Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean
I am a little surprised to read this considering how much F-1 relies on fuel and pit strategy which appears to be what you are bashing. Am I missing something, or do you dislike that in F-1 as well?
And in this case, many of the leaders pitted at the same time. They Toyota and its driver used less fuel than the competition over the same number of laps.
It was also a pretty good race form a competition and passing perspective.  |
F1 doesn't really have any strategy with fuel mileage. If they want to get 5 extra mpg, the just turn a knob on the wheel and get it, what with modern fuel injected motors and all. Only once I've seen someone lose positions over lack of fuel, and that was because Massa's pit crew failed to put in the right amount of fuel at the last stop. Plus, the cars have such large tanks and the races are so short they can run a whole round on one fill up if they want to. So in F1, it's not really "fuel mileage" that makes a difference, it's just "fuel strategy", which is the balance between how often they stop vs. the penalty for carrying more weight. Sure, getting better mileage gets you more laps for the weight of the fuel, but it's such a small difference that plenty of other factors obscure the advantage.
It's pretty much the same deal in NASCAR as in F1 regarding the fuel mileage "advantage", but with their "small" fuel tank size NASCAR has a real opportunity to make fuel mileage actually matter, if only they were to allow higher tech motors. But as it is, a fuel mileage "advantage" in NASCAR usually only comes up when there's a caution 15 laps from the finish when 14 laps is a full fuel run. Then the team with the tiny bit better mileage eeks out just more lap while everyone else does a splash and go... which is often negated by another caution with 5 to go allows all the "bad" mileage cars to get their splash *and* new tires. i.e. winning a race "on mileage" is still more luck than anything else.
What I'd like to see is one team out there w/ a direct injected V8 getting twice the mileage as the push-rod dinosaurs... then we can talk about a fuel mileage advantage, since they'd need to pit half as often, assuming Goodyear brought tires that can last that long.