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Arguably rules and regulations have changed too, to affect this. Back then they also refueled the car during pit stops. This has not been the case since 2010.
I believe that recently they have added a regulation forcing a sort of buffer time between the ready sign and when the car may leave
Wait, so now they never refuel them during pitstops?
They do the whole race just by filling the tank before the beginning of the race!?!
Yeah. They start with around 100kg of fuel.
Wow, so now I'm curious why they didn't do it in the previous years. I'm sure they refueled cars regularly during pitstops in the 1990's
You can run the car lighter if you can refuel during a pitstop. The extra time it cost to refuel is smaller than the lap time advantage a lighter car gives.
Due to the sports environmental appeal they have moved to much smaller engines, that are way more power efficient than they used to (1.6lit V6 hybrids) . I don't believe that they actually could run a whole race without refueling, in the earlier eras.
Further more they have added a limit on how many tires they can use per weekend (and per season) as well as how many engines and engine parts. In the "old" days they'd use a brand new engine for qualifying and discard it for a new one for the actual race. I belive that they are down to 3 engines per driver for the whole season.
This is great! Thanks for the explanation!
I should have thought about it, because it's happened in regular life too: just like regular purpose cars on the street, even Formula One cars have become a lot more efficient and so they can run a lot more with a smaller tank.
It's amazing how much they've improved cars and how it makes cars from the 1990's appear clunkier (even if they did appear sleek at the time)
Yes. Not for the first time either.
Although it's not the incident in question, here's Jos Verstappen's pit fire of 1994 for some context.
Yeah, since it's safer.