Do you want Refueling back?

[Richard]

Manchild - In the old days the strategy mattered less because "things exploding" was more dominant.

[ringo]

It should be mentioned that Formula 1 is drivers' championship in the first place. The series lacked a constructors' championship until 1958, most fans are mainly or solely interested in the drivers' championship and that's the reason behind the banned of most driver aids.

With pit stops, especially with mid-race refuelling, not the drivers but their teams determine the race strategy. To try finding the best possible strategy teams use advanced business strategy computer software. In other words, with pit stops not the driver but the team aided by advanced software are in control. In my opinion this goes very much against the principle of Formula 1 being the ultimate drivers' championship.

Whatever you may say about the sport being about advanced software is a gross exaggeration, the driver still has to deliver.
For the strategy to work, the driver has to match what is required. I have seen this fail many times with drivers who aren't fast enough. But i've seen drivers asked for 3 tenths a lap and they deliver.
That's another thing i liked about refueling, there was more adrenalin flowing, since the cars were on the limit the whole race. In order for the fuel strategy to work, the driver had to be fast enough.
So in essence you can't really separate fueling from no refueling. It's the same thing strategy wise. One just has more variables.

Here's what refueling give you:

*Sprinting
which indirectly leads to more mistakes

which also leads to aggressive tyre wear rates.

*More asked from the driver physically and mentally, he has to be going 100% the whole way.
We have seen Jenson among other drivers trundle around waiting for disaster, when with refueling he'd just be very late for his pitstop and his race would be messed up.

*More engine failures

*Safer pitstops
wheel change time no longer critical, so less risk with flying wheels. Also more time to make adjustments on the car which adds to strategy.

* More variance with strategy
Slower cars may opt to fuel light at the start, or heavy depending on tyre strategy.
Teammates can run different fuel levels to distract and confuse competitors. Imagine what Ferrari would have done in abu dhabi!

*Force on track battles
If one car comes in for fuel, his car gets heavier and tyres are colder. The competitor that is still on the track will have a much lighter car with warm tyres.
If he runs into the heavier car on track, chances are a battle will ensue because one is much heavier.

* Cars a smaller, faster and better looking.

[mep]

Already been tried. It made qualifying less exciting because we never saw drivers and cars at their fastest and people questioned how well a driver had actually done in qualifying. It devalued qualifying in other words. It didn't actually do anything tangible to vary the race either. People simply guessed pretty accurately what lap a driver would be coming in before published fuel weights confirmed it.

Qualy is not important, you dont even get a single point for it and the average fans don't watch it anyway. Why should they? It's a rather boring thing. Therefore it is ok when it has little value when you get good races by the rule. At the moment the boring qualy is way to important. After the qualy you can almost say who will win the race and who not as there is little change during the race.

Fuel loads should be kept secret after qualy.

Already been tried. See above.

You can try to guess the fuel load but there will always be surprises. You never know if a driver got a good or bad lap. For sure there are good reasons to keep it hiden.

The average races should feature 2 or 3 stop strategies with the possibility to go exotic with 1, 4 or even 5 stops (Magny Cours).

Well that's lovely, but how are you going to force teams to use different strategies? What you'd like to see is irrelevant. Like I said, the number crunchers all come up with an optimal number of stops and times to stop and no one does anything different because it simply costs them in time and results.

Its not hard to achieve this as we have already seen in the past. 2 or 3 stop strategies resulted in almost the same race time so you could chose both. Furthermore the theoretical best strategie does not always work in reality. 3 stops can be the theoretical fastest strategy but when you end up in traffic it does't pay of. Thats how you bring the teams to think about different strategies and you can give another variable with the tires as I said in my last post.
I recomment you to watch a couple of races of the last years. 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 where all very exciting seasons with super races. 2009 was rather boring and 2010 went even more boring.

I can't see this discussion going anywhere.

Well I am wondering if it makes sense to discuss with you at all.
Maybe I should ask JohnsonsEvilTwin about it. Seems like he already got some experience with you. As for me I can tell you that I am not willing to talk with you any longer in such a style.

[Formula None]

Do you want Refueling back?

Yes, but only if the pit stops are banned in exchange!

