Hamilton asks for fuel rule change in practice

Lewis Hamilton feels Formula 1 teams should be prevented from running with unknown fuel loads during practice sessions in order to provide both fans and rival teams “a clearer picture”.

On Friday the Mercedes driver comfortably topped both practice sessions at the French Grand Prix but accepted his advantage couldn’t be accurately measured with rivals teams running varying fuel loads.

Ferrari has consistently been slower in terms of outright single lap pace before stepping up its speed in qualifying and at Paul Ricard both Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel were around one second slower than Hamilton, while in qualifying the gap shrunk to four-tenths of a second between Vettel and pole-sitter Hamilton.

As a result, Hamilton has asked for a rule tweak to see all F1 drivers run with the same fuel loads to provide clarity for both teams and fans.

“It is kind of frustrating as Ferrari always are one second off so they are on different fuel,” Hamilton said at Paul Ricard. “Everyone is on different fuel levels so it is easy to come out of today without knowing where everyone is.

“They should change the rules, another rule they should change, is make everyone use the same fuel loads because then everyone has a clearer picture.

“It must be confusing for the fans because you don’t know why we are the quickest or why the Ferraris are that far off and they don’t care about the fuel loads so maybe that is something they can put in for the future. I don’t really know where we stand pace-wise.”

All F1 teams are permitted to run any fuel loads during every free practice session while the amount of fuel each car runs is a closely-guarded secret in order to not reveal its optimum pace before qualifying and the race.