Do you want Refueling back?

[ringo]

Experience has taught as, as did 2005, that tyres are a far, far bigger variable when emphasised.

Explain this. What do you mean by emphasized? and give an example.


Keep in mind, F1 had 2 manufacturers in 2005. How does that relate to F1 now, and what "variables" are you hoping to see?

[myurr]

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.

Equally though would refuelling have made those races any more exciting? Instead of fighting through the field we probably would have seen Hamilton stuck on a high fuel load to try and gain as others pit.

If you want exciting races you need to make sure that the cars can follow each other closely and at least fight for an overtake; and that the cars relative pace varies throughout the race, or radically different strategies are equally fast over a race distance, or cars don't qualify in order of fastest at the front.

Refuelling doesn't help with any of that, except maybe allowing some cars to qualify in front of others due to running short. But all that does is lead to races where the faster car waits until that short fuelled car pits and then assumes the lead - not exactly edge of the seat stuff.

[komninosm]

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

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.

Enough with this safety BS already. Cars departing with their fuel line attached can be avoided by a simple failsafe sensor. The risk can be made so abysmally small that it is dwarfed by the added risks of larger fuel tanks and large amounts of fuel on track pose, not to mention the higher risk of accidents due to fast, tire only, pit-stops. Go ask a risk-management consultant.

You are right though. This thread has become pretty useless. People keep just repeating what has already been said in this thread, ignoring the true facts and logical reasonings that have already been stated. Just like you did in your post. So if you don't like this thread, stop reading it and posting in it and derailing it with your abuse of people and logic and facts.

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.

Exactly! This is the true purist approach. =D>
And to answer myurr, traction control, abs, flexing body parts, active suspension, etc. are specific driver aids that were banned for that reason (though as an engineer I was sad to see em go). Refueling is not a driver aid in that capacity. It is a team strategy criteria available to all teams. By your reasoning, why not ban tire changes too? Your position completely lacks any merit. Your other arguments weren't bad, but this one is.

[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 refuelling is not something artificial like some here tried to make it look like. Refuelling 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.

I expected a reaction like this.
Traction control, abs, active suspension, manual gearbox, anti stall,... have something in common. They are electronically controlled. Electronics create something like an artificial intelligence. In the worst case you can remove the driver from the car and steer it completely by a PC. For me the use of intelligent electronics is a way of cheating and therefore should be banned.

Flexing body parts, diffusers and f-ducts are a different story. They make the car more efficient just by the use of physical laws without covering any problem with an electronic device. In principal those things should not be banned because they are part of the "engineering race". In fact these things are aspects that make the sport attractive.
Albeit I can understand that some of them get banned to keep the car speed on a resonable and secure level. What I can not understand is that a movable rear wing gets allowed for 2011 but the f-duct gets banned. That means allowing a out fashioned, heavy, electronical device for a state of the art pure aerodynamical device.

[myurr]

I agree that the rear wing next year is horrific, and I actually agree with you regarding all the other items and why they're banned. Where I disagree is that refuelling somehow is different from those other items and that it in any way adds to the racing.

When it was first announced that it was to be banned most on this board were happy, the general feeling being that it added nothing to the show and led to processional races. Removing it may not have aided the racing this year but as I have stated, and no one has refuted it, this was mainly due to other factors that are hopefully being addressed next year. Principally tyre life being ridiculously long, adjustable front wings helping maintain the balance of the car, and the double diffuser and general downforce levels making it too difficult to follow and pass another car. I'd add to that list the brakes being too powerful but that's unlikely to be changed any time soon, but it would help the racing if braking distances were significantly increased leading to more mistakes and more opportunity for the driver and the car to make a difference.

[mep]

When it was first announced that it was to be banned most on this board were happy, the general feeling being that it added nothing to the show and led to processional races. Removing it may not have aided the racing this year but as I have stated, and no one has refuted it, this was mainly due to other factors that are hopefully being addressed next year.

If it helps you I will deny this claim.
I never was happy about the ban I hated it from the first second on and I knew why and I got approved by some really dull situations this year. Maybe the ban of refuelling made on track passes even harder. At least I can't remember of a situation where a driver had a 1 second quicker car but got desperate because there really was no way to pass the truck in front of him. I must admit that I am surprised that it will stay for another year. I expected refuelling to be allowed after this year.


How the things mentioned by you affect overtaking is questionable and maybe to much for this topic. The movable front wing for example should make overtaking easier because you can adjust it to the lack of front downforce when you run close to another car. Regarding the diffusor some people here in the forum claim that it helps overtaking when most of the aero is coming from the floor. I think these kind of statements lack some kind of investigation. It is hard to say what really helps. In my opinion you need a significant slip stream effect to make overtaking easy. You get this when the cars have high drag, and the cars generate drag when they have wings with a high angle of a attack. So what they want to do with the movable rear wing is counter productive because this reduces the drag on the straights. It will be used like KERS to protect positions. Just keep this in mind next year you might say everybody was happy about it in the beginning.

[747heavy]

mep
as it is intented, only the car behind can flaten it´s rear wing.
So the car in front will still "punch a hole in the air" with it´s rear wing in high downforce position.
But we go too far off-topic.

[WhiteBlue]

From a technical point of view refueling should remain banned.

• Re fueling does not set an incentive to design race cars for more efficiency. It tends to be coupled with unlimited fuel use which IMO is not the right way to go and sets all the wrong signals.
• Re fueling is inherently less safe than a re fueling ban. The increased entertainment aspect compares unfavorably with the increased risk of death and injury to drivers and mechanics.
• Re fueling is almost certainly coupled with race fuel qualifying which destroys a great traditional challenge and robs the viewers of the only objective way to compare team mates and cars.
• Re fueling encourages off track passing in the pits and helps perpetuate the tinkering with aero rules, which ultimately is a masturbatory process for F1. There is no real satisfaction in becoming a constructor champion by finding the next loop hole in some arcane aero regulations that tend to transform the cars into moving chicanes.