[timbo]

Heh
I'm all for refueling if it's done like this -
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp7P3PgxrNE[/youtube]

[gridwalker]

Now THAT is my idea of refuelling

[komninosm]

I think some of you are glorifying the past a little too much.
Look on the relative pace of the cars, and also the differences in technology among the teams and then you'll see why what worked then wont work now.

The idea that the racing was better could also be delusions of grandeur. Things always look much better, or more hardcore when we look back.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo[/youtube]

I think the highlight reels of the past bring back the good times, when in reality the good times may well be few and far between.

Judging from this decade alone, where the technology and competition were closest amongst the teams, I much preffered refuelling.

2010 leaves much to be desired for racing. Not much hot pursuits this year like the past couple years.

Well said my friend and fellow Monty Python fan :p

[komninosm]

It should be mentioned that Formula 1 is drivers' championship in the first place. The series lacked a constructors' championship until 1958, most fans are mainly or solely interested in the drivers' championship and that's the reason behind the banned of most driver aids.

With pit stops, especially with mid-race refuelling, not the drivers but their teams determine the race strategy. To try finding the best possible strategy teams use advanced business strategy computer software. In other words, with pit stops not the driver but the team aided by advanced software are in control. In my opinion this goes very much against the principle of Formula 1 being the ultimate drivers' championship.

Whatever you may say about the sport being about advanced software is a gross exaggeration, the driver still has to deliver.
For the strategy to work, the driver has to match what is required. I have seen this fail many times with drivers who aren't fast enough. But i've seen drivers asked for 3 tenths a lap and they deliver.
That's another thing i liked about refueling, there was more adrenalin flowing, since the cars were on the limit the whole race. In order for the fuel strategy to work, the driver had to be fast enough.
So in essence you can't really separate fueling from no refueling. It's the same thing strategy wise. One just has more variables.

Here's what refueling give you:

*Sprinting
which indirectly leads to more mistakes

which also leads to aggressive tyre wear rates.

*More asked from the driver physically and mentally, he has to be going 100% the whole way.
We have seen Jenson among other drivers trundle around waiting for disaster, when with refueling he'd just be very late for his pitstop and his race would be messed up.

*More engine failures

*Safer pitstops
wheel change time no longer critical, so less risk with flying wheels. Also more time to make adjustments on the car which adds to strategy.

* More variance with strategy
Slower cars may opt to fuel light at the start, or heavy depending on tyre strategy.
Teammates can run different fuel levels to distract and confuse competitors. Imagine what Ferrari would have done in abu dhabi!

*Force on track battles
If one car comes in for fuel, his car gets heavier and tyres are colder. The competitor that is still on the track will have a much lighter car with warm tyres.
If he runs into the heavier car on track, chances are a battle will ensue because one is much heavier.

* Cars a smaller, faster and better looking.

We really think alike man. Take care.

[alexbarwell]

Remember the benefits of KERS were largely cancelled BECAUSE of refuelling - it became a marginal boost, rather than the economy and range extension that it has proved to offer in the flybrid equipped porkers and is a serious part of ACO plans for LMS. Some of the races had the likes of Weber unable to defend an inital lead as he had done for his fuel load, so those that had been more efficient in style made it past. Much like screaming away at the start and toasting all your tyres before the end. Maybe if refuelling was permitted BUT not in the same pitstop as tyres affecting a drive-through type of penalty for stuffing up the fuel load (and running lighter for longer)

[mep]

The idea behind racing is simple: Cover a given distance in shortest time.

You have to try and search for smart ideas to achieve this. One of those is to refuel the car during the race. This means that refueling is not something artificial like some here tried to make it look like. Refueling is something natural and logical born from the basic idea quoted above.

[myurr]

The idea behind racing is simple: Cover a given distance in shortest time.

You have to try and search for smart ideas to achieve this. One of those is to refuel the car during the race. This means that refueling is not something artificial like some here tried to make it look like. Refueling is something natural and logical born from the basic idea quoted above.

