Quote:
Originally posted by kang
Perhaps someone can answer this question. In Q3, they start with race fuel and then burn it off to make the car lighter for their run for the pole. They swap tires with a couple minutes to go, when the fuel is about as light as it is going to get, and then go for it. After their last lap, they cannot add fuel or change tires before the race.
My question is why don’t they just start the session with less fuel to begin with? Why burn it off? They could start with less fuel and new tires, with say 5 minutes to go in the session, and go for pole then. Why spend the first 10 minutes burning off fuel on a set of tires that they are going to remove?
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Actually, they get to put the fuel back in that they started the session with. They calculate how much per lap was burned off and how many laps they did then add the fuel back in.
So with this in mind the teams send their cars out with the amount of fuel they want to start the race with. Its a real chess match because if they do not qualify well they cannot change their fuel strategy.
This is why they dropped the time on the session from 20 minutes to 15 because not much happens until the last 5 minutes or so.
This qualifying format is exciting. I really miss the flying lap style. It was exciting to see them push their cars to their limits light on fuel just going for it.
I do not agree with what happened to FA and I suspect it had a lot to do with where they were. Italy.
But in retrospect, I thought MS's penalty for "passing" with the red flag was a joke too.
So I guess when people criticle of the driver dig too hard into the rules this is what you get. Something needs to be done to stop it.