Great first impression, fuel question.

Hi,

I had my first race, though I wasn't there live.
Must say, great game. Might consider subscribign to it after a couple of weeks :)

One question though:
The predicition of fuel use was too low and I missed 4 points because of the extra pitstop.
What factors make this prediction "un-accurate"? Is it some skill of the technical director?

Some parts of the game is broken, others are questionable. Sometimes we do question the reason behind such stupid implimentations to the game. Overall, learn from season 1, calculate the fuel ratios into a calculator per stint and you will get improved results.

Wouter, Glad to hear that you are enjoying the game & do let me know if you have more questions.

The technical director position is one that has not been developed yet, so all his/her advice should be ignored. Better to work out the fuel consumption yourself. 4 litres per lap is a good place to start. Belgium is quite a bit more & Monaco a lot less.

They give you more fuel than needed. I think you ran out because you pushed too much and burnt too much.

I didn't push, it was on the default "consistency" level all race.
I'll attempt 4L per lap for the next couple of races and pay special attention to belgium :)

Good to hear that many things are still in development. Is there a list somewhere?

Some tech directors will over estimate, some will under estimate. The higher level you get, the more accurate, supposedly, that they should be. Your first season will be a learning one, and next season you can look back at your fuel usage and stategy's and go from there. After a couple of seasons you will be able to put just the right fuel in so you have around 1L or less left at the end of each stint :)

Hi from my experience so far having had 3 different technical directors I would say add 0.4 to their calculations. I also strongly advise that you calculate your loads for the race as some races in my first season were 35 laps or so, yet my TDs calculations were designed for only 30 laps.

Fuel consumption differs per push. Using previous season data will help you formulate strategies. Season 1 of your career is really about learning how to get a food into the game. I got my first win at round 14 after working out the formulae. Such as I cannot give cause I don't like giving others an advantage :)

I'm ok figuring it out slowly. Got my first 2 points, now thats satisfying.

Take your fuel usage from your post race results per lap. You will see your fuel went down by X.x per lap on a neutral setting as you said. Take the past tracks lap length in Km then divide by the amount of L of fuel you used per previous lap. Your result is your current engine and fuel combinations L usage per Km. Use the L/Km multiplied by any track lap length to get a solid number for L / lap (fuel usage per lap) on a neutral setting. Remember this is usage on a neutral push setting, fuel usage will increase and decrease according to push settings. By using this base strategy, there will be no blame left with a hapless tech director, it will be with you and your calculator.

Do the same thing for tires too while you are at it. You can find out (roughly)  how many Km you can get on soft tires before they are slowing you down and should pit to replace them or worse let them pop on track. This will depend on tire compound, push setting, and track/ track temp. A general idea how long your tires are going to last is better than no idea at all.

slight mistake here - use L per lap divided by lap length to get L per Km. Example: I use 3.6L of fuel per lap at Turkey on a neutral push. 3.6L / 5.338 Km= .67 L per Km. Double checking the work we see .67 * 5.338= 3.57646 Round the result up or down to get your final result. You would use .67 or whatever your fuel and engine combos L per Km on any tracks lap length to get a very solid estimate on fuel per lap usage. Remember it is better to error on the side of caution than to run out of fuel.

Thx. I'm very much on the safe side now :)
Just collecting data in the first season and figuring out how everything works.

What catches my attention, and might be very demotivating for some managers, is that half of my league is inactive. It probably leads to even more people giving up!
We have had 7 cars with failing suspension in 2 races straight. That means that I'm always able to get some points if I beat a couple of teams, but there is a huge gap to the podium / top 5 teams. And one team wins every race.
Can't wait till the season is over, then I'll join a 2 car league with hopefully enough actively managed teams..

Wouter, I would suggest you talk to the league host about removing the inactive managers