F1 Fanatic

Do I remember a team many years back doing the same thing, or is my mind playing tricks on me.

Would it actually be against the rules though? Earlier in the season people were speculating whether some teams would shrot fuel their car in the event of a safet car.

It may get them some publicity but probably not the best kind of publicity. If they only lasted a few laps then it wouldn’t really be worth it anyway.

I agree with PM too. Even if they hadf less fuel I don’t think they would actually just storm off into the distance.

Macca didn’t a team do that during testing to get a load of sponsors but then their pace suddenly disappeared? I can’t recall exactly, maybe I dreamt it!

Except that they’d retire with no fuel. Which kind of defeats the purpose.

Do I remember a team many years back doing the same thing, or is my mind playing tricks on me.

Are you thinking of Prost?

I believe they ran underweight in 2000 or 2001 pre-season testing to try and get some extra sponsorship…

One of the most famous examples of this was Derek Warwick running second in the Toleman at Brands Hatch in 1982. They claimed he had a driveshaft failure after he retired 40-odd laps in.

The advantages of this kind of strategy were tied in very closely with exposure for sponsors. At a time when not every race was televised live it guaranteed that Toleman – a British team – would get a lot of camera time in one of the few races that was shown live – the British Grand Prix.

There are other reasons why it wouldn’t work so well today. Reliability is far better and the performance advantage you need over another car to overtake it is much higher. Also consider that it takes until almost the end of the race for the likes of Virgin at Lotus to lap at the pace the leaders were doing at the start. See here: Italian Grand Prix fastest laps

There’s quite a lot on it in a recent book about Toleman by Christopher Hilton. According to him Rory Byrne was in on the plan as was Pat Symonds who apparently disapproved of it – apparently 26 years later he was willing to tolerate much worse things. Hunt out a copy of “The Toleman Story” for more.

Guys there is a more recent example of running low-fuel in testing! Sauber 2010!!

Thats right. Many people believed that Sauber had a competitive car because their low fuel testing times were quite good. In spains pre season testing they almost ran low fuel only!

…and still they weren’t able to catch any sponsor! I don’t believe that companies want to sponsor a inconsistent minor team. Last year, Virgin started supporting Brawn only after a whole convincing pre-season and the Australian GP, where they dominated from Friday till the end of the race.