Malaysian Grand Prix 2013, Kuala Lumpur - Race 2/19

Ted said that Hamilton was conserving fuel to some degree from the start as the team aggressively underfueled the car, as said, its a toss up, you split a strategy for best possible chance, this is very common at races that frequently have changing conditions and high chance of rain. It could just have easily been Rosberg with less fuel and Hamilton may have been 20 seconds ahead by the end. He quite easily outqualified him and was easily beating him in the race, he pushed as hard as he could to stay with the Red Bulls, then when it was clear they couldn't beat them, they saved fuel even more aggressively, had there been any danger behind they would have let Rosberg get on with it, which is why Button's proclaimation he would have got 3rd is a complete joke(ignoring the fact that he supposedly stopped for a bald tyre and they pitted Perez at the end for the same reason, meaning Button was actually going to end up way behind even a slow Hamilton with an extra pitstop most likely).

Hamilton was faster all weekend when it counted, was on the wrong strategy thanks to the team, but because he was 3rd when the race was effectively over they finished in that order. I think the main thing is even with underfuelling one car more than the other, it looks like Merc took it too far. He's not harder on fuel, its just teams betting on different conditions.
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
Maybe missed this from a previous post... Do we not get to watch the press conference today? Has it been uploaded anywhere? :(
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I dunno they showed a very short clip at the end and I thought, did I miss it, maybe I'm blind... I don't know if they showed it, maybe too much punching to be showed :p

Glaucus said:
Rather than bring back refulling,
Can we have fixed amount and alow keys and engine development. Can we get some tech back into f1 rather than millions spent in wind tunnels changing a part of a wing by half a mm, to extra a tiny bit more downforce.
Would also make it relevant to the direction of the world and car industry as a whole.
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The one thing I like about the idea of refuelling is it should make changing strategies more flexible. Want to go for a longer stint and go slower, or less fuel on and the soft tyre and haul ass. Currently its so limited, you pretty much have to choose 2-3 or 4 stop pace from the start and if it was the wrong call, the race was basically over from the start for that person. Refuelling should allow a bit more flexibility to come in, do a faster stint, or longer stint, tune a stint to the tyres/fuel load better and, if the tyres are going to degrade so badly, smaller fuel loads suits terrible tyres much better.

Qualifying on the softer compound, then having to start the race on used rubber with max fuel is just daft.
 
Jono8 said:
Did Button say he thought he would have come third?? Lol
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Quite possible - he was running about 10 seconds or so behind the Mercs until the pitstop fail, who then had to crawl the last dozen laps to save fuel.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Ted said that Hamilton was conserving fuel to some degree from the start as the team aggressively underfueled the car, as said, its a toss up, you split a strategy for best possible chance, this is very common at races that frequently have changing conditions and high chance of rain. It could just have easily been Rosberg with less fuel and Hamilton may have been 20 seconds ahead by the end. He quite easily outqualified him and was easily beating him in the race, he pushed as hard as he could to stay with the Red Bulls, then when it was clear they couldn't beat them, they saved fuel even more aggressively, had there been any danger behind they would have let Rosberg get on with it, which is why Button's proclaimation he would have got 3rd is a complete joke(ignoring the fact that he supposedly stopped for a bald tyre and they pitted Perez at the end for the same reason, meaning Button was actually going to end up way behind even a slow Hamilton with an extra pitstop most likely).

Hamilton was faster all weekend when it counted, was on the wrong strategy thanks to the team, but because he was 3rd when the race was effectively over they finished in that order. I think the main thing is even with underfuelling one car more than the other, it looks like Merc took it too far. He's not harder on fuel, its just teams betting on different conditions.
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Complete speculation. There is no evidence that Hamilton was underfuelled versus Rosberg. In fact, Brawn alluded to the fact that they cut it fine on both cars "We were tight on fuel, the pace was a lot stronger in the race than we anticipated and we were tight on fuel and we needed to make sure we didn’t overdo it." A team bets on maximum success, not 50/50.

It was quite clear at the end, that Rosberg had more in the tank versus Lewis. To say Hamilton is not harder on fuel versus other drivers does doesn't tie in with today's happenings, and previous. He was harder on fuel versus Jenson, and it looks like he is versus Rosberg too. Not necessarily a bad thing though, as personally, I don't rate fuel management as one of the criteria necessary to be a top racing driver.
 
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