Fuel Efficiency

[Fritz]

I've been doing my own analysis on fuel consumption per lap (how much laps of fuel units get burned in an actual lap) and so far I've found that no matter the track, or other obvious factors (rain, fast driver, etc), each engine mode always burns around the same amount in a lap.
Mode-Average (ideal?)
SO-1.41 (1.40 +/-0.05)
O-1.31 (1.30)
H-1.05 (1.00)
M-0.91 (0.90)
L-0.83 (0.80)
This is making me wonder what exactly are the effects of fuel efficiency if burn rates are always the same? Am I just wrong and came to a false conclusion due to insufficient data or does fuel efficiency do something else than what I assumed?
Originally I assumed it would be a multiplier and having say 5 star fuel efficiency would reduce burn across the board by some percentage. For example at 4 stars O mode might burn 1.3 laps of fuel in an actual lap but with 5 star fuel efficiency would burn 1.1 laps of fuel. But from my observations I've noticed that this is not quite the case. Therefore does fuel efficiency do nothing? Does it simply make the car faster by some arbitrary amount? Does it reduce relative fuel weight thereby making the high efficiency cars faster through overall car weight calculations? I'm confused here.

Edit:
Latest values of averages taken from many laps except for marked with "*" since those need larger sample size.

(This section needs fixing)
5 star
SO-1.4236
O-1.2935
H-1.0056
M-0.8852
L-0.8068
delta5/4-

4 star
SO-1.4334
O-1.3170
H-1.05*
M-0.8962
L-0.8167
delta4/3-

3 star
SO-n/a
O-1.3288
H-1.025*
M-n/a
L-n/a
delta3/2-

2 star
SO-n/a
O-n/a
H-n/a
M-n/a
L-n/a
delta2/1-

1 star
SO-n/a
O-n/a
H-n/a
M-0.9422*
L-n/a
(This section needs fixing)

Driver traits
"Easy on fuel" +0.02 laps of fuel per lap.
"Heavy on fuel" -0.02??

Mechanic trait
"Fuel economy" +X.XX laps of fuel per lap

Track traits: Fuel burn
Very high: not fuel weight, not fuel burn, so idk what this does
High:??
Medium:??
Low:??
Very low:??

[Froz]

Track fuel burn may be reflected in your time penalty per lap of fuel.

Since I don't think fuel weight actually exists in game (pretty sure the game only uses fuel laps mechanically), the time penalty is there only thing I can think of.

[Fritz]

Froz님이 먼저 게시:

Track fuel burn may be reflected in your time penalty per lap of fuel.

Since I don't think fuel weight actually exists in game (pretty sure the game only uses fuel laps mechanically), the time penalty is there only thing I can think of.

That's what I meant by fuel weight. When I checked how much time a lap of fuel adds per lap, the numbers have no recognizable pattern. At a "very low" fuel burn track, 1 lap of fuel adds 0.132s per lap. At another track, this time "very high," it's 0.104s per lap. Yet another track, a "medium" burn, adds 0.147s per lap. And it goes on like this for 8/16 tracks I bothered checking. 'Twas like whipping numbers out of a hat.

Incidentally we do know how much 1 lap of fuel weighs for each track. Because of the gma rules, we know 40kg equates of 40% of the tracks distance, as is 80kg equivalent to 80%. Therefore, a 100kg tank is what gets used during no refueling seasons. In that case, 100kg/number of laps= 1 lap of fuel's weight in kg. This number makes no sense as it varies greatly if you have short or long races turned on in game settings
(100/13=7.69kg=2.72 US gallons)
(100/45=2.22kg=0.78 US gallons)
I guess some tracks just water down their fuel mixtures to keep things competitive and keep whatever company that designs these stock kg fuel tanks in business. Lolol.

[AoD_lexandro]

Fritz님이 먼저 게시:

Froz님이 먼저 게시:

Track fuel burn may be reflected in your time penalty per lap of fuel.

Since I don't think fuel weight actually exists in game (pretty sure the game only uses fuel laps mechanically), the time penalty is there only thing I can think of.

That's what I meant by fuel weight. When I checked how much time a lap of fuel adds per lap, the numbers have no recognizable pattern. At a "very low" fuel burn track, 1 lap of fuel adds 0.132s per lap. At another track, this time "very high," it's 0.104s per lap. Yet another track, a "medium" burn, adds 0.147s per lap. And it goes on like this for 8/16 tracks I bothered checking. 'Twas like whipping numbers out of a hat.

