I thought something was up when Mag was told to "yellow g2" or something and back off to save fuel for 3 laps then attack on the final two laps whilst DR was told to "press the buttons" and keep up the pace.
Couldn't quite work out why RB could do that but Mclaren couldn't... I guess now we know why. It's a shame for DR, very cool guy who didn't deserve for RB to be underhand like that.
Shame for Mag as well though as he did really well to cut the gap between him and DR to less than a second. The Mclaren, as Brundle put it, looked "handy"... definitely had more outright pace than the RB at that stage.
Not sure what you're talking about, Mag needed to save a little fuel and didn't have enough to be G2 to the end of the race, or so they thought. DR moved away as he didn't have to turn the fuel down, this has nothing at all to do with the flow rate, they still didn't use over 100kg of fuel, this was a having enough fuel at the end issue. If anything using a higher rate of fuel and pushing the engine that little bit faster at the highest end is not hugely efficient and would have used slightly more fuel.
All it suggests is that Riccy actually either used fuel more effectively throughout the race or, the Renault for all we know could be a very efficient engine, it could be more efficient(but maybe slower) than the Mercedes. Riccy is more experienced and may simply have saved a lot more fuel. Drivers have spoken about coasting in to corners saving a lot of fuel. While Mag dropped back earlier in the race and he had the gap Mag may have been pushing hard to catch up while Riccy was coasting in to corners and giving himself more fuel for the end of the race.
The question about efficiency is, well, insanely complex. i'd like to hear from teams/Ted later in the year if teams find the slipstream effect good for fuel saving, or if the engine/car loses more efficiency from lower downforce and working harder, maybe hotter engine/batteries being less efficient.
Because Renault had so little running with any teams you expect to be genuinely fast(Lotus/RBR), we don't really know how fast or good that engine is, nor a real idea of efficiency in comparison to the Merc. It may be more efficient, or worse, we get the impression its much slower but maybe in race pace it's efficiency means it doesn't have to save as much. Though the difference between say Rosberg suggest the Merc can't be that inefficient as at no time did he have to end up slower than anyone else to save fuel after blasting away.
Either way, the issue at the end of the race was fuel left on board, not rate of fuel flow.
