Fuel Level Cause Race Disrepute

[Clew]

FIA allows teams instruct their drivers to "hold position" to conserve fuel levels. Why are fans racing experience hampered by this "loop hole" in racing / technical regulations?

Fans wake up at obnoxious hours to watch a race only to discover the last 5 laps or so, drivers are told to stop racing to maintain fuel levels. Team principals certainly agree with Ross Brawn answering critics by saying, "From a technical perspective, we would have looked extremely foolish if we'd run both cars out of fuel"

From a fan's viewing perspective, the race looks foolish when drivers are told to no longer race

I don't understand why FIA allows this to happen. Are we watching a race or are we watching how well teams calculate fuel consumption?

[raymondu999]

Are we watching a race or are we watching how well teams calculate fuel consumption?

I think what you're missing out here is that with engineering skill and expertise st this level - they shouldn't be miscalculating fuel consumption. As such - it's a variable that should not form a "differentiating variable" at all.

Humans make mistakes, sure. But if they simply miscalculate the fuel level, and no one else along the chain spots the erroneously low figure, you have to ask whether they should be in F1, in a way.

[Clew]

With all do respect raymondu999, we all know F1 is the pinnacle of motor car racing when considering engineering inputs and outputs of raw material fabrication and race strategy. Fuel consumption errors have existed and caused problems for several races over the years. I won't search the net for examples.

I guess what I'm asking is how can we eliminate fuel consumption errors...or better still, how can we penalize teams for their fuel consumption errors?

If lollipop guy releases a car too soon from box and causes an infraction with another team, human error is cause for FIA penalty to the team

If mathematics is incorrectly applied to wheel nut gun torque application, we witness the nut fall off thread...the wheel bounce around the track...and ultimately team suffers a FIA penalty due to human error

Where is FIA deterrent for fuel consumption miscalculations? No penalty.

Surely Newton watching the race would have commented on how ridiculous it is to watch the pinnacle of motor racing only to hear team principle say stop racing due to the dependent variable or time derivatives miscalculations

[flynfrog]

I don't believe you are seeing miscalculation you are seeing teams on the losing side of a bet. THey were hoping for more rain a safety car ect.

[Clew]

Okay, okay, okay...whether insufficient fuel level is due to miscalculation or a teams active strategic "bet"....how do FIA set up a deterrent to remove insufficient fuel level instance from races?

[hollus]

a) From an engineering point of view: There was no fueling error.
The fastest way around a 305Km race is slightly underfueled at the beginning. You get more lap time and tire life out of carrying 10Kg less for half the race than you lose for saving fuel throughout the race. Plus most races are largely decided at the last pit stop, there is a time penalty for saving fuel from there on, but often there is no associated position penalty.
Also, had there been a safety car, or had it rained for longer, both Mercedes would have been fueled optimally, everybody else would have been overfuelled, and they would have looked like heros that came from behind in the race.

b) From a sporting point of view: Who says that every race is expected to be 100% at maximum effort every lap?
Have you seen any soccer? A league has 30-40 games. When a team gets 1-0 ahead, it starts speculating and letting time pass by, as taking risks is very un-advantageous in soccer. If they get 2-0, often both coaches give up the game and start giving minutes to future talent and saving their stars from getting injured. Nobody complains or find it unusual.
Have you seen much basketball? The regular league is ~30 games in Europe (70+ in USA). If the a team is 10 points behind and hasn't gotten anyone rested, they might accept defeat and try to just keep the distance small, for the possible value of the points difference in the future. Nobody complains or find it unusual.
Why should F1, a sport with a season consisting of 20 races, be any different?

[Pup]

Cars used to run out of fuel all the time back in the day. Even when we had refueling a few years ago there was the occasional DNF from running out of fuel. McLaren, I'm looking at you. Anyway, you can do all the math you want, but those numbers will never control the driver's foot, or race traffic, or rain, or extra pit stops, or, or, or...

Besides, the rules don't just allow teams to hold position because of fuel. They allow them to hold position, or swap positions, for whatever reason they want.

[raymondu999]

Okay, okay, okay...whether insufficient fuel level is due to miscalculation or a teams active strategic "bet"....how do FIA set up a deterrent to remove insufficient fuel level instance from races?