[raymondu999]

I think people are kind of confused in that what they really hate is that the cars are saving fuel/tyres and not going flat out doing 50 qualifying laps each race. I know that's what I don't like about no refueling. I like this new no-refuelling formula, but what I don't like is how the teams then try to save fuel/tyres. To me, the ideal form is a non-refuelling formula 1, but with all the teams going flat out every lap.

Now I'm not a very knowledgeable guy in terms of tyres, but would it be possible to, say, create tyres with a compound that kind of only lasts x laps no matter what? i.e. even if they go flat out/save tyres it'll still last, say... 20 laps.

[segedunum]

Explain this. What do you mean by emphasized? and give an example.

Where tyres become a limiting factor. They never were under refuelling because they were effectively changed for free where fuel had a bigger and known impact on performance.

Keep in mind, F1 had 2 manufacturers in 2005. How does that relate to F1 now, and what "variables" are you hoping to see?

It shows that when you put tyres on the edge it's a far bigger unkown than any refuelling strategy that anyone already knows about.

It's like I've slipped into a parallel dimension where the last fifteen years never happened.

[segedunum]

Enough with this safety BS already. Cars departing with their fuel line attached can be avoided by a simple failsafe sensor.

This is bollocks. If a driver pulls away with the fuel line still attached we are going to see what we saw with Massa at Singapore as well as Kovalainen doing the same thing last year that resulted with fuel in Raikkoenen's eyes. Nothing is going to stop that and nothing has. No simple 'failsafe sensor' is going to stop that and and I don't know where you're getting that made up fantasy from.

The risk can be made so abysmally small that it is dwarfed by the added risks of larger fuel tanks

Larger fuel tanks where not a drop of fuel is spilt, and hasn't been for some time, and where refuelling is done in a safe and static environment.

...not to mention the higher risk of accidents due to fast, tire only, pit-stops. Go ask a risk-management consultant.

We've had more serious accidents in the pits with refuelling, from Verstappen's fireball to Kovalainen's attached fuel line, than we have had at any time in F1's history without. Stop with this 'risk management consultant' crap as if you know what you're talking about.

[ringo]

Enough with this safety BS already. Cars departing with their fuel line attached can be avoided by a simple failsafe sensor.

This is bollocks. If a driver pulls away with the fuel line still attached we are going to see what we saw with Massa at Singapore as well as Kovalainen doing the same thing last year that resulted with fuel in Raikkoenen's eyes. Nothing is going to stop that and nothing has. No simple 'failsafe sensor' is going to stop that and and I don't know where you're getting that made up fantasy from.

Poor Kimi, he got fuel in his eyes, what a tragedy.
That fool should have had his visor closed, that was a breach of safety on his part.

As for felipe, i can't remember any serious injuries relating to the refueling itself.
A driver is just as likely to mow down a pit crewman without refueling, it's all down to what stops the clock, either tyres or fuel. It's his or his loli pop man's fault.

There have been no serious injuries relating to fuel leaks during the post 2000, refuling era.
The drivers have on fire proof gears; they're pretty safe if there is a flash fire.
Most of the times the torn off hoses are to be blamed on human era, it's never about the fuel rig equipment.
In the same way, an accident on the track is blamed on a driver most of the time. It's impossible for this sport to be perfectly safe; it's up to the men and women involved to be responsible for their well being.

[ringo]

Explain this. What do you mean by emphasized? and give an example.

Where tyres become a limiting factor. They never were under refuelling because they were effectively changed for free where fuel had a bigger and known impact on performance.

Be more specific. I can't remember any race where similarly quick teams running the same tyre brand had differing race strategy because of the tyre.
Tyres were theoretically a limiting factor, but it never materialized. All teams had the same thing to deal with tyre wise. The differing brands, michelin and BS are giving the illusion tyre add variation.
2011 wont be like 2005; 1 tyre make and no refueling. Just wait and see.

[segedunum]

Poor Kimi, he got fuel in his eyes, what a tragedy.
That fool should have had his visor closed, that was a breach of safety on his part. As for felipe, i can't remember any serious injuries relating to the refueling itself.

Jesus Christ. It ignited in the cockpit as Kovalainen's fuel hose snaked and spilt fuel all down the pitlane, and like it or lump it, all drivers will have their visor open slightly for cooling and vision. Massa almost dragged his whole pit crew with him.

Most of the times the torn off hoses are to be blamed on human era, it's never about the fuel rig equipment.

What's that got to do with anything? It happens, as well as stuck rig equipment.

If you're going to troll now Ringo because you feel you have nothing more to say on this because you desperately want to justify your preference then please, don't bother.

[gridwalker]

I doubt if it will change anyone's mind, but I used to work as a risk management consultant for the UK Department For Transport (back in 2004).

If anyone cares to ask me, the fuel is much safer when contained in a bullet-proof kevlar sack coated in carbon fibre than it ever will be whilst being pumped through a hose under high pressure.

Additionally, the fuel contained in the tank (the afforementioned kevlar sack) is only a primary risk to the driver, whilst the fuel being pumped is a danger to the whole pit crew. Refuelling amplifies the danger by an order of magnitude by exposing a much larger number of people to the risk, whilst increasing the chance of leakage and vapourisation.

Ergo, refuelling is the least safe option.

Ringo : Maybe you should check the crudentials of the people on the other side of the argument before you tell us to ask for a professional opinion.