11-19-2020, 05:02 PM
TLDR: The total times from the strategies in my previous post are all within a few seconds of each other at Imola. Taking the uncertainty of my driving while collecting the data into account, I think they all perform as well as each other in a hotstint scenario with no one else on track. I wouldn't be able to confidently rank them in order of best to worst at all. Theoretically, I suppose strategy 1a (start on hards and don't change tyres in the pitstop) is the fastest by at most 5s in the hotstint scenario.
However, there are other more important factors to consider when in a race. Starting on hards will leave you more vulnerable to the other drivers who are on softer tyres for the opening laps of the race, making it much more likely you will be battling to hold position. These battles could cause you to lose some time or worse make mistakes that lose significantly more time, and these time losses could easily add up to be more than the theoretical gain you get for starting on hards. So it might be best to decide the starting strategy based on qualifying results and how aggressive you want to be at the start of the race when it comes to overtakes or holding position.
Results for the strategies on tracks similar to Imola will proabably be very similar, as long as the tyre wear is about the same, but I haven't tested this out and probably won't as I've spent far too long at this. My attitude was to get the testing done in the first few days and hope it applies to all the tracks over the next few weeks, as luckily I had a lot of spare time over the last few days. For an extreme track like Norschleife, I proabably won't risk a strategy like 2a (soft for both stints for 30 minutes each), as driving there on very worn tyres at the end of a stint with a car like this is more than likely going to end in disaster for me, especially as I haven't raced there before. The length of my posts here should shorten after this (hopefully), so we can all breath a sigh of relief at that.
I want to put up some times for the strategies in my previous posts, using fuel loads that match those required for the stints since that will have an impact on times over the hour. I also had got more practice and race time done, so my lap times and consistency have improved a bit again so the data should hopefully be better again. There is a pinch of salt that needs to be taken with these times. I didn't do each strategy individually for time constraint reasons (I had plenty of free time but not as much as that). I pieced them together from pratice stints I did with the tyres on various fuel loads. I made sure the tyre life and fuel loads were roughly where they should be when piecing together each strategy, so I don't think they will be too far off the true theoretical values (theoretical for me that is).
For the stints in each strategy I'll have the following three values in square brackets [tyre used, fuel load, length of stint].
Please note for the 2nd stint, the fuel load is not how much fuel I added, rather the amount of fuel left when I start the stint. So in the case of strategy 1a, where I start the race with 93L fuel, drive 24 laps in the first stint averaging 2.4L per lap and add 1L of fuel in the pitstop, then I'll have 93 - (2.4 * 24) + 1 = 36L of fuel at the start of the second stint.
Strategy 1a is the only one with no tyre change, so I specify in the square brackets that old tyres were use in the 2nd stint. For all other strategies/stints, fresh tyres were used at the start of each stint.
Times are written in the format mm : ss . 000 (I can't write : s beside each other with no space without making an emoji? mm
s.000 lol).
For calculating my averages, I left out the times for the 1st lap which is a standing start, as well as the inlap and outlap for the pistop. I then add those time losses back into the totals. I found a standing start on lap 1 was slighlty slower on hards than softs, so I took the opening lap on hards to be 1 second longer than the opening laps for softs (a bit crude but I will later talk about how the choice in starting tyre can have even more of an impact at the start of a race scenario).
Again my focus was Imola, so I'm taking 20 minutes = 12 laps, 30 minutes = 18 laps, 40 minutes = 24 laps, 60+ minutes = 36 laps.
I'm also starting to think strategies 1b and 2b (that use both hard and soft tyres) should shorten the stint on softs a bit more and spend longer time on hards, such as 10 - 15 minutes on softs and the rest on hards. However that might only theoretically save a second or two. It would be much better to make the decision on when to pit in either of those strategies based on any opponents close by where you want to either make/defend an undercut/overcut. You would lose less time in gaining/keeping track position from a well timed pitstop, compared to sticking with a very specific time/lap to pit on and getting stuck in a battle on track as a result of that.
