Understanding Fuel consumption and Tyre wear

[Tallmaris]

Hi All,

I am a bit lost for help here. I have noticed that usually I can do a maximum of 3 laps on hard tyres before pit stop, which means basically 3 stops in a 10 laps race (which seems a lot to me!). AI cars are usually a lot more efficient altough they still manage to be faster than me.

So I am here asking for some hints on that and on how to manage fuel consumption.

1- Tyres wear a lot when driving offroad, that's a given I think. But does tyre wear more when running on the edge of the track? I noticed a different sound when runing on the white line or on the curbs...

2- well this is tied to the above: what is the perfect trajectory? By watching F1 I can see that usually you start large in a bend and then close in but if the curbs damage the tyres I have to revisit this.

3- I was reading on the upgrade that steering while braking can wear tyres more, does that mean I would have to brake before? Again I am used (from other F1 games as well" to bring the braking into the first part of the bend... what is a good technique?

4- This is silly but what I do is keep the throttle on and then brake without releasing the throttle key... does that count as releasing the pedal or is it actually counting as throttling while braking so it consumes fuel? I can see the throttle light goes off in the game so I can imagine there is nothing bad in that...

5- KERS or no KERS: what is your preference? Do you have it on or off basedon the track as well?

Thanks very much and sorry for the noob questions

[przemator]

1. Driving on kerbs damages the tyres, you should avoid it. You can check the wear rates in engine.ini:

tyreweartarmac = 0.0006
tyrewearrumble = 0.0050
tyreweargrass  = 0.0400

As you can see, driving on rumble makes your tyres wear about 8x faster.

2. You should drive as fast as you can without going off track . Retaining speed in corners is good, and for this you need to be on the outside before turning, thus making the turn softer. Sharp corners are the only place where it is justified to drive on kerbs. In long, soft corners, try driving on the track. Also, hitting other cars damages your tyres! Avoid contact with other cars. I usually keep in mind that I want to get OUT of the corner as fast as possible, in contrary to getting as fast as possible IN the corner. So I take my time, position myself, brake, and then when I'm ready, I apply throttle. Generally, brake and throttle should only be applied once in a corner.

3. I sadly did not notice the effect of braking+turning. Maybe it's because you only do it for a split second.

4. If the car brakes effectively, then it's no problem, but I guess your fuel consumption may be a tiny bit higher.

5. KERS makes you go 1-2 seconds faster on ANY track. Sadly we didn't address this issue when asking Simon for update.

You should be able to easily do either a 5H + 5H or 4H+4H+2S strategy on pretty much every track. I would advise to set the lapcount a bit higher (around 15 laps maybe?), which would make the soft tyres a tempting solution. In online championship most races are over 20 laps, and we usually utilize soft tyres.

[Alfonso]

Yeah, Przemator was right in everything but maybe a bit too much technical as he normally is!

What he forgot to say is that fuel consumption is proportional to the number of laps. So if you make a race of 5 laps you still have to go to pit at least 1 time while if you make a race of 40 laps you probably only have to go 2 times cause Hard tires will last for about 18 laps or so....
But yeah, everything depends on your driving style. I hope you know that if you dont accelerate you dont spend fuel, so if you are "running out" you can save it by simply release throttle on turns and let car lose speed instead of braking and then press gas on. For sure you loose some time but...if you need to save it can be worth it. I´ve used it already quite sometimes this season as i was having on Fuel gauge 3.0 left (example). Cause i had a considerable advantage i could do it and in the end i could reach last lap with something like 0.3!

The game is optimized for around 14/15 laps! I mean in terms of tire and fuel consumption so everything bellow that looks a bit unreal, yeah! We had to reach compromises on that last update.

About the perfect line for turns.... Well, thats a very very relative point. I can give you a "tip" for this. Try to make Q sessions on the carrer mode, and then after each lap you have a ghost car to compare laps. Try different approaches to turns and you will soon start understanding how the game works on this. Some turns you win time by going inside, some dont. But i tell you one thing, its there where you can make the all difference. Its obvious yeah but....the thing is to get out of the turn as fast as possible. I normally say it: "Try to make a straight line as possible in a turn."

But yeah, once again, it all depends on your driving style....you just have to find your method and!
Practice helps a lot, to know the tracks (most important issue) but to know the behavior of the car so you can adapt quickly to other circumstances, while making takeovers for example....

Ok, hope i helped in some way and that i completed a bit more what mr Przemator said.

[Tallmaris]

Thank to boht of you for the tips... I am doing this career mode here and I managed to get a second place in China with my Lotus

Honestly it was more because the AI cars freak out when it starts and stops raining. When it starts they seem to slow down before I do and I could pass them easily, same when it stops raining, they seem to be running another half lap on the speed limiter and I could easily pass a few of them (and then managed to stay between the two Ferraris for a few laps).

The problem is during the full rain laps: other cars seem to go just faster than me, even with the speed limiter on for everyone they are easily a few km/h faster and they just pass me without problems on straights... is that some kind of bug?

While I am here I'm going to ask anotehr question: is it advisable to install a mod and do the career mode with that on? What is the mod you would suggest in that case?