FOTA to consider refuelling ban and as a result would make the races shorter. It says in the article that they are considering this due to pit stop mistakes, one of them being mentioned is Massa's pit stop in Singapore.

Link to article:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/71398

What are your views on this?

Great. Cheaper for the sport, better for the fans.

wouldn't change much racing wise, might actually reduce overtaking if everyone is on the same fuel level.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Great. Cheaper for the sport, better for the fans.

Yes, but I think it would be boring if the races was too short.
How much fuel can a current F1 fuel tank hold?

Quote :

might actually reduce overtaking if everyone is on the same fuel level.

Aren't they trying to rise overtaking in F1, less overtaking would be boring.

Quote from sam93 :

Yes, but I think it would be boring if the races was too short.
How much fuel can a current F1 fuel tank hold?

Depends on the car. As we saw at the Italian GP (IIRC), the Renault has a massive fuel tank as Piquet (or was it Alonso) went about 75% of the race without refuelling. Most I would think would last about 30-40 mins max.

http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/C ... gle-Seaters#BMW_Sauber_F1 - BF1 holds 95 litres.

i dunno, piquet in germany almost did 3/4 of the race in one tank, however it was wet so fuel usage will be low. nothing stop them from building bigger tanks though, if it's needed it will happen.

I wouldn't want to see the race being shorten, sprint race are for lower formulas and a grand prix should be "grand".

Certainly better than a spec engine.

I don't see why not, it worked fine in the 80's. If they make the cars easier to overtake and ban refueling that will mean the races are more about on track action than tactics, which everyone wants. There wouldn't be any problems with re-fueling when the safety car is out either.

I'm unsure about this. I guess it could be safer and all that, but IMO it's part of the sport. And I don't know what the penalties would be for refueling, but maybe some people would accept the penalty if they have a lead and to be faster.

Your forgetting that more overtaking maneuvers means more penalties handed out by the FIA. I'd love to see this rule come in though will mean that fuel strategies aren't what wins races. I bet all the people who calculate the fuel strategies are crapping themselves though at the thought of losing their job.

Quote from Knight_Atack :

I'm unsure about this. I guess it could be safer and all that, but IMO it's part of the sport.

Refuelling is probably safer as there is less fuel that needs to be kept in the fuel cell + grounding out and so-on at the start.

No need for a refueling ban - and the shorter races would fail. Keep refuelling how it is, if they want to cut costs they could simply take less people to the races or restrict how many employees a team can have. Or allow customer chassis.

it'll favour the drivers that use their brains, no one will be able to drive at 100 % all the race and expect their brakes etc to be in perfect condition at the end.

you'll get a mix of tactics, do you go off like a bat out of hell at the start and hope to hang on at the end or do you take a "prost" approach of taking it a bit easier while the cars heavy and then push at the end, last time you had no refueling the cars that paced themselves were often up to 3 secs a lap quicker than the leaders in later parts of the race so you should get some good end of race battles.

the fuel tanks will be big enough, the regs will reflect the lack of refueling and the cars will be designed to hold enough fuel, just dont expect it to come in until 2010 at the earliest as next years cars are already pretty finalised. what you probably will get is the amount of fuel being reduced yearly to promote efficiency and the use of kers. also it may make tyre choice a fair bit more interesting.

all in all i'm in favour and it will help with the green issue as it will look like F1 is trying to be more green and also it will make a big difference to the equipment being carried overseas with no refueling rigs, which will save on freight costs and the transport carbo footprint. we may not like it but if the sport doesn't acknowlage the green issue and the enviroment then it may find it's forced to yield to outside rules rather than ones it sets itself.


what will be interesting is what happens in qualifying, i'd assume that the last session will be a low fuel session like the others and then everyone fills up for the race, alternaively we may see a return to a similar system to in the past with just 1 session for everyone though may be lasting just 30 mins to ensure there are cars on the track for the cameras. what i'm pretty sure is that we wont have is the same system we have now as it would mean the top 10 cars would be eating into their race fuel in the last session whilst everyone else had full tanks for the race.

Quote from Knight_Atack :

I'm unsure about this. I guess it could be safer and all that, but IMO it's part of the sport. And I don't know what the penalties would be for refueling, but maybe some people would accept the penalty if they have a lead and to be faster.

don't forget refueling was banned before and it was only brought in because no one was passing on the track so if the new regs work next year it's not needed. i suspet the penalty will be the same as before, i.e. your car stops if it runs out of fuel

refueling never even occured as tactics in the modern era till gordon murry introduced it at brabham, it used to happen in fangio's era but in those days races were much longer. thats one reason i dislike refueling, just as rallying has been neutered into short sprints rather than the longer stages of the 70's and the drivers are now tucked up in bed at night rather than running all night, so f1 has become a series of 3 or occasionally 4 sprint races connected by refueling stops with the drivers never having to cope with heavy cars and having no respite for 2 hours or 200 miles ( this is another thing that anoys me, the regs state an F1 race should be 200 miles or 2 hours which ever comes first but these days the races despite finishing inside 2 hours are often shorter than the 200 mile mark )

Yes, bring it on but don't shorten the races! That would force the teams to produce engines with a good fuel economy... I never understood the forced pitstops anyway...

I think banning refuelling *could* work, certainly in any other organisation it could be made to work, whether F1 can get it right is another question. The refuelling rigs and their spares are a significant part of the air frieght that teams take to each race, those things are really heavy, and each team needs at least 2 (They get given 1 in their entrance fee and have to buy the other).