Overall it seems that strategies 1b, 2a and 2b are going to give the nearly the same total times if done in a hotstint scenario, and strategy 1a will be only just a tiny bit quicker. However in reality I think they are all pretty much at the same pace for me when taking the human element into account. Its very possible the times on hards I used for strategy 1a was when I was really in form while driving and the times I used for softs in other strategies was when my form wasn't as good and was going slightly slower. I really don't think I am consistent enough to do multiple race length practices and have an average lap pace for each practice that is within 0.2 seconds of all the other ones. Since 0.2 * 36 = 7.2 seconds, this completely covers the range of the total times for the four strategies and so considering this uncertainty element, I couldn't rank the strategies from best to worst in a hotstint scenario, so in that case they are all plausible to me.
There is a more important factor to consider and that's having other drivers on the track during the race, compared to the empty track I had when collecting the times for the calculations above. Battling against other drivers, for multiple laps in row especially, will cause much more significant time losses. In particular this is true for the start of the race where everyone is bunched up and you can gain/lose places easily or possibly carve out a large early lead if running at the front. I have found from my practice and races that on the large fuel loads (76L-93L) at the start of the race, I can be roughly 0.6 - 1.2 seconds quicker per lap on softs compared to hards for the opening four laps where the softs are really fresh. This means that at the start of the race, a person starting on hards is going to be under a lot of pressure from those on softs.
In my first race I qualified 2nd and started the race on hards with 93L of fuel, so I could go with strategy 1a or 1b. Despite having a decent/good launch, I was immediately under huge pressure going into the first chicane (Variante Tamburello) from those behind me as they had more grip and speed. It caused he to make a mistake at the second chicane (Variante Villeneuve) that dropped me two positions from my memory. Because I got flustered by this, I ended up accidently cutting the final chicane (Variante Alta) which gave me a 5 second slowdown penalty and lost another few places. I managed to recover some positions (losing bits of time in those battles) but a few laps later I cut the same chicane again and got another slowdown penalty. After this I settled down and drove much more consistently with no major mistakes. When I pitted I swapped to softs (so I went with 1b) as I wanted to have fun pushing hard to make up for the earlier frustration. I was able to win in the end, the softs helped me make the overtake for the lead more easily. But because of all the problems I had at the start when being under pressure on the hards, I had lost so much time that the race was only 35 laps long.
In my second race, I qualified in first and I started the race on softs, so I could use strategy 2a or 2b. I had an okay/decent launch, but thanks to the soft tyres I was under less pressure going into the first chicane where I was still ahead with no one side by side. I made it cleanly through the chicane and the next few corners, so this time I began to carve out a lead rather than getting into a battle, making a mistake and losing positions. I continued to create a lead over the next few laps that was large enough to more than make up for the time I would lose on the laps at the end of the stint when tyres were worn. I ended up going with strategy 2a in that race and winning, but more importantly I made the race 36 laps long as I didn't lose the time at the start.
In other words I was far quicker in the second race compared to the first. I feel that using softs when starting on the front in a race helps immensely, and made a bigger difference to improving my total race time despite them being (according to my above data) theoretically slower than starting on hards in the hotstint scenario. Like I said in the tldr, it might be best to decide the starting strategy based on qualifying results and how aggressive you want to be at the start of the race when it comes to overtakes or holding position. I kind of want to try a race starting on hards again, to see if I can have a better opening to the race as those things can change depending on the day. If I do, maybe I can set an even better time than my second race, who knows?
However, there are other more important factors to consider when in a race. Starting on hards will leave you more vulnerable to the other drivers who are on softer tyres for the opening laps of the race, making it much more likely you will be battling to hold position. These battles could cause you to lose some time or worse make mistakes that lose significantly more time, and these time losses could easily add up to be more than the theoretical gain you get for starting on hards. So it might be best to decide the starting strategy based on qualifying results and how aggressive you want to be at the start of the race when it comes to overtakes or holding position.
