Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Paul Ricard, 2018

F1 fans should ‘vote for more pit stops’ – Hamilton

2018 French Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by and

Lewis Hamilton says Formula 1 fans should urge the sport to create races which feature more pit stops to improve the racing.

The Mercedes driver predicted this weekend’s French Grand Prix will be a one-stop strategy race. Hamilton believes this is to blame for a lack of action in recent races and wants Pirelli to bring softer tyres to improve the competition.

“They’ve got the ultra-soft – which is soft – and then super-soft and soft. They all seem pretty much the same tyre, there’s not a big difference between them all.

“There’s going to be some graining. It’s a very hard tyre compared to last year it’s a much, much harder tyre. Even though they said they went softer I don’t believe it. They predicted before the weekend they would do 35, 40 laps each or something like that which is a huge amount.

“It’s an unexciting one-stop race most likely. But if you’re a fan and you want more stops vote for it, make some noise, I’m sure F1 will take the peer pressure.”

Hamilton also suggested changing the rules to require drivers to run similar fuel loads in practice sessions so fans can see more easily which teams are quickest.

“It’s kind of frustrating because Friday, Ferrari’s always a second off, they’re on different fuel levels. Everyone’s on different fuel levels and so it’s easy to come out today not really knowing where everyone is.

“They should change the rule – another rule they should change – and make everyone use the same damn fuel loads. Because for the fans for sure it must be confusing. You don’t know why we are the quickest, you don’t know why Ferraris are that far off.

“They don’t care about the fuel loads so maybe that’s something they can put in for future.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2018 F1 season

Browse all 2018 F1 season articles

29 comments on “F1 fans should ‘vote for more pit stops’ – Hamilton”

  1. Power to the people!!!?

    So, I need some help here, when was the last time F1 has actually listened to the fans? Even that big questionnaire a couple years back didn’t really change much did it now?

    That being said, ironically, I think it’s the worst idea ever to follow what fans want because fans don’t know what they want.

    1. They listened to fans in that qualifying format they tried and trashed. They listened to fans with faster, louder cars and more durable tyres. They listened to fans with the ridiculous grid penalties. etc. etc.

      What i want with the tyres is free choice for the teams, notning more and nothing less. I wanna see races where Verstappen does a 3 stopper on Hyper softs and Perez tries to go the entire race distance on one set of mediums.

      1. @rethla Did they listen to the fans, or the drivers/teams, I think very much the latter.

        1. They listened to (the drivers/teams who listened to) the fans.

          Especially ‘Liberty’ FOM listens a lot to the fans, @fltasix.

      2. @rethla that wouldn’t happen. The strategies are calculated and engineered which result in what we similarly see in car designs, pretty much the same lap times. Hoping for wild strategies is not realistic. We see every race weekend that teams are allowed to choose their tires and at the end of it, come Sunday, they more or less do the same strategy unless other factors occur.

    2. the skwirrell
      23rd June 2018, 10:23

      as for making all cars run with the same fuel loads, “no thanks”. let the teams individually decide what they want to run, not Hamilton or someone else. I’d like re-fuelling to be brought back in, and allowing the teams to free to choose whichever of the various tyre options that they want to use [as was said by Gabriel]

      1. @the skwirrell In-race refuelling was detrimental to on-track overtaking, though.

    3. @flatsix, I definitely agree with you that the opinions of the fans changes extremely rapidly and will often contradict itself so often that it’s virtually impossible to tell what they want.

      They’ll complain if the tyres are too durable and result in “too many boring one stop races”, but will moan about “gimmicks” if they then try and force it so teams have to make multiple stops. They’ll complain that there aren’t enough “traditional venues”, but when they are added to the calendar they complain that they are “boring” or “rubbish”.

      They’ll complain that there isn’t enough variety in strategies and say that refuelling should be brought back, but then complain if that means teams rely on pit stop strategy to get a driver ahead or if all the teams run the same pit stop strategy – not to mention the hypocrisy of complaining about the safety of mechanics in the pit lane, only to then suggest reintroducing the activity (refuelling stops) that resulted in the most injuries and accidents in the pits.

  2. Cristian (@sandorcristian)
    23rd June 2018, 9:55

    Bring back refuelling – always added some hazard to the strategies

  3. Got to feel sorry for Pirelli. They get asked to make soft tyres that necessitate more pit stops and everyone complains. They make harder tyres that can be leaned on and everyone complains.

    The only way you’ll get more pit stops without ‘showbiz’ tyres is refueling. Maybe they should look into a safe way of doing that rather than keep expecting a tyre to be produced that can just do everything they want.

  4. You don’t need refuelling, you just need less compounds. Have three different compounds and always bring two to a race. That way the length of a stint on any given tyre depends on the type of track, and you’ll still have on stoppers on easy tracks, but multiple tracks on the harder tracks.

    1. Three would be okay, if there’s a gap between softest and second soft tire. And combination of softest and hardest won’t get you to the end of race… Aaaand you can’t use that softest tire in qualifying nor start the race with it.

  5. James Coulee
    23rd June 2018, 11:06

    Hamilton already forgot how it was when we had 4 pit stops per race: nobody would make an overtake on track.

