Drivers 'thrown in deep end' for expected wet race

His team-mate Oscar Piastri added: "It's obviously going to be a voyage into the unknown for everybody. When it rains here, it normally is pretty torrential, so it could be an interesting day.

"It's just going to be what happens with the power-unit, how you get power, where you get power is in a computer's hands.

"Just making sure that that does roughly what we expect. Obviously, the margin for error when it's wet is significantly smaller."

The forecast is for wet weather on and off through the day, with occasional thunderstorms. Commercial rights holder F1 and governing body the FIA are meeting on Saturday evening to decide whether to change the race timetable to give them more chance to hold the race, which is scheduled to start at 16:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Sunday.

The inclination will be to leave things as they are because of the disruption caused to television schedules by moving the start of the race.

But because the cars will not be able to run if there is heavy rain, and US laws will prevent the race taking place if there is a thunderstorm, it might be moved forward.

There is the additional complication that authorities will not allow the crowd in the grandstands to stay out in the open if there is an electrical storm near the venue.

Verstappen and both Ferrari drivers, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who start third and sixth, both drove in the wet in pre-season testing, while Red Bull's Isack Hadjar crashed when he did so.

The rest of the drivers from the leading teams have no experience of the new cars in the rain.