Anyone who has watched Formula 1 would have in one way or another be introduced to the concept of a race strategy - and Ferrari fans would be all too familiar on how heartbreaking it can be when the wrong strategy is used during a race. But what actually is a race strategy and does it makes sense for me to use it in my sim racing?
A race has a defined start and end - either in the number of laps to be completed or based on a defined period of time (e.g. 30 minutes, 60 minutes, etc). A race strategy is a basically a plan set out by the team to complete the race as quickly as possible. This could either mean:
requiring the driver to drive at a specific pace throughout a stint
requiring the driver to drive at a specific fuel consumption rate
requiring the driver to conserve tires
pitting at a specific lap
requiring the driver to do any or all of the mentioned item above
Usually a team will have their preferred strategy (the fastest) and one or two alternative strategy that may not be the fastest but is close enough that it could be the fastest option depending on how the race progresses.
Taking F1 as an example again, the Mercedes team can and should have a very different race strategy compared to Ferrari. This shouldn't come in as a surprise as the race pace of Mercedes is far faster compared to Ferrari's race pace. A logical step for Ferrari is to employ a race strategy that would minimize the gap to the Mercs as much as possible, thus increasing their odds to benefit in case any incident that may fall on either or both leading Mercs. Coming closer to home, if you, like me, are in a league with several aliens, a race strategy can help close the gap between yourself and the aliens by the end of the race.
A race strategy is in no way essential to have fun in a league race. Having one, however, can help visualize the race before it actually takes place. It also removes a lot of headache and anxiety in the final minutes before the race start - since all fuel load, pit options, refuelling amount, tire sets, etc would have be populated before hand; leaving you with enough time for that last minute toilet break before the race starts. But enough talk, and let's have a look at an example from my recent race league in Kyalami.
As a side note, the race league that I join has a 60 minute race with a pit window. A driver must come into the pit during this pit window, but does not necessarily need to change tires or to refuel. Essentially they can do a stop and go during the pit window and it will be considered as their pits completed. Prior to this race, all previous races, the leaders would normally put full fuel in and race until the end using this stop and go strategy as their pit stop.
Race Strategy Example: Kyalami - the Tale of Tires and Fuel
Going into this race, I knew that I didn't have the pace with the aliens of the group. The aliens were lapping anywhere between mid 1:41s to low 1:42s in our 20 minutes practice servers and I am consistently lapping low 1:43s and dipping into high 1:42s every now and then. I also knew that I did not feel comfortable driving the NSX with full load of fuel. My pace with full fuel would also drop to between high 1:43s and low 1:44s.
Using my race strategy spreadsheet, the tried-and-true fill her up and race till the end would leave me around 52.5s behind the leaders. Not ideal, but at least I will finish the race in the same lap.
To make this work however, I need to be pretty consistent and drive high 1:43s throughout the race, which was something I wasn't comfortable with. I also knew that my race setup will eat up my rears and I wasn't sure if I would have enough tires left at the end of the race to not be spinning at every corner exit. So I knew, that although this strategy can work on paper, I doubted it would be achievable during the race.
I then experimented with the idea of starting with enough fuel to last until the end of the pit window since I was much more comfortable with the car in low fuel load trim. And since the pit time difference between filling up the car to the end of the race and to change tires was "only" 4 seconds, I also played around to find out if there is a difference between changing and not changing the tires during the pit window.
The End Result?
Refuelling during the pit window is actually faster for me compared to trying to drive with full fuel load. My race pace would be in the low to mid 1:43s which is something I am comfortable with in low fuel trim.
So going into the race I knew I will be starting with low fuel. I still wasn't sure if my tires would last me until the end of the race. Since the difference was 4 seconds, and that I could potentially lose way more time if I lost my rears at the end of the race, I decided my Plan A was to swap tires. If, however, during the race, my tires felt good and I didn't need to change them, the I can switch to Plan B.
Although the race itself didn't go according to plan for me (having crashed out early on, and immediately getting served with SG30 plus some pit issues later on), I hope this sharing shed some light on how helpful a race strategy can be. If you are interested to how to create a race strategy, do stay tune as I am preparing a mini-series on how to make your very own race strategy sheet using Excel/Google Sheets.
Thank you to SpeedTavern.My for organizing the race league.
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