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A Formula 1 car on intermediate tyres is 13.2% slower than the same car on slicks. In real terms that is about 11 seconds a lap.
Across 140 driver records from eight mixed-condition races, not one driver got within 6% of their own dry pace.
On full wet tyres the penalty is roughly 23%, though the modern grid almost never runs them.
Comparing a wet race to a dry race tells you nothing useful. Different circuit, different fuel, different tyres, different everything.
So we only used races where the same driver ran both. In a mixed-condition Grand Prix a driver spends part of the race on intermediates and part on slicks. Comparing their own median green-flag lap on each removes the car, the driver and the circuit from the comparison completely. Whatever is left is the weather.
That gave 8 races between 2022 and 2026, and 140 driver records. Wet races are rare, which is why the window has to be this wide.
Green flag laps only, no in-laps or out-laps, nothing from the opening two laps, no deleted laps.
Four checks were set before running it. Full wets must be slower than intermediates, which must be slower than slicks. The intermediate penalty must land somewhere between 5% and 30%, since anything under 2% would mean we were measuring a dry track and anything over 50% would mean safety car laps had leaked in. At least three races with at least six drivers each. And the effect must vary between races, because "wet" covers everything from damp to a downpour. All four passed.
Spa produces the biggest absolute loss at 15.4 seconds, simply because it is the longest lap on the calendar. A percentage costs more seconds when there are more seconds to lose.
Monaco produces the biggest percentage at 17.0%, and that fits what Monaco is. There is no run-off, the barriers are immediate, and the consequence of a mistake is a wall rather than a gravel trap. Drivers leave more margin there than anywhere, and the stopwatch records it.
The variation between races is the point rather than a problem. A damp track that is nearly ready for slicks and a track with standing water are both "wet", and the 8.8% to 17.0% spread is that difference showing up.
There is a persistent idea that rain is the great equaliser, that it lets a brilliant driver overcome a bad car. The individual records complicate that.
The range across all 140 records runs from 6.3% to 24.3%. The best single performance still lost more than 6% against that driver's own dry pace.
What rain does is not make anyone fast. It widens the spread between drivers, and it hands out far more opportunities for someone to make a mistake. The equalising happens through chaos and through the value of track position, not because a car becomes competitive that was not.
The three tiers, measured within the same races:
That full wet figure comes from only two driver records and should be treated as indicative, not precise. We are reporting it because the gap to intermediates is large and consistent with what the sport says about the tyre, not because two records settle anything.
The reason the sample is so small is itself the story. The modern grid barely uses the full wet. When conditions are bad enough to need it, they are usually bad enough for the race to be neutralised behind a safety car or red-flagged, and by the time racing resumes the intermediate is the better tyre. The full wet has been squeezed into a window that has almost stopped existing, which is a live discussion in the sport and the subject of ongoing debate about whether the tyre earns its place.
Eleven seconds is the number to hold onto. When a driver stays out on slicks as rain arrives, or gambles on intermediates before anyone else, that is the size of the bet.
The crossover is worth more than any strategy call. Being on the right tyre for two laps is worth more than a perfect pit stop, and it is why teams stare at radar rather than lap charts when the weather turns.
Rain does not make a slow car fast. It makes results unpredictable, which is a different thing.
Percentages travel, seconds do not. Spa lost more seconds than Monaco while being less severely affected. Always check which one you are being quoted.
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Wet sessions change faster than any summary can keep up with.
The Formula Dream app runs a live Dashboard through every session: every car moving on the circuit map, and a timing tower with lap times, gaps and intervals, tyre compound and age, pit counts and positions gained or lost. It is the same information these measurements come from, arriving live. You also get live driver radio as it is broadcast, and every FIA document of the weekend as it is published.
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Russell took the lead at turn one and crashed at the final corner of the same lap. Verstappen won, Hamilton charged to second, and the McLarens hit each other.