By ensuring that every race has a predictable number of safety cars - and predictably 100% dry weather.

Gambling is human nature, especially when the odds are as fine as they are in F1 - a blink of an eye can mean the difference between winning a title and runner up (as the cars are now all within tenths of one another). Gambling is something you can never take out of the equation, unless they know for damn sure they'll be running at racing pace for a full distance - in which case the incentive to gamble goes away, for the most part. Even if it was a predictably dry race with no safety cars -races such as Bahrain for example - some teams will bank on the lighter fuel load at rhe start being more advantage than the fuel saving disadvantage later on.

Mercedes in malaysia 2013 and China 2011 thought they'd be slower and racing in the pack - hence using other cars' slipstreams, which saves your fuel. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) they were running in clean air and the drag ofclean air took more fuel than they had planned for.

Again - I do not believe that teams in F1 miscalculate fuel consumption. Even if they do, it would be a one-off. The examples we have nowadays are all of failed gambles - not miscalculated fuel levels. Abu Dhabi 2012 qualifying notwithstanding (Vettel)

[WhiteBlue]

Lets hope that the problem will go away next year when they are all forced to carry much less fuel. The engines will be a lot more efficient and there should be less performance potential in additional fuel saving than there is now.

[mep]

All what has been said here is true, however this fuel saving is just a lame excuse from the teams to justify their team orders. The drivers can both set their cars to max fuel saving and still race against each other. Mercedes simply did not want to risk a crash when the drivers kept fighting against each other. Even in fuel save mode Nico could still have overtaken Hamilton by using the DRS. Not to mention that Nico himself said he had enough fuel which actually shows that the Mercedes team brings up an excuse and lies for that.

[Clew]

F1 gambling strategy is based on a probability models of controlled variables...mathematics. The fans perspective is somewhat diminished as a result of miscalculations to the probability curves of fuel consumption. F1 only has 20 races. To the casual-social fan, they are not aware of the nuances of the sport and may not even care so long as their Red team, or Silver or Blue team wins.

But to the serious technically and strategically savvy F1 viewer, it sucks to see 1 out of 20 races, 2 races in the season, be ruined by miscalculation of probability.

[Clew]

All what has been said here is true, however this fuel saving is just a lame excuse from the teams to justify their team orders. The drivers can both set their cars to max fuel saving and still race against each other. Mercedes simply did not want to risk a crash when the drivers kept fighting against each other. Even in fuel save mode Nico could still have overtaken Hamilton by using the DRS. Not to mention that Nico himself said he had enough fuel which actually shows that the Mercedes team brings up an excuse and lies for that.

BINGO MEP!!!! Team orders suck. Lets hope WhiteBlue is right with the problem going away next year with new engine formula....or at the very least, fewer incidents of obvious application of team orders.

[hollus]

Seriously, I think we are all spoilt from 5-6 consecutive seasons of great racing and (mostly) last race drama. I do not watch a soccer game expecting it to finish 5-4 with the winner coming from behind in the last 20 minutes, but I love it when it happens. We should be happy that this has effectively happened a lot in F1 lately, but it is not the normal state of affairs.

[Pup]

But to the serious technically and strategically savvy F1 viewer, it sucks to see 1 out of 20 races, 2 races in the season, be ruined by miscalculation of probability.

Well, there's a reason that bridge building hasn't evolved into the spectator sport it was once hoped to be. We don't expect F1 teams to play it safe and get things right 100% of the time - that would be, well, boring. We want them on the edge of everything, and that includes their fuel calculations.

I have to ask if you're a recent fan of the sport? The cars are so much more reliable today than ten years ago and the same can be said for their fuel calculations. It used to be that the fear of not finishing added half the tension to watching the race.

And as I said before, the fuel isn't an excuse for team orders - they don't need an excuse, they just frickin do it. It's allowed.

[Clew]

Seriously, I think we are all spoilt from 5-6 consecutive seasons of great racing and (mostly) last race drama. I do not watch a soccer game expecting it to finish 5-4 with the winner coming from behind in the last 20 minutes, but I love it when it happens. We should be happy that this has effectively happened a lot in F1 lately, but it is not the normal state of affairs.

Agreed .....I wonder if it's safe to say, obvious application of team orders recognized by F1 fans are a result of a teams strategy going horribly wrong