Results for the strategies on tracks similar to Imola will proabably be very similar, as long as the tyre wear is about the same, but I haven't tested this out and probably won't as I've spent far too long at this. My attitude was to get the testing done in the first few days and hope it applies to all the tracks over the next few weeks, as luckily I had a lot of spare time over the last few days. For an extreme track like Norschleife, I proabably won't risk a strategy like 2a (soft for both stints for 30 minutes each), as driving there on very worn tyres at the end of a stint with a car like this is more than likely going to end in disaster for me, especially as I haven't raced there before. The length of my posts here should shorten after this (hopefully), so we can all breath a sigh of relief at that.
I want to put up some times for the strategies in my previous posts, using fuel loads that match those required for the stints since that will have an impact on times over the hour. I also had got more practice and race time done, so my lap times and consistency have improved a bit again so the data should hopefully be better again. There is a pinch of salt that needs to be taken with these times. I didn't do each strategy individually for time constraint reasons (I had plenty of free time but not as much as that). I pieced them together from pratice stints I did with the tyres on various fuel loads. I made sure the tyre life and fuel loads were roughly where they should be when piecing together each strategy, so I don't think they will be too far off the true theoretical values (theoretical for me that is).
For the stints in each strategy I'll have the following three values in square brackets [tyre used, fuel load, length of stint].
Please note for the 2nd stint, the fuel load is not how much fuel I added, rather the amount of fuel left when I start the stint. So in the case of strategy 1a, where I start the race with 93L fuel, drive 24 laps in the first stint averaging 2.4L per lap and add 1L of fuel in the pitstop, then I'll have 93 - (2.4 * 24) + 1 = 36L of fuel at the start of the second stint.
Strategy 1a is the only one with no tyre change, so I specify in the square brackets that old tyres were use in the 2nd stint. For all other strategies/stints, fresh tyres were used at the start of each stint.
Times are written in the format mm : ss . 000 (I can't write : s beside each other with no space without making an emoji? mm
s.000 lol).For calculating my averages, I left out the times for the 1st lap which is a standing start, as well as the inlap and outlap for the pistop. I then add those time losses back into the totals. I found a standing start on lap 1 was slighlty slower on hards than softs, so I took the opening lap on hards to be 1 second longer than the opening laps for softs (a bit crude but I will later talk about how the choice in starting tyre can have even more of an impact at the start of a race scenario).
Again my focus was Imola, so I'm taking 20 minutes = 12 laps, 30 minutes = 18 laps, 40 minutes = 24 laps, 60+ minutes = 36 laps.
- Strategy 1a: Start on hards with 93L of fuel, these tyres will be used for the whole race. Pit anywhere between 00:10 and 00:50 marks and add 1L fuel with no tyre change. (I pitted after 24 laps as that's when I pitted in strategy 1b.)
1st stint [hard, 93L fuel, 40 minutes]: average = 1:41.180, average x24 = 40:28.328,
2nd stint [old hards, 36L fuel, 20 minutes]: average = 1:40.784, average x12 = 20:09.407,
Time lost in pit = 00:25.000
Time lost off line = 00:07.000
Total = 61:09.735
- Strategy 1b: Start on hards with 93L of fuel. Pit at at 00:40 mark and swap to softs with no fuel added.
1st stint [hard, 93L fuel, 40 minutes]: average = 1:41.180, average x24 = 40:28.328,
2nd stint [soft, 35L fuel, 20 minutes]: average = 1:40.451, average x12 = 20:05.416,
Time lost in pit = 00:34.000
Time lost off line = 00:07.000
Total = 61:14.744
- Strategy 2a: Start on softs with 76L of fuel. Pit at at 00:30 mark and swap to softs with 17L of fuel added.
1st stint [soft, 93L fuel, 30 minutes]: average = 1:41.319, average x18 = 30:23.739,
2nd stint [soft, 50L fuel, 30 minutes]: average = 1:40.451, average x18 = 30:12.118,
Time lost in pit = 00:34.000
Time lost off line = 00:06.000
Total = 61:15.857
- Strategy 2b: Start on softs with 76L of fuel. Pit at at 00:30 mark and swap to softs with 17L of fuel added.
