The rationale of Formula One's fuel consumption

[Pingguest]

Since this year fuel-efficiency has become a lot more important in Formula One. Both the fuel-flow as well as the fuel consumption during the race has been limited.

The more I read about the new rules and their purpose the more I understand the rationale behind the fuel-flow limit. This regulation meets the requirements of safety, cost-efficiency and fuel-efficiency. It ceteris paribus caps the engine's peak power, as only an improved efficiency will enable the manufacturers to increase the engine power.

The more I read about the rules and how other series have been searching for more fuel-efficiency and thus more eco-friendly and road relevant power trains, the less I understand the fuel consumption limit. With the fuel-flow limit in place the fuel consumption is effectively limited already and with refueling during the race banned, teams and their engine suppliers already have an incentive to reduce fuel consumption and thus the fuel load and weight they let their drivers start with. However, without a fuel consumption limit no regulation will prevent drivers from racing flat-out the entire race distance and no regulation will force them to lift and coast during a significant part of the race. The balance between racing flat-out and reducing fuel consumption will be a mere matter of strategy and tactics the driver and his team will have to figure out and execute.

I do think proper racing is about more than just driving fast; it is also about looking for the best race strategy and finding the best way of executing it. That is the very reason I am fundamentally against pit stops: let the drivers do their race and make them win or lose the Grand Prix on-track. From this point of view I am not in principle against any fuel consumption limit. But given fans' reactions to this regulations, however, one could argue Formula One should reconsider it. Interestingly, fuel consumption was effectively limited already during Formula One's first turbo-era in the 1980's. The fuel consumption rules were heavily criticized by many stakeholders, including drivers. Alain Prost got the nickname 'The Professor', because he was considered the master of finding the best possible fuel consumption strategy and fuel saving. But even the Frenchman was very critical about the fuel consumption limit.

All the time I thought about minimum boost, saving fuel. No, this was not racing but you still have to
find a way to win, a way to do it better than the others."

As a reaction Keith Duckworth came with the idea of a valve restricting the fuel-flow.

The same criticism is expressed against the current 100 kg fuel consumption limit. Race engineers make the drivers continuously aware about the fuel consumption and request them to slow down.

This makes me wonder what rationale was behind the fuel consumption limit, as the fuel-flow is already being limited. In my opinion it does not fit to the current regime mandating teams to qualify and race with the very same specifications either.

Could anyone enlighten me?

[langwadt]

I assume it is there to force them to actually use the KERS to brake and not just drive it with the engine, and so they don't just store away energy every time they don't need full power though that would be limited by the ES limits

[strad]

whole thing is a farce It's racing not a Mobil Gas Economy run

[Stradivarius]

I am not sure if they even use 100 kg of fuel in every race. After all, more often than not, we don't hear talk over the radio of saving fuel and during safety car, we have heard drivers, at least in one race I remember Rosberg, asking his team whether he should burn more fuel to make sure he wasn't running too heavy.

[Aesto]

I am not sure if they even use 100 kg of fuel in every race. After all, more often than not, we don't hear talk over the radio of saving fuel and during safety car, we have heard drivers, at least in one race I remember Rosberg, asking his team whether he should burn more fuel to make sure he wasn't running too heavy.

That only happens when there's a Safety Car or some other unpredictable event that causes a driver to slow down (for example being stuck behind a slower car or yellow flags in a sector for an extended time) and in such cases drivers will always need to burn fuel in order to not run heavy. They would do this even if the consumption limit per race was 50kg worth of fuel.

On topic: My understanding is that the purpose of the consumption limit, even though there already is a fuel-flow limit, is to make fuel-inefficient but performance-effective techniques such as off-throttle blowing (teams ran with more fuel than necessary purely for the aerodynamic benefit) useless. Granted, that particular one was banned already anyway, but chances are that sooner or later (and given that this is F1, sooner seems more likely), the teams would have come up with something else that would have run contrary to the concept of an innovative and environmentally-friendly formula.