Originally Posted by brundlebud:
“With re-fuelling they have to go as quickly as they can in order to open up gaps to make the fuel stop bring them out in the right place. They can't afford to coast because that will mean they aren't going quickly enough to make their spot when they come out. PLUS they'll be fuelled for X laps at the start and unlikely to be able to save enough to extend that, so therefore no point in fuel saving.”
“With re-fuelling they have to go as quickly as they can in order to open up gaps to make the fuel stop bring them out in the right place. They can't afford to coast because that will mean they aren't going quickly enough to make their spot when they come out. PLUS they'll be fuelled for X laps at the start and unlikely to be able to save enough to extend that, so therefore no point in fuel saving.”
It is actually very possible & very beneficial to extend fuel stints so even if you have refueling you still see a fair bit of fuel saving.
If you fuel for 20 laps you can quite easily extend the fuel stint by a couple laps by saving fuel & that will have strategic benefits later on as it allows you to take on less fuel during the stops which obviously results in faster stops.
As I said a few days back, Indycar has refueling but you still see a lot of fuel saving & you actually often see them using lift & coast more often than you see in F1 because of the benefits it can give you.
In terms of refueling in F1, Personally never liked it & I always felt it did far more harm to the racing than just about anything else. It shifted the focus towards strategy & away from the actual racing so we always ended up with most of the passing & bits of interest occurring in the pits rather than on the track which was something I never liked.
The other issue is that fuel strategy is far more reliant on the strategy guys & computer models in the pits rather than on the drivers. Drivers can have a say in changing tyre strategy, You can switch compounds or drive differently to manage the tyres to get more life out of them.
With refueling drivers are largely stuck doing whatever strategy the guys in the pits tell them is best with no real say in it themselves. If there fueled for 20 laps then you pit within that window (Maybe getting 2-4 laps if you saved enough fuel), While with tyres if you plan to go 20 laps but have kept the tyres in good condition you can keep going for as long as your able to keep your tyres at a good level of performance.




