The 2021 F1 Season.
- Thread starter Tony Lockhart
- Start date
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
Must be Balto-Ugric solidarity...
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Didn’t run out!
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
I'm surprised the cars don't have a reserve fuel tank say with the minimum of 1 litre needed for scrutineering. Or maybe they could have say a 5 litre reserve and an alarm and then the driver and team know they are very low on fuel if it comes into play. Or perhaps this isn't mandated in the rules? Or do the teams just want the weight saving? I thought teams now add weight strategically to make the minimum car weight?
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
They knew what they were doing.
Might explain why Vettel didn’t try too hard to overtake Ocon… he’d have used more fuel, not finished.
Might explain why Vettel didn’t try too hard to overtake Ocon… he’d have used more fuel, not finished.
Eyebroughty
JohnC
As usual in F1, it is complicated and we make it more complicated as part of the overall optimization process.
The financial cost to make a car underweight is large, but at times, there are significant performance gains from making it underweight. This is because you can adjust the weight distribution, which gives you a powerful tool to adjust vehicle balance and in addition enable a better aero configuration to be used. So even if underweight, you want to put your mass in the right place on the car, and that is very unlikely to be in the fuel tank.
The teams have very accurate flow meters (at various locations on the fuel line and are FIA supplied) and know exactly how much fuel is put in the race car at the start of the race. This is why Otmar's comment that the measurement system said that there was 1.74 litres in the tank, whereas the scrutineers said that there was only 0.3 litres in the tank was odd.
Or a small tank of legal fuel that you show to the stewards, and a big one with 'enhanced' quality. Oh, that would be cheating and that never happen in the honorable sports of motor racing
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Balance, is what I’ve read. Balance between how the front and rear tyres perform, especially hard vs medium, and then very hot vs warm conditions. That puts you straight onto your back foot if you can’t find it while Mercedes, who’d found the balance, could then choose the best front and rear down force for the race.
I think the track surface in Hungary provides a challenge from FP1 onwards.
Tiggers, I thought the same as you as the circuit is characterised by low speed corners and where change of direction through combinations of turns is really important.
The best answer that I can come up with is that RBR under performed on Friday and Saturday. There is a balance that needs to be achieved across the one lap qualifying performance on Saturday and the long run performance on Sunday. That has varied from circuit to circuit this year. Whilst the teams like to think that they have this under control, I think that there is quite a bit of variance as you need to optimise your setup (including static tyre states and tyre heating / cooling from rims and brake ducts etc) and then your tyre heating in the blankets, and the tyre preparation on the out lap, the driver duty cycle etc. And this is where the variance seen between Lewis and VER creeps in.
Lewis was very fast on Sunday, and despite the not pitting error (not sure why Toto is defending that choice...), he was very quick on the hard tyres during the long stint. And despite his complaints that the rear tyres had gone off, he was still lapping at a fast pace. His pace on the mediums was very fast, but there was no one to compare with as the other fast cars / drivers were not in the race, so we have no real comparison as to how quick he was there compared to other drivers and races.
Overall, prior to the start, I was still expecting VER to win though.
You beat me to it!
One thing I would add, is that as per my post #1154, the balance is a function of many aspects, and that include front and rear downforce as priority one items.
I forgot to add the track temperature in my list as that is a variable that you have to adapt your overall set up and tyre preparation around, which of course varies during the race weekend and makes the race engineers and tyre engineers jobs even more challenging.
davidjt
pfm Member
Or a small tank of legal fuel that you show to the stewards, and a big one with 'enhanced' quality. Oh, that would be cheating and that never happen in the honorable sports of motor racing
One Sunday at Brands years ago there were two mechanics around one particular 'special saloon' on the grid who had to keep dabbing their eyes. Funny that.
DuncanF
pfm Member
I don't think the FIA are disputing that there may well be 1.74L in the tank. The issue is that the regs say that 1L must be made available at any stage, presumably by syphoning. AM could only extract 0.3L for the scrutineers. If you need to remove the fuel tank and put it through a mangle to squeeze 1L out, you are not meeting the regs. Similarly, if you have 100L in there but cannot produce 1L on demand then you are out of luck. I see no merit to the AM appeal as the regs are unequivocal on this matter.
Thanks, very informative and I guess therefore in simple terms it was a case of Merc getting it right and RB having an off weekend. Spa will be interesting as it should suit the W12, but we will see.
I was merely reporting what Otmar had been reported to have said. Whilst I can clearly see Otmar saying that, I cannot see him saying that an appeal would be a good thing to do. He has worked in F1 for 23 years, mainly in senior positions and so knows the score.
Just to be clear the FIA scrutineers will have followed the process that they have used for years to get fuel samples out of all the race cars. I cannot remember the last time there was a failure to get the required fuel sample out.
Unless AM can prove the equipment or the process was faulty, I cannot see that they have any chance of winning the appeal.