Banning refuelling was stupid and led to driver deaths

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DOF_power

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snowy said:
I really felt a great buzz before the 2010 season started, I couldn't wait for it to start. This season hasn't grabbed my attention yet. Perhaps when testing starts I'll get the buzz back, for now I'm just filled with a sense of impending doom. :disappointed:

Perhaps I should qualify that... :thinking:

I am not looking forward to the return of KERs, which I recall disadvantaged larger drivers and smaller teams. And I am pretty sure that the stalling rear wing overtaking concept is the most banal, insidious idea that F1 has ever come up with. Worse even, than refuelling! :bored:
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Refueling isn't an idea.
F1 had refueling from 48 till 57 and previously GP racing as well. Banning refueling was the artificial idea, and stupid one witch lead to the deaths of many drivers.

Relevance isn't and artificial idea either.
 
How did banning refuelling lead to the deaths of drivers? Do you mean they died in fuel fires? Any examples?
 
DOF_power said:
F1 had refueling from 48 till 57 and previously GP racing as well. Banning refueling was the artificial idea, and stupid one witch lead to the deaths of many drivers.
Click to expand

OK, lets get this totally straight. F1 did not ban refuelling in the 60s and 70s, teams simply elected not to refuel.

The refuelling ban came in 1984 and lasted into 1993. There were no deaths in Formula One World Championship events in this era. The third race into the refuelling era was the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Now, I am not saying refueling killed Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenburger, much more had changed for 1994. I am claiming however there is no evidence of a glut of deaths in Formula One due to the refuelling ban, since there were no deaths at Championship events during the ban.
 
Think of it from a 1960s designers prespective, the team boss thinks going the whole race on one tank is a good idea, as the tyres will last, so you ust find somewhere to put the tank without comprimising aeroynamics. (Limited to just making the cars slippy in those days) There is a lot of space in the cockpit, so why not put it there? This meant on some cars, the driver literally sat inside the fuel tank, with fuel above, to the side, and behind him. So in the event of a crash, and the inevitable fire, the driver was almost immediatly engulfed in flames, and had no chance.

All that could have been done was introduce a rule limiting tank capacity, specifying location, or imposing mandatory stops. he FIA wasn't that sophisticated back then (is it now?), so this sort of rule would never have come into place.
 
DOF_power said:
Refueling isn't an idea.
F1 had refueling from 48 till 57 and previously GP racing as well. Banning refueling was the artificial idea, and stupid one witch lead to the deaths of many drivers.

Relevance isn't and artificial idea either.
Click to expand


48 to 57, so the rule changes would of been for 1958?

for the 1958 season Alcohol-based fuel was banned, races were shortened. And also although not relavent to this Manufctors had there own Championship, Vanwall the first winners i believe.

This may of changed stratergies that made pitting for fuel not suitable, but never have i heard of a rule change banning re-fuelling, nor can i find any mention of it with a quick check of some sources, just to double check im not talking out of my cake hole here.
 
The cars were also made of Magnesium which if anyone has seen burns very easily and very brightly.

The cars back in the 60's had the fuel tanks at the sides of the driver's seat and they were only banned after Berger's Imola fireball.
 
The point I was alluding to was the fact that they are at opposite ends of an idiot spectrum. Refuelling being introduced to spice up the show, contriving to make it possible for one car to get in front of another. The new rear wing rules are another contrivance to make it possible for one car to get in front of another.

Both ideas are artificial means and are part of a general dumbing down of F1.
 
Hear hear snowy :cheer:

Good riddance to re-fuelling I say. It's ridiculous, as has been pointed out, to claim that banning it has claimed any lives; in latter seasons there was as much or more danger from the re-fuelling process itself than any risk from a fire resulting from a crash.

Mind you, I bet Fernando Alonso was wishing at Abu Dhabi last November that Vitaly Petrov would have needed to stop for fuel, eh?.

On the proximity wing I'm reserving final judgement until we've actually witnessed it in operation, but my hopes aren't high. Next, they should get rid of that other artificial 'competition up-spicing' device, the mandatory use of two tyre compounds.
 
tooncheese said:
Think of it from a 1960s designers prespective, the team boss thinks going the whole race on one tank is a good idea, as the tyres will last, so you ust find somewhere to put the tank without comprimising aeroynamics. (Limited to just making the cars slippy in those days) There is a lot of space in the cockpit, so why not put it there? This meant on some cars, the driver literally sat inside the fuel tank, with fuel above, to the side, and behind him. So in the event of a crash, and the inevitable fire, the driver was almost immediatly engulfed in flames, and had no chance.
Click to expand

I agree that situation is dangerous, but my point is there was no ban on refuelling at the time, which is what I am referring to.

Banning refuelling has not done Formula One any harm at all in 2010. The drivers are not permitted to sit in a fuel tank nowadays, so without any complacency, more thought has been applied to driver safety, rather than in the 60s when everyone individually decided to stop refuelling.
 
Chad Stewarthill said:
Hear hear snowy :cheer:

Good riddance to re-fuelling I say. It's ridiculous, as has been pointed out, to claim that banning it has claimed any lives; in latter seasons there was as much or more danger from the re-fuelling process itself than any risk from a fire resulting from a crash.

Mind you, I bet Fernando Alonso was wishing at Abu Dhabi last November that Vitaly Petrov would have needed to stop for fuel, eh?.

