Solved

Engines and performances

No, I don't think it's the engine. OK, with the change to Wonder you probably gave up 10 points in the big 4 towards your competition, which might hampered your pace slightly, for a FE bonus I don't know if it really was an improvement on every track as with FE only reaching certain steps are an improvement and every point in between those just making the car a little bit worse. Looking through the results I suppose your lead was likely more a result that it looks like that your main competitor Scuderia Nera wasn't attending Bahrain and thus started 5 and 6 but finished one lap behind, then Qualifying and running a few laps on Mediums didn't help in Monaco and finally made, as it turned out with the rain stopping, the wrong choice of Wets in Canada for both Qualifying and having to pit after only one lap. Whereas in the second half things went a lot better for that team without any 'duds' and thus gnawed away your lead again.

In development perhaps, in early races you beat him Qualifying in the races I checked and from Azerbaijan on he had an advantage. But it looks a bit like he saved up some points during that early phase but after applying them you almost immidiately closed the gap again. So maybe mistakes but you did not  better or worse than him.

Race strategy is difficult and even harder to explain. I noticed that the strategies of both cars differ by two laps sometimes. Was that experimental or misjudged fuel? Anyway, the basis is knowing your fuel and tyre wear for the tracks, as well as time lost in pitting. Then there's the goal to have DRS every lap and for both cars as often as possible.

The important step with strategy is playing them out in the head. What does the fuel weight with the car? How affects the tyre wear the car? What happens in those crucial phases one team had pitted and the other not? What are the others doing, where will they be in relation to me and how fast will they go? Get I DRS from them, especially when I'm slower, will I get blocked, especially in laps I'm light and/or need to go fast to play out an advantage? 

For example same strategy (like the last winning one) as the main opponent may work, but if you're likely the one starting behind you have to be (pretty) sure to be able to stick closely to the other guy and confidend to be the one getting last DRS or has way more boost at the end. If you end up a bit behind it's a bit unlikely to gain with doing the same in a slightly slower car (without help) and it needs quite unusual events to end up way in front.

Finally there's PL management in the race. It's based on two rules:
1) Keep your tyres in the optimal window.
2) In iGP it's: More speed = more heat

Edit: Yes, Chris is absolutely right, watching races, both Youtube and Spectating, really helps in building experience in how races unfold, and you're not distracted by having to manage cars.

Your pre-race practice laps fuel consumption should allow you to plan your pit stops to the precise lap.

If you don't pit on the lap you expected to pit you got it very wrong. If you have 1.1 litres or more fuel remaining when you stop or you run out of fuel just as you enter the pit lane you got it a little bit wrong.

To work out the fuel load multiply the practice lap fuel consumption by the number of laps you want to do, add 0.5 litre and round up to the next integer.

As an example, for a practice lap fuel consumption of 2.2 litres per lap and you want to do a 11/10/9 lap strategy:

• 11 x 2.2 = 24.2 + 0.5 = 24.7 then round up to 25


• 10 x 2.2 = 22 + 0.5 = 22.5 then round up to 23


• 9 x 2.2 = 19.8 + 0.5 = 20.3 then round up to 21

However, remember that practice laps are carried out at PL3 which means there are a couple of things you need to consider:

• If you are at a circuit requiring high PL (e.g. Monaco in winter) you are going to use more fuel per lap than the practice data suggests so it would be advisable to maybe add a litre, definitely in stint 1 above, possibly also stint 2 depending on the risk you want to take.


• Likewise if you are running in Bahrain at 40 degrees or Monza in the summer with soft tyres you are going to use lower push so may be able to get away with a litre less than calculated. Again in the example above I think stint 3 would be worth risking 20 litres.


• As the track "rubbers in", the cars get faster and the tyres get hotter. If you are actively managing the tyre temperatures you will inevitably end up using lower push levels towards the end of the race. You should also account for this when calculating your fuel load.

You can use the above calculation or maybe develop your own way of working it out (I have another slightly more complicated method) and going forward, when you review your race data you should be aiming for the cars to pit on the laps you expected and at the end of the stint have between 0.1 to 1.0 litres of fuel remaining.