Formula One is set to ditch a proposal to bring back in-race refuelling in 2017 after the technical feedback was unanimously against the move, Mercedes-GP motorsport head Toto Wolff revealed.
The proposal, part of measures to improve the show and make cars faster, was put forward by a Strategy Group meeting last month but has yet to be approved formally by the sport’s governing body.
“When we discussed it in the strategy group it didn’t have a lot of support but we agreed to explore it, to discuss it in the technical regulations meeting and in the SRM (sporting regulations meeting) and analyse it properly,” Wolff said yesterday in Canada.
“The feedback was 100 per cent negative: too expensive, not safe enough, detrimental to the races and the strategies.
“So it’s going to go back in the strategy group and my opinion is it shouldn’t happen. I’m not keen on getting refuelling back into F1.”
Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn was also opposed. “I don’t see the rationale behind bringing refuelling back,” she said. “You just have far more costs, which is in contradiction to what has been agreed to reduce costs.”
It was suggested that refuelling, which was banned in 2010 on cost and safety grounds, would return with a maximum fuel allowance in keeping with moves to improve economy and present the sport in a greener light.
Refuelling also contributed to races becoming processional in the past with teams using pit stops to get ahead of rivals rather than overtaking on the track.
Some drivers had welcomed the prospect of refuelling coming back, including Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
“Obviously as a driver, if you go faster, which you do when you refuel the car, it’s better,” he had said last month when the idea of a return to refuelling was first mooted.
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