Pictured is a 750 gallon tank and the concord had a fuel capacity of 31,500 gallons. Thats he equivalent of 42 of these tanks

  • WFH@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    The gains from increased density were extremely marginal, but then again F1 is a marginal gains game. Maybe you could push a couple extra % more in some parts of the race to gain or secure track position but it wouldn’t change overall performance. That’s also why the FIA switched to fuel weight instead of volume.

    On a plane like this it wouldn’t make a difference as weight is more important than volume.

    • 0xKesh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      The FIA also added a temperature limit to reduce this effect that I was mentioning. I just did some slight research on it, looks like when it was at its most effective in the 80’s, cars had a 195 litre tank, with fuel chilled to about -30c this allowed for an extra 10-12 litres, or about 6% increase.

      This change was huge in that era of racing, basically meant that drivers could stay at 100% pace for longer without nursing fuel. Coincidentally, when doing some reading on this I also found that apparently chilled fuel during the refuelling era of F1 also helped increase the flow.

      Anyway, that was my thinking originally lol, looks to be actually answered in the comments now though. Thanks for the reply!