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The Pit Straight: When It Rains, It Pours

Formula 1 is back from its summer break, and in case you forgot what was happening, the 2023 Heineken Dutch Grand Prix offered a quick summary of the season to date. Red Bull never looked like they weren’t going to win, and hometown hero Max Verstappen delivered yet another crushing performance to earn himself a spot in the record books, alongside Sebastian Vettel and Alberto Ascari as the winners of nine Grands Prix in a row.

His greatest challenge wasn’t from another driver – although Sergio Perez and Lando Norris did technically take turns up front. No, Mother Nature brought in the rain clouds on two separate occasions, creating a dry-wet-dry-wet challenge for drivers and strategists alike (although, again, Verstappen and Red Bull didn’t put a foot wrong).

But with rain comes two things: red flags and controversy, and the Dutch Grand Prix had plenty of either. With a set of regulations that decreases visibility, and intermediate tire that’s great for a wide range of conditions and an extreme wet tire that no driver wants to be on, Jack Swansey and Alex Gintz have a lot to talk about, as they break down the state of wet-weather racing in F1.

See also
Max Verstappen Weathers Multiple Storms to Win at Zandvoort

The Pit Straight is Frontstretch‘s F1 podcast, available weekly on Tuesdays on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and right here on the web.

About the author

Jack Swansey primarily covers open-wheel racing for Frontstretch and co-hosts The Pit Straight Podcast,but you can also catch him writing about NASCAR, sports cars, and anything else with four wheels and a motor. Originally from North Carolina and now residing in Los Angeles, he joined the site as Sunday news writer midway through 2022 and is an avid collector (some would say hoarder) of die-cast cars.

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