    1. Not true. Please re-watch the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.

  6. What I don’t understand (including the comments from respected fans above) is why do people want more pit stops with the likely outcome that we see more pit stop overtakes rather than on track ones.

    I do like pit stops: marvellous teamwork, some excitement, and a few ‘Hammertime’ (fill in your preferred driver) fast laps.
    But I want more on track overtakes. The best way to make that happen is by having cars that can follow each other in the curvy bits. 2019 & 2021 will be steps to achieve that I hope. The pit stops and fresh tyres are then a bonus which make it work to lose some time and come back faster with fresh tyres.

    PS a way to get more pit stops is to limit the time teams lose doing a pit stop. They should ‘increase’ the pit lane speed (where safe to do so), put a chicane after the pit entrance where possible (Montreal), or find other ways to limit the lost time to below 10s.

    1. Excellent comment, and good points about decreasing the time penalty for pit stops.

      I do think that refueling is unfairly targeted for reducing on-track overtaking. If aero prevents drivers from following closely enough to overtake, pitting fewer times doesn’t help. But nor will more pit stops necessarily improve on-track action.

      It does of course open up more strategic possibilities, and more chances for drivers to shortfill or gamble on safety cars. And if cars can follow closely, it can help create a virtuous cycle of overtaking by putting drivers on fresher rubber more often. IndyCar shows that it’s possible to have more pit stops for more strategic variety, as well as aero that allows drivers to pass on track.

    2. I don’t like pitstops too much, as they induce randomness (due to pitstop blunders) that’s not necessarily useful, but I really like the strategic aspect (without pitstops races tend to be static and utterly boring). Last year, the more durable tires and wider cars generally produced very predictable races with very little racing. The 2016 tires were great and they produced great races, even if those races were usually dominated by Mercedes. Maybe we should return to those tires.

  7. I’d rather they go the other way, Remove the mandatory pit stop & go back to making a no-stop possible should anyone wish to try it.

    I’d also like them to move away from ‘show tyres’ as well, Let Pirelli or whoever the tyre supplier may be to just make the best range of tyres they can rather than having to worry about artificially building degredation into them. I’m frankly tired of the focus been on deg, operating windows & all the other nonsense & focus that have been on the tyres the past few years.

  8. Just require all three types of tyre to be used during the race for a minimum of 15 laps each. Simple.

  9. John Gilmartin
    23rd June 2018, 13:31

    No no no no no. We want to see racing ON THE TRACK.

  10. I say… bring just the fastest tires available plus wet and intermediate, no mandatory pit stop and no more what-you-qualy-on-it-what-you-start-on.

  11. Having just watched the DTM race, I like the way they implemented DRS. Award everyone with a set number of DRS deployments for the whole race and let them use it whenever they want as long as they are within one second of the guy ahead and limited to 3 uses per lap. Opinions?

    1. @karlynhuz It’s better than how it’s used in F1 but I still think the P2P style system used elsewhere is way better than any of the DRS implementations.

      P2P is fairer because its allows for attacking & defending which not only creates far better racing but also introduces an element of strategy from the drivers who have to figure out when/where is best to use it.

      DRS is quite boring, Not just in the type of passing it tends to create but also the fact that drivers are told where & under what circumstances they can use it (The FIA mandated DRS zones when 1 second of car ahead). There’s no strategy or real driver input to DRS… The DTM/GP3 limited number of uses improves that to an extent but I still don’t think there as good as P2P would be.

  12. GtisBetter (@)
    23rd June 2018, 14:05

    Stop saying it’s confusing for fans!

    I have never met anyone who can’t figure out the soft/hard tyre thing. It’s not rocket science or confusing unless reporters and commentators say stuff like:”the ultrasoft is the soft for this race.” No it’s not! The ultra-soft is the ultra-soft for this race and it’s 6/7 on the soft side on the rainbow.

    Also, everybody know practises are for one thing. To try things out. Hence the name. The fastest car shows up in quallification, when it matters. That’s how sport works.

    And fans have been complaining about the inability to get close and overtake for years, making noise about it. One pitstop race is usually not the main reason for boring races.

    1. @passingisoverrated Same with anything technical. It’s all confusing to the fans. Uhm, no. 90% don’t care, and the other 10% can read up on it if they want.

  13. Pit stops should be for endurance races, F1 should not be endurance races, they should drive from lights to flag non stop, only change tyres when the track gets wet or dries out. They should really give each driver only two sets of tyres for use in the race, one set dry weather tyres and one set wet weather tyres, if the driver destroys them and can’t finish the race then tough.

    1. That’s very much 1970s racing. Very old-fashioned and potentially incredibly boring in the current aero-dependent F1 era.

  14. It is so easy, just make them race all three compounds. Automatic two stop races and a possible bigger delta between stints.

  15. The time drivers losses by pitting should be shorter from ca. 22 seconds to 10 seconds. This certainly motivate them to drive harder and make more frequent pit stops than it is now. You can do it by changing the positions of the pits with respect to the tract so that part of the tract is longer than it is now.

Comments are closed.