Engines could then be reduced in capacity to allow for the reduced fuel load, and we could re-introduce the variable boost turbo charger. Just like we had when they introduced mid race refuelling ! Back to how it was, before it was broken in the name of cost saving...

The problem is that F1 has shown time and time again that it cannot save money. There was a time when the cost of the fuel on an F1 grid was so high that it could fund an average family car to run 24/7 for 100,000 years. They got rid of super fuels, and the teams spent the money elsewhere.

You cant remove costs in F1, you can simply move what the teams spend money in. They have the money, they're going to spend it.

I'm expecting 2009 to be a bad year, major new rules meens higher field spread as the rich teams get the running start. End of the year will see panic changes to make it more exciting.

I hope they dont introduce a competetive element to Friday, I dont want a 3 day event. I'm happy checking the grid online on Saturday then cycling over to my folks house for the race. Why does it need to be 3 days?

agreed, i remember when they used to have qualifying on the friday and the saturday and it was your fastest time over the two days that counted, add in the 1hr practice on friday, saturday and sunday mornings and you ended up with loads of time spent for very little return.


the only way friday will be relevant is if they ban all or almost all testing apart from on all day friday. this would be great as it would make things a lot more unpredictable and also reduce a lot of the traveling / freight costs again but it'll never happen whilst ferrari have their own test track.

i meant to say also that if things carry on this year it won't be a drivers championship but a pit crew championship as they are costing drivers a lot of points. i always felt that the teams job was to build the fastest / most reliable car and it was the drivers job to get it from the start to the finish as quick as possible, not the mechanics. at the end of the day F1 is supposed to be the ultimate drivers championship and the ultimate constructors championship. not the ultimate forecourt workers championship.

"We've got to look at our agenda on Friday and decide whether that's a worthwhile agenda where we can make more spectacle and have a bit of competition on that day, and we're going to review what we do on Saturday and Sunday to see if we can make it a little bit less predictable."

I like the sound of that.

Quote from tinvek :

it'll favour the drivers that use their brains, no one will be able to drive at 100 % all the race and expect their brakes etc to be in perfect condition at the end.

you'll get a mix of tactics, do you go off like a bat out of hell at the start and hope to hang on at the end or do you take a "prost" approach of taking it a bit easier while the cars heavy and then push at the end, last time you had no refueling the cars that paced themselves were often up to 3 secs a lap quicker than the leaders in later parts of the race so you should get some good end of race battles.

That's just thinking back to what happened in the 1980s and it wouldn't apply today. Brake technology and materials are 30 years more advanced. and the races would be flat out sprints to the end with consumption controlled by computer (a la MotoGP).

Here's the big problem: they spend 2 days practicing and qualifying, then they put the fastest guys at the front and we expect the slower cars that start behind to overtake them. Fuel stops are the only saving grace at the moment because it means you can go light in Q3 and mix the grid up a bit.

If they want to cut costs and level the playing field then they should try the "claiming" rule that they are going to use in MotoGP 600 (or whatever the replacement for the 250s is called).

Please explain - is it something like autograss about must selling cars if a certain price is offered?

Exactly. So the FIA set a tariff of say £5m for a chassis and £1m for an engine. At the end of the weekend you can go to Ferrari's garage (or whoever) hand them over a cheque and they remove Kimi's fluffy dice (and hip flask no doubt) from the car and you take it home.

Quote from Storm_Cloud :

That's just thinking back to what happened in the 1980s and it wouldn't apply today. Brake technology and materials are 30 years more advanced. and the races would be flat out sprints to the end with consumption controlled by computer

teams still hav eproblems today with brakes. one of the worst tracks for causing them was / is montreal, yes they can be overcome but once again it means absolute speed is compramised due to unsprung weight increases, rotational mass being increased and the aero being affected by larger ducts etc plus ducts and other brake parts etc are limited in size by the regs

off topic but does anyone else remember the fia press bulletin issued when senna was disqualified from a race that was poorly translated into french and ended up saying it was for using oversize ducks ! on his car ? it even got translated back into english as ducks .

why dont they just have a pitstop window of 5 laps in the middle of the grand prix?
then they dont have to shorten the race, and they dont have to make the fuel tank larger either.

Quote from NSX_FReeDoM :

why dont they just have a pitstop window of 5 laps in the middle of the grand prix?
then they dont have to shorten the race, and they dont have to make the fuel tank larger either.

Champcar tried it before and it didn't really work out on open-wheelers...

I'm thinking why don't they just limit the amount of fuel they could use in the race, ie. put in a 100 litre fuel tank or whatever and ban refuelling, and bring back low fuel proper qualifying, and then let the team loose to do whatever they wants to the engine (as long as it still burns petrol), with KERS continue to be available.

that way, teams will really looks for creative way to save fuels, and hopfully technology will be invented, rather than spending billions and billions just to fine tune a little part for a little extra performance, cos rules are too restrictive.

As said modern technology of brakes etc I would of thought wouldn't cause too much of a problem. Whether they take out refuelling while making all the action happen on track the fast cars/drivers will still be fast so I don't see too much of a change in the running order.

As for qualifying though - I quite like the system now with them using race fuel (which obviously wouldn't be available with no pit stops) but now the 'group' of cars that they are racing they have to offset their fuel against them to either be light, quick but pit earlier or heavy and pit later. Mixes it up a bit