Anyone Else Sick Of The Fuel Saving Section In Races???

[N12ck]

I cannot stand fuel saving during races, it prevents a driver who's quicker being able to catch up with the leader as he has to save fuel. Aside from that another annoying factor is saving tyres

Put more fuel in at the start then.

It is actually one of the least artificial parts of racing, teams calculate and put as much fuel as they think will make them finish as high as possible. No-one actually makes them put a certain amount of fuel in the car.

if they put more fuel they cant be quicker and catch up.

The only way to solve this is to have an FIA mandated minimum amount of fuel at the start, which would be same for everyone and would be 20 to 30 lit higher than what they have now.

I agree, this would solve it, no more fuel saving!!! it ruins races!!!

[Paul]

And burning excessive fuel is exciting? Remember when they used to do it in quali? If teams think they need 20 kilos less fuel for optimum race performance, they will engage some silly engine map and burn it in first 5 laps of the race... Or do 20 installation laps before the start...

[N12ck]

And burning excessive fuel is exciting? Remember when they used to do it in quali? If teams think they need 20 kilos less fuel for optimum race performance, they will engage some silly engine map and burn it in first 5 laps of the race... Or do 20 installation laps before the start...

I would personally prefer to see drivers pushing for the whole race (like in 2008) rather than teams looking for an advantage by underfueling them and having to save fuel which stops a potential battle from happening. How many times have we seen a driver who has been pushing really hard, is lapping faster than the leaders and would catch the leaders at the pace they were going at -get told to save fuel, which stops a potential battle for the win. I would rather see drivers pushing the whole race than conserve fuel IMO. Saving fuel and saving tyres doesn't scream pinnacle of motorsport to me,

Nick

[Paul]

Sure, that would be nice, but it is really hard to force them to do so. Too much is at stake for teams to just let their drivers loose.

[richard_leeds]

I disagree. This is a sport that relies as much on strategy and planning as it does on raw speed. What should count is the fastest time to the finish. Usually the car with more fuel is slower to the flag.

[marcush.]

I think the teams are tending to err on the wrong side of fuel loads at the start of the race ,deliberately playing the game of being able to build a cushion by running underfueled and using that speed advantage through lower weight.
And as this usually works both ways(you can save quite a bit of fuel tucking in behind the car in front of you and not attacking all the time),it seems the teams play that game to the extremes ,robbing themselves of opportunities when things not quite pan out as that.
Sure one can say all that strategy calculation and feeding in infos of other competitors it seems people seem to converge all to the same strategies even if they are super ambitous in certain areas -fuel -or monkey see monkey do -tyre choice-
I´m a bit at a loss here what to think about all this.

[Paul]

You sure are right about playing to the extremes. They risk in each race, betting on their calculations being right, and sometimes lose. But I imagine that in the long run, over the course of the whole season, they win. That could be something for teams to evaluate over the off-season, how much points they gained/lost by trusting their calculations vs. being conservative all the time...

[marcush.]

calculating risks is counter productive in my view when it comes to race strategies.
certainly the outcome of races are quite often pivotal and this due to people deciding on things in the way they do .
Last race .Maldonato putting pressure on alonso crew by pitting early for example.
They deliberately played the game wwith alonso who had lost a Championship by looking too close to their obvious opponent in the championship (Webber) and completely missing the point in doing so.
Mind you in consequence Ferrari is now not following the strategies of anyone and in this they lost basically any chance to catch Maldonato.
Perhaps they could not even if they tried (as their tyre endurance might have been worse than Maldonatos ) but I think Ferrari would have put the pressure back on WGP following in the slipstream and diving into the pits at the same time.
just look at Kobayashi ..he does overtake at points of the track nobody even seees a half chance it was possible...I´m also sure guys like coulthard could not perform such a move and make it stick ...so calculating risks is useless when not accounting what the guys involved can bear in terms of pressure.

[Cam]

I don't mind the fuel savings, so long as there's a way around it. No team has (or is allowed due to regs) found a way to complete a race faster while using less fuel. There lies the key. It's going to take a very clever idea to either use that same fuel load better via a better engine (maybe like a hybrid) or some other innovation to either force the other teams to change tactics or develop something else. Imagine Toyota coming back to F1 next year running a Hybrid engine - and winning! Boy oh boy I'd love to see that. Maybe BMW comes back and runs a split petrol/hydrogen setup. They might remove KERS and DRS, use the weight savings for other things - man, that's the F1 I want to see.