and simulation work. McLaren driver Oscar Piastri said the preparation had not delivered answers. “We don't know what's going to happen,” he said after similar work before Miami, adding that the new power units only add to the difficulty in changing conditions.
That lack of knowledge could leave some teams better placed than others. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said squads that have already run in the wet, particularly Red Bull and Ferrari, hold an advantage because both tyre behaviour and power-unit management can drift far from what engineers predict on a dry simulator model. In Montreal, that means a possible wet race is not just a weather story but the first real stress test of whether the 2026 package can be raced safely and effectively when grip disappears.