Race director Marques in hot seat at wet race

Rui Marques is the Formula One race director, with responsibility to ensure that races start with the highest level of safety attainable, or don't start at all if certain conditions cannot be satisfied.

- David Tremayne

Just think about that for one moment.

At Silverstone recently, 500,000 spectators attended during the course of the British Grand Prix weekend. In Spa-Francorchamps for the Belgian GP on July 27, the figure was 389,000. Even assuming that around 150,000 on each occasion were there on race day, that's a lot of people who were there at significant personal cost to watch a motor race.

Both events were affected by rain, however, and that is a fundamental problem. It begins with the fact that most people think they can drive, pretty damn well, actually. And when there is talk of the race drivers not being able to see where they are going, fans tend to think how cool they were themselves hitting 140kmh in their Lexuses and Mercedes during that downpour on the motorway last week.

The fact is that in heavy rain the Pirelli wet weather tyres can dispel 85 litres of water every second. That's a huge amount if you think about it. Even the intermediates can manage 35 litres per second.

That water becomes spray that makes it hell for the driver following your car.