To Fuel or Not to Fuel - That is the Question

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by foreversideways

Full tank of fuel, set of slicks, no flappy paddles or fly by wire throttles, no paddles for engine maps etc. Just the driver on his own in his car for the whole race. It used to be called Grand Prix Racing.

Well living to 40-50 used to be a good long life too, but thats not better just cause it's older. GP cars ran with no seat belts in the 30s, should we go back that far? Or just ban innovations from after your childhood so it all seems more magical? If you think that every year things didn't change to go faster and improve the car your head in buried DEEP in the sand. Improving lap times and making the car do things nobody thought was possible before is GP racing. The team working to make the car as fast as possible over the race duration is GP racing. If you want everything to freeze, record your favorite season and watch it over and over again.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Improving lap times and making the car do things nobody thought was possible before is GP racing.

Maybe if it could do all that without stopping...now that would be impressive.

[Joe Taylor]

Originally Posted by foreversideways

Full tank of fuel, set of slicks, no flappy paddles or fly by wire throttles, no paddles for engine maps etc. Just the driver on his own in his car for the whole race. It used to be called Grand Prix Racing.

That'd be the 1998 season. What a thrilling year that was...

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Joe Taylor

That'd be the 1998 season. What a thrilling year that was...

They didn't have 'race distance fuel tanks' in 98.

Maybe if they had...............

[Joe Taylor]

Originally Posted by Marbot

They didn't have 'race distance fuel tanks' in 98.

Maybe if they had...............

Sorry, meant 1988

[Dead-Eye]

Originally Posted by Marbot

The "dangerous situation" was Ferrari having yet another relatively dismal season in 2006.

You mean they abolished something that was obviously aimed at ending Ferrari's dominance because it ended Ferrari's dominance?

I too thought that the 2005 season would have been even better if they'd have also banned refuelling.The current strategy of using your pit stop to leap-frog your opponent doesn't make for exciting racing.

And why are they used? Because you usually can't overtake on the track. What happens if you can't overtake in the pits or on the track? Procession.

[Dead-Eye]

Just going through some old videos...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXXK5...eature=related
Without refueling the mechanics wouldn't need fireproof suits. Just the shorts at 1:05 are a convincing argument to keep it

[dtype38]

I vote that the best reason so far!

[Osella]

my two euro's worth:
I'm not saying this would DEFINITELY be better, but I'd be interested to see what happened if:

you couldn't refuel and change tyres at the same stop (UNLESS perhaps you were repairing damage, replacing a punctured tyre, and even then you couldn't do both at once); give point(s) for having lead the most laps and having lead a lap; give a point for the fastest lap in all the practice/qualifying sessions; give a point for the most laps completed in all the practice/qualifying sessions (the former awarded to the driver, the latter the constructor); the banning of the word 'quallie', which, to these Anglo-Saxon ears at least is an offence to nature

[werner]

As F1 is, or at least should be the pinnacle of motorsport, it should have the best of everything: driverskills and ability, high-tech superfast cars, the most challenging tracks and the best brains thinking about tactics. The thing you should need only a litlebit to win is luck. However, the amount of other factors needed to win a GP should still make for exiting and unpredictable races.
That's why i'm opposed to banning pitstops and windtunnels; it wouldundermine the importance of tactics and technology.
What I want to propose is quite a bit like pingguest proposed:an unfreeze of the enginedevelopment and a tyrewar. But although allowed, pitstops should be made slower by a max number of mechanics and a slower fueling system, and maybe additional rules like the mandatory shutting down of the engine before refuelling. A nice byproduct of these rule would be enhanced safety in the pits.
It would increase the speeddifference between the cars, but the cars that are the fastest will probably lose the most time in the pits. I.e a car with harder tyres and a less powerfull engine will probably have to pit less for tyres and fuel, but will be significantly slower then a car with softer tyres and a powerfull, but gazguzzling engine. Who winns will depend on the type of track, the passingability of the faster driver and the talent of the drivers to make up time/don't lose to much time when driving alone.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by werner

:an unfreeze of the enginedevelopment and a tyrewar.

Another spending competition.

The cars are already fast enough/too fast,so bringing back engine and tyre wars will require a further cut in aero,which given that the FIA have worked pretty hard to get it down to the proposed 2009 levels isn't likely to happen.

For the past ten years or more F1 cars have been on the limit of what most people think is an acceptable risk for drivers/pit crews and spectators.

[fourWheelDrift]

I'm surprised no one has raised this further up this thread but as far as I can see nobody has mentioned that there are two reasons drivers don't overtake on the track, one is that it is damned difficult and risky but another reason is that they know the other driver is going to stop and usually they have got a pretty good idea when.

If you banned refuelling the cars would be a little larger and heavier empty, and substantially heavier at the start. You would see how different drivers managed their cars and tyres on a lightening fuel load and the teams wouldn't know which cars were going to pit for new rubber or when so the only sure way to pass that car in front is to do it on the track. This would also place a premium on looking after the tyres and give lots of choices for the race. Imagine a driver who could nurse a set of the harder tyres for the whole race while running slightly slower because of it against Hamilton tearing three sets of softs to pieces during the Grand Prix! (I am assuming we ditch this artificial piece of silliness about mandatory use of two types of rubber in the race).

