Comments on: 14 reasons to love the refuelling ban | Comment

By: Riffa

Riffa — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:53:46 +0000

It is an awesome site and I would consider it mainstream. It is ran so well, that it is hard to believe it is ran by a single person. Ohhh, I know he is not doing everything by himself, but he is the most ‘hands on’ administrator I can remember seeing and is an awesome writer, SUPER informative and fully deserves a spot at any top level F1 publication. GJ Keith. I too am a fan of F1Fanatic and recommend it highly.

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:09:21 +0000

point 6, 11 and 13 proved to be wrong but overall, I like the refuling ban… Is there any way to force cars to start with a minimum amount of fuel meaning they can’t start with not enough in to go the full distance though?

By: Omar Roncal

Omar Roncal — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:21:01 +0000

Yeah, but it still feels like there’s something missing in the races. When I see videos from the 90s and the spectacular overtakings then, I wonder if the “evolution” of F1 has damaged the show

By: pgj

pgj — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:05:33 +0000

Yes yes yes. We just need technical changes to support the ban. We have had fourteen years, or so, of regulation changes all designed to convince us that overtaking in a pitstop while watching a series of time trials was the real thing. I am sick and tired of every discussion regarding slipstreaming being hijacked by propeller heads talking of drag, downforce, aero-grip and mechanical grip. Take a car from the 70′s and 80′s compare them to modern cars and strip off the bits that prevent slipstreaming. Then ban the bits that are removed.

While I am into this rant. I hate the two rubber rule, I won’t go into that although I have plenty to say about it. But why is it that pitstops have to be over in a few seconds? Why not limit the number of mechanics that can touch the car?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:05:15 +0000

I think it’s fair to say the Bahrain GP vindicated 0/14 of these predictions.

Let’s see if the other races are any improvement…

By: JK

JK — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:21:51 +0000

1, 2, and 4 have absolutely NOTHING to do with the refueling ban and EVERYTHING to do with a change in qualifying rules. The rules of qualifying only have an effect on the race (other than order of the field) if the rules state that they do. Refueling has nothing to do with it. Ex. Montoya in 2002 that you reference in 1. There was still refueling and yet the amount of fuel and the tires used in qualy had nothing to do with the race itself.

By: Rhys

Rhys — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:44:21 +0000

I think the refuelling ban will definitely freshen up the strategic battle, particularly with the two compound rule staying. Strategy got a bit predictable in the last few years, as the teams all had the same data and had a good idea of what everyone else would be doing, so hopefully that’ll change.

But I’m not convinced it will improve overtaking. There’s a lot said about drivers “waiting for the pit stops”, but we’ve seen plenty of occasions where a driver is losing huge amounts of time behind slower cars and still not overtaking.

I think a lot of people look back to the “golden era” before refuelling, i.e. the 1980s and early ’90s, but we’re not going to see that kind of racing again without drastic changes. The track layouts are very different now, the aerodynamics of the cars discourage overtaking, and the cars are generally much closer in performance.

By: Arun

Arun — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:33:02 +0000

I agree. Its a pity that lesser cars will have lesser chances to forge ahead even for a sight of a win. I do understand that this is all about the car’s performance and driver skills but still.

By: mc

mc — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:17:44 +0000

My concern regarding the refueling ban is that the added pressure on pitcrews to perform quick changes may result in more errors in the pits and more races being decided by variations in pit times rather than on the race track.

Previously the fact that refueling took longer than tyre changes meant that all pitstop times were fairly close together and thus not the decisive factors on who took the podium (except in the rare cases when a crew made a bad error). I think we can expect more mistakes and more time differences from stop to stop and these might even be more decisive than accumulated lap times. I hope I am wrong though… and I am happy that racers will no longer have a good package and strategy spoiled by a fuel rig issue.

By: James Alias

James Alias — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:42:26 +0000

In that case the teams can tell the drivers to enrich their fuel-air mixtures to maximum so that can max out on their engine power / consume all the extra fuel they’d have leftover.