It's romantic to think that you'll have a team of drivers who will all perform well with 3+ hour shifts in the car, but it's fantasy. Somebody will end up on their roof, or stuck in a wall. That's a sudden reality-check that maybe it's not such a hot strategy, after all. Driver fatigue, and the inevitable problems that that will cause will more than eat up any benefits of "going long" on fuel.[/b]
Romantic or otherwise, building an endurance team around drivers who can't (sorry for the horrible pun) endure is silly. I've worked with one team that has had drivers who are more than capable of sitting in the car for 3+ hours without a mishap. Said team won the 12-Hours at the Point a few years back and took a 2nd at Moroso in '99 or '00 - I can't remember anymore. The same team ran the Tropical 12-Hour this year in Homestead and the Nelson 12-Hour with only 2 drivers and finished 2nd to an SRF at Homestead and 2nd to a Miata at Nelson. It is certainly possible.

The idea of using a monster-cell and making few stops is a race strategy that clearly works. Adding a large cell can have drawbacks BUT it's all about car preparation. If you just drop a 25 gallon cell in the back of a car that wasn't intended for that kind of weight, you'll have problems - no sh*t. As a friend always says to me PPP = PPP - Piss Poor Preparation = Piss Poor Performance.

Matthew