A question about full-fuel tank racing

[rfs]

Hi. I've been lurking for a while and here's my first post.

What was the tyre degradation like the last time refueling was banned? I'm asking this because whenever I see races from 1989, 1990, 1991 etc I don't see everybody being forced to drive gingerly to prevent their tyres from being destroyed. Does anyone think drivers will be afraid to overtake for fear of flatspotting their tyres?

[Mysticf1]

Its a balancing act, one that Alain Prost was very good at, numerous times he would drop down the order only to re surge in the later laps with fresher tyres than his competitors.

how does this relate to todays race? no one knows, i dont think even the teams know at this point...its going to be a very interesting race with alot of thinking on their feet.

[riff_raff]

rfs,

Regarding your question, there's a lot of factors to consider. The cars are 20kg heavier than they were. But the aero downforce, suspension geometries and handling are also much more refined than 20 years ago. And so are the tire constructions and tread compounds. So getting a set of tires to last a race distance is probably more likely. Even for current F1 drivers that don't have "The Professor's" legendary soft touch.

It's a good thing re-fueling is gone. It was a feeble attempt to add an artificial sense of excitement to F1 racing. But it was not safe the way F1 handled it.

riff_raff

[rfs]

Its a balancing act, one that Alain Prost was very good at, numerous times he would drop down the order only to re surge in the later laps with fresher tyres than his competitors.

What about more aggressive drivers like Senna and Mansell?

[marcush.]

I´m pretty sure you can´t do anything aggressive with full tank + super softs.. if they ignore this Sutil and Barrichello will snap them up in no time...so the more dicing we see at the front the worse it will get..maybe they plan for an extreme short first stint? but turn it like up or down ,I have the impression that they all made a bad mistake in choosing the softs for the Q3 session ...for Button it made really no difference at all ,so the last who could dream of the pole was perhaps Rosberg but all others may have put the softs on for ego reasons and will get punished deerly...
why should the tyre have that massive dropoff only when the tanks are empty ...so given the more severe loading they will face a even more severe dropoff when trying to explore (and go over the limits ) of the tyres in the race..

[rfs]

Well it looks like people are now blaming the refueling ban for the lack of entertainment today. I wonder if it's just because of the aero or if all the tyre/engine/fuel conservation going on was a factor.

[mep]

Well it looks like people are now blaming the refueling ban for the lack of entertainment today. I wonder if it's just because of the aero or if all the tyre/engine/fuel conservation going on was a factor.

Yea, the ban of refueling is definitely responsible for reduced entertainment and I can’t even see why safety is increased by this.
I even think that it does exactly the opposite. Refueling demanded some time so there was enough time to do a safe tire change. Now pit stop time is all up to the tire changing so they are under much more pressure and have less time to change the tires. This will lead to more failed pit stops. Even in recent years we saw much more accidents due to rushing in pits than with refueling.

[roost89]

Now pit stop time is all up to the tire changing so they are under much more pressure and have less time to change the tires. This will lead to more failed pit stops. Even in recent years we saw much more accidents due to rushing in pits than with refueling.

Surely that'll count as excitement?

[dave34m]

I gotta say that watching those heavy cars going around slowly so tney didnt burn out the tyres was pretty boring. This change hasn't added to the excitment at all. This seems a stupid as the "no tyre cahnges" a few years ago. Why they have to make such extreme changes to this sport is beyond me

[marcush.]

this was exactly going as I feared .With the soft tyres and on full tank nobody really pushed and just maxed out what is in the tyres ,not really caring about track position..very early on drivers were told to conserve tyres...
I feel the problem in this scenario could only be erased if the tracks would allow for the pitstop laps time being just 2 or 3 seconds longer than taking the normal laps .this would spice up things as you could really wring ecverything out of the car and would have to do so.