Mekies : It will be a very different game to last year

Laurent Mekies, Toro Rosso Chief Engineer

"It will be a very different game to last year. We will all have to discover the effect of this high fuel mass on the tyres, which are themselves different to ’09 as the front tyres are now narrower. The rear tyre is very slightly changed and the compound selections will be slightly different to last year. Strategically, the general trend, when refuelling was permitted, was to try to go as long as possible to attempt to get ahead of competitors in the pit stops. That is likely to be inverted this year. This opens the door to the implementation of a very reactive strategy. We will see plenty of activity in the pit lane. I think it will be good fun in this first year, playing with this new equation."

"From the engineering point of view we will have to adopt a bigger compromise in terms of set up choice compared to 2009. Last year, if you were a front or mid-field runner, you had to have a car that performed well with both low and medium fuel levels, as you would be running in the final part of qualifying with the fuel load with which you would start the race. On average, you would try to set up your car to run well with around 40 to 50 kilos of fuel. With all of qualifying now being run on low fuel and the race starting on maximum fuel, this will lead to a greater compromise in terms of the car set-up. That in itself will impact on the performance of the car at a given moment of the race, dependent on the decisions made by the engineers and drivers."

"It is not beyond the realms of possibility that we could see drivers having to conserve fuel during some stages of the race. The truth is that, even though we have known about the rule change for a while, we had to estimate what is going to be the 2010 fuel consumption at the moment when you had to decide on the size of your 2010 fuel cell."

"It is not so straightforward, even though we are running the same engine. The tyres are changing, which creates a base change, which affects the fuel consumption as a function of the lap time of the car. First you have to take into consideration the tyres and then the real effect of the fuel load on the overall race lap time. This estimate is not straightforward."

"Every team was free to take as much risk as they wanted in terms of the maximum fuel capacity of its cars. I am sure everyone was keen to try to limit the size of the fuel cell, given it had to increase drastically compared to the previous year. Everybody has gone to the limit so as not to impact any more than necessary on the design of the car, which already had to change to accommodate the larger fuel cell. I therefore believe it is likely that at some stage or other, a driver will have to save fuel at some point in the race."