Fuelgate 2011

Feathers are flying on Twitter this afternoon as the link to this article is making the rounds. In short, the article quotes an unnamed team source questioning how J.R. Hildebrand went so many laps before crashing, speculating that the car was outfitted with a larger fuel tank.

@GrahamRahal fired the first shot, saying "Now some of you may understand what I was saying the other night. Word is finally out now!" Within 12 minutes, @PantherRacing fired back "You're a real class act, Rahal. Congrats." Rahal then stressed that it was neither him nor his team that was the source for the article.

The Racemind Take: I doubt very much that Panther wanted to risk the humiliation of a post-race teardown discovery, and a larger fuel tank would definitely be noticed. If there was any shenanigans going on, I would think it would be something that would never be discovered.