People are inevitably going to use this data to compare overtakes between the refueling era and now so I thought I’d add my perspective to it. The data clearly shows that every single season of the refueling era has less overtaking than every single season after the refueling ban. In fact I can add that I have draft data going back to 1975¹ (just from lap charts and pit stops…) and that shows that every single season between 1975 and 1993 also has more overtaking than every single season in the refueling era. That’s a pretty damning verdict.

That does not mean that F1 was unwatchable between 1994 and 2009 (I mean I’ve just rewatched every single race) or would become unwatchable if refueling was reintroduced, I just don’t think it would be a very worthwhile idea. I think the fundamental problem with refueling in F1 is that it favours the overcut strategy. The weight advantage of having a light car to one with a full tank vastly outweighed any tyre advantage and thus the traditional strategy was to go long, do a few fast laps, and overcut your rival. Faster cars have more scope to deliver on strategy so would often be the ones who’d be going the longest. But the crucial point is that you come out of the pit stop phase ahead and with a relative tyre advantage. So often you would see a situation such as… Schumacher is behind Montoya but we know he has about five laps more fuel and of course after pit stops Schumacher comes out ahead and has a tyre advantage and would simply gap Montoya… the race was over and there’d be no realistic hope of Montoya catching Schumacher in that situation. So often it felt during the refueling era that in the final stint of races the field had found its natural order and you were just watching cars going round getting further apart while having to listen to James Allen retelling the race about 15 times (a personal pet hate of mine).

Of course you could say if they had DRS it would be very different and I agree the figures would be higher, however I still think that the double benefit of coming out of a pitstop phase ahead and with better tyres works heavily against refuelling, the same goes if they had high degradation tyres. It’s a positive feedback loop , Chainbear did an excellent video on that a couple years ago. As a side note a common argument in favour of refueling is that you can push all the time and you didn’t have to babysit the tyres. Firstly the tyres were often pretty soft anyway they were just designed for their stint length… you wouldn’t consider nurturing your tyres to extend your beyond a couple laps because you would run out of fuel. I also don’t buy the fact that they were pushing all the time either, certainly not at the front of the grid where the majority of the focus is, this is most evident when say Schumacher is suddenly going two seconds a lap faster during the pit stop phase. There’s a lot of rose tinted glasses for this period but ultimately people are more likely to remember a race like Belgium 2000 than a race like Belgium 2002.

If refueling did return it would be a lot different today than it was before. The hybrid engines we have now are way more efficient, the amount of fuel used for a full race now is pretty similar to what was used in just one pit stop then. The cars are not going to get much lighter and you are unlikely to get 2 or 3 stop strategies. In fact it would likely cement a one stop strategy, at the start of the race you will likely know who has the most fuel (particularly if they bring back qualifying with race fuel). It will be the fastest car (Mercedes), as they will be the most able to carry the weight penalty at the start to be able to go long in the pit stops and come out ahead with fresher tyres than anyone behind. Pit stops would also be a lot less tense as tyres can be changed leisurely as they wait for the fuel to go in. All in all it just doesn’t look like the best method to go racing.