[BusinessInsider]

Can someone explain this to me? I'm only familiar with the current regulations and so the logic of this paragraph doesn't make sense to me:

> Back in 2006, the regulations required teams to qualify their cars with race fuel-loads. The trade-offs were obvious – load the car up with fuel and you’d end up further down the grid, but with the benefit and flexibility of adjusting your strategy in the race. By contrast, qualify on petrol fumes and you had a good chance to be quick on Saturday, but you’d theoretically start the race with one hand tied behind your back.

[ThrustVectoring]

There's a tradeoff to be made with amount of fuel loaded into the car. If you put more fuel in the car, it weighs more, and so will corner and accelerate worse and have worse lap times. On the other hand, it'll have more fuel, so it won't need to make a pit stop as soon.

Qualifying laps are structured differently from the actual race itself, in a way that incentivizes putting less fuel in the car. Essentially, only the qualifying lap times matter, and not the advantages from having more fuel loaded. The obvious strategy is to put the bare minimum in the tank for qualifying, and more during the start of the actual race.

The new regulations forbid that strategy - you're allowed no more fuel to start the race than you had used to start the qualifying laps.

[jakub_g]

In the last years, no refueling stop were allowed during the race, so everyone just loaded the same amount of fuel for the race.

However, previously, there was refueling possible during the race, which allowed for some strategy variation:

- either you start with small amount of fuel, gain advantage due to lighter car (~1s faster per lap), and refuel early in the race (probably 2 refueling stops needed in such case)

- or start with bigger amount of fuel and stay longer on the track, but only do 1 stop for refueling

Also, since you needed to start the race and qualifications with same amount of fuel, going with less-fuel-and-double-refuel strategy meant you were more likely to win a pole position due to lighter car during qualifications.