On the proximity wing I'm reserving final judgement until we've actually witnessed it in operation, but my hopes aren't high. Next, they should get rid of that other artificial 'competition up-spicing' device, the mandatory use of two tyre compounds.
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Tell that to those who were burned alive in cheap shitty fragile racecars from 58 onwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB-fknoiZt4

Indycars had an imposed max limit on fuel after 64 (or was it 65) but F1 continued with the shitboxes.

Again refueling was much more a part of GP racing then the ban of refueling 1906 to 1957, 82-83 and 1994- 2009.

And relevance is part of the sport.

teabagyokel said:
OK, lets get this totally straight. F1 did not ban refuelling in the 60s and 70s, teams simply elected not to refuel.

The refuelling ban came in 1984 and lasted into 1993. There were no deaths in Formula One World Championship events in this era. The third race into the refuelling era was the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
Click to expand



I thought they were banned directly from 58 onwards, but basically the rules banned refueling indirectly. Still the same result witch coupled to fragility and cheapness of cars killed people.
In America they banned side mounded tanks and put a fuel limit, after 64 I believe.

And there was a rule from 61 onwards witch killed refueling for good, namely that fuel fillers should be hidden by the bodywork.
 
According to good old wikipaedia,

Fifteen drivers died in the 1950s; twelve in the 1960s; ten in the 1970s; four in the 1980s and two in the 1990s. No driver has suffered a fatal accident since 1994, making this the longest period in F1 history without a driver fatality. Drivers from the United States of America have had the most fatal accidents with ten drivers from that country having died, although seven of these were while participating in the Indy 500 during the 1950s when it was part of the FIA World Drivers' Championship.
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There have always been fatalities in Grand Prix racing; some caused by fire, some not. But the sport has been getting gradually safer and safer each decade (dramatically so in the last two). More drivers died in the 1950's, with re-fuelling, than in each of the two subsequent decades where there was none. To claim an increase in deaths directly or indirectly caused by the banning of re-fuelling is not only incorrect but also disingenuous and quite disrespectfull to the deceased, in my view.
 
Chad S has it exactly right. The overall improvement in crashworthiness of the cars is a far greater contributor to the blessed lack of fatalities than anything related to refueling.

Furthermore, if you look at the Spanish GP of 1969, you will see horrendous crashes of the two Team Lotus 49Bs, but neither of them caught fire. That is because most cars by that time were using bladders in their tanks to prevent leakage in the case of a crash. By 1973 deformable structures were required to provide protection in the case of side impacts (take a close look at the Tyrrells of that year, you will see triangular structures on the sides).

Most of the driver fatalities were from force of impact, not fire. Cevert and Revson and Rindt being perfect, tragic examples. Usually, when a driver died from fire, it was through asphyxiation rather than being burned. This was true of Siffert and De Angelis. Bandini at Monaco was the exception. Most fire-related deaths were due as much to poor training of fire crews of that era as to anything else.
 
It like a tomato (english) vs. tomato (american english) thread.

The rules from 58 onwards were directly and/or indirectly responsible for killing some of the drivers.

This "designers interpreted" or "drivers were historically killed" is just making excuses, as the natural reaction of every GP engineer and designer ever was to beat the rules and opposition and the cars always ended up faster (but not necessarily safer).

Only the fortunate accident of carbon fibre truly turned the tide against driver fatality, and FIA/CSI making rules witch drove designers into creating those flaming death traps didn't help.
 
DOF_power said:
It like a tomato (english) vs. tomato (american english) thread.

The rules from 58 onwards were directly and/or indirectly responsible for killing some of the drivers.
Click to expand

  • The first refuelling ban in Formula One was in 1984
  • There have been no deaths in World Championship events without refuelling since the original ban
  • Your claim is that banning refuelling led to drivers' deaths

1958-1983 rules are irrelevant to this discussion. All that is relevant are times where refuelling was banned in legislation, i.e. 1984-93 and 2010-.

Those are the goalposts, please don't attempt to move them again.
 
I've tried to keep out of this but I can't. Claiming there is a relationship between refuelling and driver deaths is like trying to prove a link between colour blindness and dysentery. Yes, some people who are colour blind will get dysentery but it's not the cause.

To suggest not allowing F1 cars to be refueled during the race lead to more drivers being killed is amongst the most perverse arguments I've heard. Poor car construction, bad marshalling, inadequate safety barriers, bad track surfaces, inapropriate safety equipment, poor tyres, bad manufacturing practices; all of these I could accept but banning refuelling, complete guff!
 
Indeed, if banning refuelling were the cause of more fatal accidents, surely we would also see an increase in non-fatal accidents? Aside from Vettel's tendency to turn right into whoever is alongside him or the new teams inexperience, I'm not aware of any significant increase in accidents recently, fatal or otherwise.
 
Those who believe that a rule-set favoring the lack of refueling (a.k.a. additional weight) did not lead to constructors/ teams maker ever lighter and ever more fragile cars don't how GP racing worked or any racing for that matter.

Within the frames of the rules and/or (mostly) outside them (heavy inspection wing, led in the fuel tank, stuffing weight in pipes after the races, water cooled brake reservoirs, the Brabham theatrical play act, the March intentional crashing and theatrics to stop the race and damage on purpose the car) the F1/GP racecars became more fragile till carbon fibre came along.


Racing had a lot of bosses, designers, engineers and mechanics witch today would be judged and imprisoned for manslaughter.


And that's the honest non-politically correct, non-biased, non rose tinted truth.
 
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