1st stint [soft, 93L fuel, 20 minutes]: average = 1:41.319, average x12 = 20:20.890,
2nd stint [hard, 64L fuel, 40 minutes]: average = 1:40.451, average x2 = 40:20.305,
Time lost in pit = 00:34.000
Time lost off line = 00:06.000
Total = 61:15.195
I'm also starting to think strategies 1b and 2b (that use both hard and soft tyres) should shorten the stint on softs a bit more and spend longer time on hards, such as 10 - 15 minutes on softs and the rest on hards. However that might only theoretically save a second or two. It would be much better to make the decision on when to pit in either of those strategies based on any opponents close by where you want to either make/defend an undercut/overcut. You would lose less time in gaining/keeping track position from a well timed pitstop, compared to sticking with a very specific time/lap to pit on and getting stuck in a battle on track as a result of that.
Overall it seems that strategies 1b, 2a and 2b are going to give the nearly the same total times if done in a hotstint scenario, and strategy 1a will be only just a tiny bit quicker. However in reality I think they are all pretty much at the same pace for me when taking the human element into account. Its very possible the times on hards I used for strategy 1a was when I was really in form while driving and the times I used for softs in other strategies was when my form wasn't as good and was going slightly slower. I really don't think I am consistent enough to do multiple race length practices and have an average lap pace for each practice that is within 0.2 seconds of all the other ones. Since 0.2 * 36 = 7.2 seconds, this completely covers the range of the total times for the four strategies and so considering this uncertainty element, I couldn't rank the strategies from best to worst in a hotstint scenario, so in that case they are all plausible to me.
There is a more important factor to consider and that's having other drivers on the track during the race, compared to the empty track I had when collecting the times for the calculations above. Battling against other drivers, for multiple laps in row especially, will cause much more significant time losses. In particular this is true for the start of the race where everyone is bunched up and you can gain/lose places easily or possibly carve out a large early lead if running at the front. I have found from my practice and races that on the large fuel loads (76L-93L) at the start of the race, I can be roughly 0.6 - 1.2 seconds quicker per lap on softs compared to hards for the opening four laps where the softs are really fresh. This means that at the start of the race, a person starting on hards is going to be under a lot of pressure from those on softs.
In my first race I qualified 2nd and started the race on hards with 93L of fuel, so I could go with strategy 1a or 1b. Despite having a decent/good launch, I was immediately under huge pressure going into the first chicane (Variante Tamburello) from those behind me as they had more grip and speed. It caused he to make a mistake at the second chicane (Variante Villeneuve) that dropped me two positions from my memory. Because I got flustered by this, I ended up accidently cutting the final chicane (Variante Alta) which gave me a 5 second slowdown penalty and lost another few places. I managed to recover some positions (losing bits of time in those battles) but a few laps later I cut the same chicane again and got another slowdown penalty. After this I settled down and drove much more consistently with no major mistakes. When I pitted I swapped to softs (so I went with 1b) as I wanted to have fun pushing hard to make up for the earlier frustration. I was able to win in the end, the softs helped me make the overtake for the lead more easily. But because of all the problems I had at the start when being under pressure on the hards, I had lost so much time that the race was only 35 laps long.
In my second race, I qualified in first and I started the race on softs, so I could use strategy 2a or 2b. I had an okay/decent launch, but thanks to the soft tyres I was under less pressure going into the first chicane where I was still ahead with no one side by side. I made it cleanly through the chicane and the next few corners, so this time I began to carve out a lead rather than getting into a battle, making a mistake and losing positions. I continued to create a lead over the next few laps that was large enough to more than make up for the time I would lose on the laps at the end of the stint when tyres were worn. I ended up going with strategy 2a in that race and winning, but more importantly I made the race 36 laps long as I didn't lose the time at the start.
In other words I was far quicker in the second race compared to the first. I feel that using softs when starting on the front in a race helps immensely, and made a bigger difference to improving my total race time despite them being (according to my above data) theoretically slower than starting on hards in the hotstint scenario. Like I said in the tldr, it might be best to decide the starting strategy based on qualifying results and how aggressive you want to be at the start of the race when it comes to overtakes or holding position. I kind of want to try a race starting on hards again, to see if I can have a better opening to the race as those things can change depending on the day. If I do, maybe I can set an even better time than my second race, who knows?