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by Marbot

Another spending competition.

The cars are already fast enough/too fast,so bringing back engine and tyre wars will require a further cut in aero,which given that the FIA have worked pretty hard to get it down to the proposed 2009 levels isn't likely to happen.

For the past ten years or more F1 cars have been on the limit of what most people think is an acceptable risk for drivers/pit crews and spectators.

I don't think that's a good reason to keep the current status quo, is it?

[werner]

About costs: F1-teams will spend as much as they can anyway.

About to high speeds: When refuelling and tyrechanging costs lots of time, fuel-efficiency and lack of tyrewear will be an advantage. The development of these characteristics will slow down speeds on the track. If not, indeed aero can be further reduced, as can air-intake, cilindersize or tyresize.

[Marbot]

From a drivers point of view.

http://www.itv-f1.com/news_article.aspx?id=43611

[Pingguest]

On F1fanatic I the following post regarding pitstops. The post was made by user Steven Roy:

Re-fueling should be banned as it stops cars trying to overtake on the track. Re-designing cars to have bigger fuel taks is simple we used to have them before pointless pit stops were introduced. Max wants to cut downforce well guess what happens to downforce if you stick a bigger fuel tank in the middle of the car.

I would dispute the assumption that a smaller tank is necessarily more fuel efficient. If both cars are driven the same way that is the case but that isn’t what happens. Drivers push much harder because they know they have to build a gap before the pit stops. If you ban re-fueling and ban tyre stops drivers have to preserve their tyres so don’t burn as much fuel.

I want F1 races to be sorted on the track by the drivers not by a pit crew or by someone like Ross Brawn operating a driver by remote control.

Gilles Villeneuve’s legendary win at Jarama in 1981 is revered because he kept 4 much faster cars behind him for the whole race and gave us a facinating afternoon we still think of 27 years later. Had there been tyres and fuel stops he would have been fifth at best after the first stop and would have been lucky to be in the to ten at the end.

I believe the only way a driver should gain a place is by taking it from the driver in front by better driving(or mechanical faults etc). I don’t elieve that a driver should ever lose a place to a driver who is racing on another piece of tarmac due to some clever strategy. At Imola one year Schumacher went from 12th to 2nd and overtook one car. That is not how F1 should be. F1 should be about two drivers disputing the same piece of tarmac like Villeneuve and Jones did. We have great cars and great drivers now. Lets have them settle things on the track not in the pits.

[Mr V]

If there wasn't refuelling then the Ferrari mechanic wouldn't have been injured today

[duke_toaster]

And if there wasn't refuelling cars would be crashing with 250+ litres of high octane jungle juice nice and combustable petrol.

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by duke_toaster

And if there wasn't refuelling cars would be crashing with 250+ litres of high octane jungle juice nice and combustable petrol.

The reason we don't see fire balls after crashes is not that there are only 100 litres of fuel in the car, I can assure you that could make a damn good blaze. It is because the tanks are made of high tech flexible aramid fibre reinforced synthetic bladders housed in carbon fibre structures protected in the very centre of the car. Given this technology the increase in risk with carrying two or three times as much fuel is tiny, certainly much less than the risks of refueling which as we have seen today are not all to do with fire.

Banning refuelling does not mean banning pit stops, cars could and would still choose to stop for fresh rubber. As no-one would know when or if each car was going to stop the races would be much more unpredictable and interesting. Also since a driver would not know if or when the driver in front was going to stop the only sure fire way to get in front would be to overtake. When you watch today's races it is quite clear that it is difficult to overtake but also that drivers don't try to overtake because it is easier to wait for the stops.

I think any refuelling ban would not work without shaking up the tyre regs too, to give drivers a real choice of strategy there would have to be a real choice of tyres too.

Incidentally I think it would be pretty much the end of Lewis's career as he seems to be able to destroy a set of tyres quicker than anyone else on the grid.

[JeremySmith]

Originally Posted by fourWheelDrift

Incidentally I think it would be pretty much the end of Lewis's career as he seems to be able to destroy a set of tyres quicker than anyone else on the grid.

I think he should look for a career in? The mortgage business..

[Marbot]

DC wouldn't be in favour of a refuelling ban if he didn't think it was safe to do it.Therefore we have to assume that modern fuel tanks are pretty robust things.Much more robust than a mechanic in flimsy overalls I bet.

[Marbot]

Some interesting videos and text on the subject of refuelling.

Clive James's commentary is also particularly good.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/08/2...deo/#more-8933

[JeremySmith]

Thank you Marbot great link...

[MarkkuAlen86]

I don't think re-fuelling is necassary, and I like the idea of turbos coming back. Forces the driver to have a strategy in-car.

Stick shift, slicks, no aids, no refuelling, tyre changes, no radios, turbos etc

I think it's what people have wanted for years, never seems to happen though.

[Dutton]

I think it is a bit unnecessary to ban radios; actively damaging, even. I can see where people could be coming from in terms of telemetry, although I don't have a problem with it, but I think it is fair enough to at least let team and driver communicate.

What do you define as an aid? The obvious stuff is taken for granted, but the more subtle things which can be done lay where?