SiLo wrote: ↑15 Mar 2024, 21:19
Honestly, I preferred the refuelling days, I liked the strategy and that it was hard to overtake. It was a gamble on qualifying performance NOT to get stuck behind someone. I think if the aero rules had allowed much closer racing, refuelling would have been far more exciting for a viewer.
I could be entirely blinded by rose tinted glasses however.
I remember that we used to pray for rain each race as it was the only way to have any on track action. The biggest problem was that a light car with old tyres was almost always a lot faster than a heavy car (after refuelling) with new tyres, so there was an overcut effect at every race. This meant drivers were constantly trying to extend their stint - lifting and coasting. It was so bad that they wouldn't even risk trying to overtake on track as it meant using more fuel to attack the driver in front. Instead they did all they could to extend their stint and overtake in the pits.
In my view the next biggest problem was that teams couldn't really react to strategy during the race. At the moment you can trade an early stop for potential track position with an undercut. You get fresh tyres, can push on those fresh tyres to gain a second or two on the car ahead, and perhaps its enough to get past.
But then that other car gets the chance to react. They can pit the next lap to try and minimise the losses to keep position. They can extend the stint to get a tyre advantage for the next stint that they can use to try and overtake on track to get the position back. The car that pitted first may also have pitted too early, so they will run out of tyre life at the end of the race giving a dramatic showdown.
With refuelling your strategy is baked in. You'll almost never pit earlier than you have to as you want to maximise the time the car is light at the end of a stint. You can't come in early to get fresh tyres and try for an undercut as you'll be slower. You can't extend beyond the lap you are fuelled to. In a multi-stop race you can short fuel to gain track position, but you'll have a longer pitstop next time around, and all that "action" takes place in the pits and pit wall, without a huge amount of visibility for fans.
Refuelling produced terrible racing before, and most fans were counting down the days until it was scrapped once it was announced it was gone. Safety and cost seemed to be the excuse, where at the time the real reason was Bernie wanted to make the races more interesting as they were dull processions at the time with limited on track action.
