Me and a few of my mates been talking about the sport, about what went went wrong in the past years and we constantly came back to the same conclusion:
refueling ban.
Cheese tires, KERS, DRS. All of these were introduce so the races would be more exciting, giving the advantage/helping hand to the car behind to make an overtake, or add some kind of a tactical field for the team strategists, creating a difference in pace by going with a different tire compound. All of these 'artificial' [/size]tools are trying to emulate the pace differences that we already had when refueling was allowed. A slower car, that's behind in pace over half a sec or even more could manage to overtake a faster one in qualifying and in race by having less fuel. Teams could play with fuel loads tactically, going lighter or heavier, depending on the scenario, and in the end creating pace differences and overtakes. It seemed way more natural than pressing a button on the steering wheel to gain speed. Remember the 2010 season? I dear say, was the most boring season of the past few decades. First year after the refueling ban which called for the introduction of DRS and Pirelli tires.
I also miss the element, when we waited after the qualifying for data, calculations, of how much fuel the drivers had onboard.
I get why some may call it a good decision. It made the sport safer and it saves money. But at what cost? Way more money has gone down the drain trying to make a technical reshuffle, so the sport becomes exciting yet again. Couldn't they've tried to improve the refueling gear, try to make it safer? Maybe someone has more information on why the ban was introduced?
What's your take on this people?
Ok, I think the poll results speak for themselves. I'll go point by point.
First of all, I think it's important to understand that, if you want better racing, pace difference is something you want to avoid. i.e., the more equal the cars are in terms of speed (so also weight and tyre degradation), the higher the possibility of having close racing. What is the fun or the merit in having a car with much less weight or newer tyres pass a heavier one or one with older tyres? With no refueling at least they all have more or less the same weight (depending of course on fuel efficiency but roughly). With refueling they had weight difference and compound difference (except in that one year where they could only use one compound for the whole race, which is, IMO, something that would equalize the field even more without refueling). To sum up, no refueling, one less variable, more equal cars, higher probability of closer racing on track.
The elements you mention, DRS, tyres and Kers (Kers not so much as it was also introduced to explore energy harvesting technology), were band-aid solutions to the main problem that F1 has been unwilling or unable to address: too much aero turbulence behind the leading car made following close, and therefore overtaking, too difficult if not impossible. A change of rules was put in place to address that in 2009, they found a loophole that could not be banned immediately (double diffusers) and they stopped trying to fix the main problem, instead introducing these gizmos you mention. As much as I hate DRS and cheese tyres, I prefer an on track pass with DRS than a pass in the pits, which were the norm in the refueling era. So, to summarize, gizmos were not a result of the refueling ban but the inability/unwillingness to control aero turbulence.
Refueling was not banned because it was too expensive or dangerous mainly, it was banned to improve the racing! The problem was that it was not accompanied by other measures or these measures weren't implemented properly and F1's stakeholders have since gone down a path of patch-solutions, rule reshuffles and IMO the wrong racing paradigm, that have thrown the sport into the difficult corner it finds itself in nowadays.