So are traction control, abs, flexing body parts, active suspension, etc. Just because they make the cars faster, doesn't mean it's a good thing for the sport. It should be the case that by banning refuelling the balance of the cars should vary over a race distance, making them more difficult to drive and thus improving the racing. This was negated to some degree this year thanks to the movable front wing, now banned, and the double diffuser making it more difficult to follow the car in front, also now banned.

If the wheel to wheel racing still hasn't improved next year then, if there are no new loopholes being exploited, I'll concede that banning refuelling hasn't helped as expected and it should be looked at. As it is the refuelling years produced some of the most dull on-track races in F1's history, with drivers routinely just waiting for the pit stops in order to pass. Exciting on paper for some, but pretty visually dull to most. Surely it's best to give the refuelling ban a decent chance to make a difference.

[ringo]

There are few races in 2010 that can compare to their refueling counterpart.

these all paled in comparison this year:

bahrain, malaysia(save for the ferrari and mclaren qualifying poorly), spain, monaco, turkey, europe, britian, germany, singapore, japan, brasil, abu dhabi.

The only races that are pretty hard to put down this year are:

Australia, thanks to hamilton,
Canada, thanks to tyres and Hamilton & Alonso,
China, thanks to rain, Hamilton again
Budapest, thanks to Webber's drive after Vettel messed up
Korea- never ran before.

2010 was ok, but it wasn't visually stunning. 4 drivers going into the last race with a chance for the wdc doesn't mean it was exciting or o refueling made it happen.
Take flashy hamilton out of the season, and it's as boring as they come.

As it is the refuelling years produced some of the most dull on-track races in F1's history, with drivers routinely just waiting for the pit stops in order to pass. Exciting on paper for some, but pretty visually dull to most.

It's hard to agree on this. 2009 made things look worse than they are.

[Florio]

I don't think refuelling is the problem for the 'lack of overtaking' some are saying on here. You want big stategy calls then have a wide range in compounds, or tyres that wont last the whole race (Canada is a great example). I know Pirelli won't do it....it would look bad on them as a whole, but thats what gives great races.

[andrew]

Refueling and tyre stops are not key to real overtaking but create a high speed game of leapfrog.

The problem is that the cars can't get close enough to the car in front without damaging the tyres.

The solution to improving racing is simple:

• Slow the cars down - if you want cars that are stupidly fast then stick to computer games.
  Reduce downforce and the overall reliance on areo and design the cars to be more reliant on mechanical grip.
  Reduce braking efficency to increase the braking zone distances - that might bring back the "last of the late brakers" type passing.

Complaining about Herman Tilke and his tracks is only a very small part of the whole overtaking thing though if the cars were sorted out as above, then maybe his tracks won't appear so terrible (apart from Valencia - street circuits are rarely good!).

On another point, the poll above needs a 3rd option. I suggest that an option of sometjhing along the lines of "Refueling is only a sticking plaster solution and only creates false overtaking". At the moment, I cannot vote as I don't think this is a simple Yes or No question.

[segedunum]

*Sprinting
which indirectly leads to more mistakes

which also leads to aggressive tyre wear rates.

Well, no, because tyres were changed at every stop so tyres had no bearing whatsoever over 90% of the time. In 2005 when tyres were a finely balanced factor we got the variances we'd been desiring for some time.

I don't know about these mistakes you speak of. We've had a simlar number as in previous years, perhaps more.

*Safer pitstops
wheel change time no longer critical, so less risk with flying wheels. Also more time to make adjustments on the car which adds to strategy.

Christ. Did you see the cars departing with the fuel line attached?

* More variance with strategy
Slower cars may opt to fuel light at the start, or heavy depending on tyre strategy.
Teammates can run different fuel levels to distract and confuse competitors. Imagine what Ferrari would have done in abu dhabi!

This is a complete myth for reasons already stated. The number crunchers in the end all came up with the same optimal strategy and the variables were miniscule. We waited for fifteen years for the wild variances in strategy we were promised, and they never happened. It simply became a means for teams to keep their cars in front if nothing else. Experience has taught as, as did 2005, that tyres are a far, far bigger variable when emphasised.

People are just repeating what they've already said in this thread, completely ignoring the reasons stated as to why refuelling didn't work the way it was intended for fifteen years. This thread has become pretty useless.