Comment by jborichevskiy
5 years ago
> "What? The fuel tank capacity can't have an inflated basketball in it that springs a leak during the race, leaving us with more fuel capacity?"
Pardon my ignorance- what is the motivation for temporarily reducing the fuel capacity in this example? And why was it disallowed?
Fuel tank capacity is required to be 10 gallons. Say, 20 laps or so.
They check, at the tech inspection, that your tank doesn't hold more than 10 gallons. Great.
Except, once you deflate the basketball (or get creative with routing fuel lines all over the car), you actually have 11-12 gallons onboard.
Which means, at the end of the race, when everyone else has to pit, you can make the "risky option" to skip the final pit stop, keep rolling, and, well, surprise of surprise, make it over the line (in first place) before you flame out.
Ah, that explains the fuel lines as well. Very interesting!
Your fuel tank was only allowed to hold a certain amount of fuel because if you had more, you could go farther between pit stops, thereby covering more laps while the other drivers were stopped for gas.
He would temporarily meet the small tank regulations during inspection, but under race conditions, the ball would burst, allowing for more space in the tank, which would get filled up with more fuel than his competitors at the first pit stop.
If you’re not cheating you’re not trying.
How was he "caught" if thats the term?
I would assume that by some point, if one of his cars won, the officials just took the whole thing apart to find out what sort of bizarre loophole he'd found that met the letter of the requirements while totally violating the spirit. His antics weren't secret, even at the time he was working. He was just really good at it.
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By the mere fact that the car wasn’t pitting as often. Car was likely inspected afterwards.
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That makes sense, thanks. Clever!
I assume the rule book specified a maximum fuel tank size, to ensure that teams were making roughly equal pit stops for refueling, etc. Installing a larger fuel tank with the volume taken up by an adjustable air reservoir means the tank starts at legal capacity, and increases in capacity after the race begins, allowing fewer stops for refueling.
When you qualify, your fuel tank is only allowed to hold X gallons. With the basketball inside, it held X gallons.
When the basketball sprang a leak and deflated, the tank held X+Y gallons, netting a slight advantage between pit stops (an extra lap or two over 500 miles adds up)
Fuel capacities are reduced to minimize the fire in fiery crashes. But lower fuel capacity means more pit stops, which the racer wants to minimize.
Temporarily reducing fuel capacity means the car passes tech inspection, but really has more capacity.
I suspect that it increased the fuel capacity from the nominal "max" at race start, so when you hit a pit stop you can put more in.