Refuelling back for 2017

[ajprice]

ash73 said:

Pit stops should take longer if you take on fuel, in fact I'd go the other way and say they should only add fuel after the wheels have been changed, or reduce three men per wheel to two, or one. Less safety risk and more interesting strategy options.

As an example, the last hour of the WEC Spa race got very interesting between the lead Audi and Porsche, because of the strategy. Both cars needed fuel to reach the end of the race, so do you save time and only pit for fuel, but double stint the tyres, or take a longer pit for fuel and fresh tyres, or stay out longer on the tyres you've got and splash n dash. This of course also depends on the tyres not being what we've got now in F1.

[RichB]

ash73 said:

Pit stops should take longer if you take on fuel, in fact I'd go the other way and say they should only add fuel after the wheels have been changed, or reduce three men per wheel to two, or one. Less safety risk and more interesting strategy options.

However because they can swap wheels faster than it takes to add the fuel it means there are less risks taken and theoretically cars should not leave the pits with loose wheels. Therefore it is safer to change the wheels while refueling.

[Crafty_]

ash73 said:

Pit stops should take longer if you take on fuel, in fact I'd go the other way and say they should only add fuel after the wheels have been changed, or reduce three men per wheel to two, or one. Less safety risk and more interesting strategy options.

NASCAR mandate a set number of personnel over the wall, initially 6 people (1 fuel man, 1 jack man, 2 tyre carriers, 2 tyre changers). Can be upped to 7 once they give the nod (the extra guy might make a track bar adjustment, clean air ducts or the windshield).

Must use a manual jack, 5 lugs per wheel and all must be done up - officials and now cameras monitor all work).

They cannot go over the wall (i.e. in to the pit lane) until the car is a spot or two away. If anything or anyone leaves the pit box its a penalty, a loose lugnut means the car must come back in straight away (and loose places).

Even so they'll get 4 wheels changed and car fuelled somewhere in the teens. I wish I could find it but there was an overhead shot of Mark Martin in a stop a few years ago, stop is done and the car is moving to leave and there is a guy running around the front of the car with his hand on the bonnet (sorry, hood) who had been clearing air ducts.

Fuel is not pumped in, gravity only, I think they do about 15 litres / sec.

Here's a pretty normal stop.

https://youtu.be/vNqt_PGGKi8

Most of the rules come from safety - limited numberof people and only when they need to be there, lots of incidents in the past with guys being hit whilst waiting for their car, the wheelnut thing is because previously they've only done 2 or 3 up to get a car out quickly, not a smart thing to do if a wheel comes loose at 200mph.

Pit crew are often college americian footballers - if you're going to go running around with a jack or wheel you need to be pretty strong. As you see from the video, grip can be an issue, they used to use chemicals in the pit box to add grip, but NASCAR banned it, so they pour soft drinks (coke etc) in the pit boxes to try and add grip.

You can see in the video the lugnuts for the new wheel are already in place, they are glued in place, ready to go.

I don't think the car being stopped for longer detracts from the racing, they still battle like hell to get the car out and everyone's doing the same.

[MissChief]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXkNQzfwBOk

Pit Stop!

[suffolk009]

[quote=Crafty_]

NASCAR mandate a set number of personnel over the wall, initially 6 people (1 fuel man, 1 jack man, 2 tyre carriers, 2 tyre changers). Can be upped to 7 once they give the nod (the extra guy might make a track bar adjustment, clean air ducts or the windshield).

Must use a manual jack, 5 lugs per wheel and all must be done up - officials and now cameras monitor all work).

I was watching NASCAR last night. It's my first season. Didn't one driver have to pit after his rear wheel started to vibrate. Commentators said they'd only put three nuts on - the rules are different this year.

OT: I liked the 25 lap sprint format. They raced 25 laps, then all pitted at once for fresh tyres. Then another 25 laps. I assume points for each sprint race.

Can you imagine the fines for unsafe release in F1 after everyone in the pits at the same time!

I find I'm really enjoying watching NASCAR.

[Eric Mc]

I hate pit stops and think they are the ruination of racing. Fuel stops are just a further impediment to track action. Maybe if they abolished the pit lane speed limit the stops would be more dramatic

[hairyben]

How about, instead of bringing in a raft of rule changes in one go, changing/tweaking one or two rules every season? That way the teams would all be adjusting and playing catch up with their strat which is what mixes it up.

As for fueling, it does reward skill in a way the "undercut" doesn't.

For the free tyres to produce any fun pirelli (or whomever) will have to engineer better tyres- see the Argentine motogp where the two bridgestone compounds were causing head scratching as to which would be best. Although then you'll have people complaining that races are being decided by tyre gambles.

Personally I think they (the fia) should employ a few of the aero wizzards with access to wind tunnels to look into producing a set of aero rule proposals with low turbulence, or allow (active?) front wings to follow closely.

