What did Lewis Hamilton mean by "equal fuel"?

[suryakhans]

On the BBC Chequered Flag Canada preview podcast, they spoke with Lewis Hamilton about his first pole and win here in Canada in 2007. He mentioned that it was the first race the team had let him have "equal fuel" with Fernando Alonso. He/they didn't explain what that meant - does anyone here know?

[N4D13]

In 2007 they had this rule according to which you had to qualify with the amount of fuel you had at the start of the race. I assume that what Hamilton means is that up until that point, Alonso had been getting a preferential strategy, and from the Canadian GP they either gave them the same amount of fuel for qualifying.

Funnily enough, that was also the same reason in which Alonso's well-known fuel-saving abilities made him save an extra lap of fuel, which caused him to pit during a safety car period, which was forbidden at the time, and ended up getting a 10-second stop-and-go penalty. People kind of shut up about Alonso's fuel saving after that.

[inimitablestoo]

It's worth mentioning that they still had refuelling in F1 at that point, up until the end of 2009 in fact, which meant the amount of fuel you started with was likely to vary up and down the grid