[IainT]

hairyben said:

Personally I think they (the fia) should employ a few of the aero wizzards with access to wind tunnels to look into producing a set of aero rule proposals with low turbulence, or allow (active?) front wings to follow closely.

Excellent idea! It could equally be 'outsourced' to teams with dispensation to run their tunnels for this project then compare the results.

[MartG]

hairyben said:

Personally I think they (the fia) should employ a few of the aero wizzards with access to wind tunnels to look into producing a set of aero rule proposals with low turbulence, or allow (active?) front wings to follow closely.

They did that a few years ago but none of the proposals were accepted - check out that rear wing

[HarryFlatters]

hairyben said:

or allow (active?) front wings to follow closely.

The 2009 rules allowed front wings to be adjusted from in the cockpit, so we know it's possible.

[anonymous-user]

MartG said:

hairyben said:

Personally I think they (the fia) should employ a few of the aero wizzards with access to wind tunnels to look into producing a set of aero rule proposals with low turbulence, or allow (active?) front wings to follow closely.

They did that a few years ago but none of the proposals were accepted - check out that rear wing

Was that really 10 years ago? If I recall correctly it was rejected because it soon became clear that the F1 aero designers would still be able to very easily design a car that would be hard to get close to, regardless of where the rear wing was positioned.

[Esseesse]

hairyben said:

Personally I think they (the fia) should employ a few of the aero wizzards with access to wind tunnels to look into producing a set of aero rule proposals with low turbulence, or allow (active?) front wings to follow closely.

May be wrong, but I gather that ground effects create little turbulence and allow cars to get close to each other. Wings create much turbulence as you'd assume, and as there are no ground effects allowed, the teams have to rely heavily on their wings.

Would allowing ground effects along with restricting front and rear wings to a maximum of 3 elements with constant cross section improve racing? Maybe...

[Esseesse]

ash73 said:

Esseesse said:

Would allowing ground effects along with restricting front and rear wings to a maximum of 3 elements with constant cross section improve racing? Maybe...

Do it! The only problem with ground effect back in the day was active suspension failures, should be possible to regulate these days.

No need for active suspension. Interestingly, Indy cars use ground effects.

[Vaud]

I think the other issue with ground effect is increasing cornering speeds, and also the consequences of a sudden separation from the ground effect if it becomes the dominant aero. Higher cornering speeds = high energy to dissipate in crash...

[Esseesse]

Vaud said:

I think the other issue with ground effect is increasing cornering speeds, and also the consequences of a sudden separation from the ground effect if it becomes the dominant aero. Higher cornering speeds = high energy to dissipate in crash...

Indeed, but this is what the problem really comes down to. DC said the other week that you'd rather watch a tightrope walker than someone walk along a while line on the ground. Unfortunately/fortunately depending on how you look at it, for exciting racing, safety concerns need to be directed towards improving crash structures and run off areas etc, rather than designing out crashes.

[Eric Mc]

Esseesse said:

ash73 said:

Esseesse said:

Would allowing ground effects along with restricting front and rear wings to a maximum of 3 elements with constant cross section improve racing? Maybe...

Do it! The only problem with ground effect back in the day was active suspension failures, should be possible to regulate these days.

No need for active suspension. Interestingly, Indy cars use ground effects.

Have you seen the three flying Indy cars this weekend?

[Mr_Thyroid]

I'm no aerodynamicist but my understanding from reading Gary Anderson's analysis in Autosport is that multi-element wings improve stability and predictability of wings - therefore I'm wondering if reducing the wings to single element would really have an impact on a car's ability to follow another - could it have the opposite effect because a single element is affected more by dirty air?

[Eric Mc]

I think you will find that the Indycars flew for different reasons. Over the past 20 years I can't recall an F1 car taking off because it was travelling backwards or sideways.

Over the past 20 years we have seen sportcars and Indycars all take off because of the way ground effects work in reverse when the car stops travelling forward. It was because of fear of this that ground effects were banned from F1 back in 1983.

F1 cars fly when they are launched after hitting something else - like another car or a wall.

[Esseesse]

Eric Mc said:

I think you will find that the Indycars flew for different reasons. Over the past 20 years I can't recall an F1 car taking off because it was travelling backwards or sideways.

Over the past 20 years we have seen sportcars and Indycars all take off because of the way ground effects work in reverse when the car stops travelling forward. It was because of fear of this that ground effects were banned from F1 back in 1983.

F1 cars fly when they are launched after hitting something else - like another car or a wall.

Interesting. Maybe the rule should be that there is no more than X amount of lift from any angle at speeds up to 200mph (assuming you can do that in a wind tunnel), rather than no ground effects?

[Eric Mc]

And that is the problem. With aero effects being so well known now, trying to dial into the design all the factors you want - and don't want - would result in something we might have difficulty recognising as a motor car.