Incidentally we do know how much 1 lap of fuel weighs for each track. Because of the gma rules, we know 40kg equates of 40% of the tracks distance, as is 80kg equivalent to 80%. Therefore, a 100kg tank is what gets used during no refueling seasons. In that case, 100kg/number of laps= 1 lap of fuel's weight in kg. This number makes no sense as it varies greatly if you have short or long races turned on in game settings
(100/13=7.69kg=2.72 US gallons)
(100/45=2.22kg=0.78 US gallons)
I guess some tracks just water down their fuel mixtures to keep things competitive.

Well its not counted in game but altitude and air-temp make a major impact on fuel efficiency. The colder it is, the denser the fuel gets for increased efficiency. And lower altitudes mean more air density for the intake, which increases efficiency. The variance in track fuel rate might be taking that in to account in its factoring.

[Fritz]

AoD_lexandro님이 먼저 게시:

Well its not counted in game but altitude and air-temp make a major impact on fuel efficiency. The colder it is, the denser the fuel gets for increased efficiency. And lower altitudes mean more air density for the intake, which increases efficiency. The variance in track fuel rate might be taking that in to account in its factoring.

Ya definitely. Air temp, o2 levels, air pressure, etc all affect irl fuel efficiency. In the game tho, I haven't the foggiest idea what the game means when it says, this track has a ______ fuel burn as the game doesn't seem to relate that quality about the track to any meaningful stat calculation or effect.

[Lilebilb]

I thought track fuel rate just had an effect on lap time increase per additional lap of fuel carried....but then again I never checked it.

[PUNISHER]

all this info and ideas should be giving to devs or they should read it and implement it in next update or dlc. just create multiplier for everything and hopefully it works.
Let's say we have our base data at good conditions:
SO: 1.4 , O 1.3 and so on
multiplier for all engine modes and tyre modes.
and now let's start with weather: medium rain make it +0.1 , heavy rain +0.2 , cold or hot again multiplier.
Then followed by tyres, faster tyres make you go faster so you burn more fuel I think :D so
ultra soft +0.2 and then you have medium -0.2 and hard -0.3.
Also when tyres are on push mode it means you braking a lot later and no costing so more fuel, unlike on saving mode on tyres mean more costing before braking and less fuel.
Tyres attack: +0.2
Tyres back up : -0.2
Clean air -0.1 dirty air +0.1 and also +engine wear out quicker and loss of downforce lets say miltiplier -0.5 or something like that. Or something like that.
And put all these factors together for a great strategy.
Just a quick idea, it would be nice to get something like that in a game.

[Mr. Nice]

Fritz님이 먼저 게시:

Incidentally we do know how much 1 lap of fuel weighs for each track. Because of the gma rules, we know 40kg equates of 40% of the tracks distance, as is 80kg equivalent to 80%. Therefore, a 100kg tank is what gets used during no refueling seasons. In that case, 100kg/number of laps= 1 lap of fuel's weight in kg.

Well while the in game rules fluff text equates 1kg=1% of race length (probably an equality inspired for F1's current 100kg per race limit), I think we all know that mechanically the game only uses % of race length (rounded up to whole laps) for the tank size limit. Which theoretically means the limit in actual weight varies by track, which is fine for a game, even though it would be hell to implement in a real world series!
As to the "high fuel burn" track stuff, have you tried looking as the time loss (per laps worth of fuel) as a percentage of a standard lap of the track? After all, 1 sec loss on a 60s lap is equivalent to 1.5s on a 90s lap in terms of "fuel burn" efficiency.
Have to say, with refuelling I never plan to use less then "high" engine mode.

[Fritz]

Mr. Nice님이 먼저 게시:

Fritz님이 먼저 게시:

Incidentally we do know how much 1 lap of fuel weighs for each track. Because of the gma rules, we know 40kg equates of 40% of the tracks distance, as is 80kg equivalent to 80%. Therefore, a 100kg tank is what gets used during no refueling seasons. In that case, 100kg/number of laps= 1 lap of fuel's weight in kg.

Well while the in game rules fluff text equates 1kg=1% of race length (probably an equality inspired for F1's current 100kg per race limit), I think we all know that mechanically the game only uses % of race length (rounded up to whole laps) for the tank size limit. Which theoretically means the limit in actual weight varies by track, which is fine for a game, even though it would be hell to implement in a real world series!
As to the "high fuel burn" track stuff, have you tried looking as the time loss (per laps worth of fuel) as a percentage of a standard lap of the track? After all, 1 sec loss on a 60s lap is equivalent to 1.5s on a 90s lap in terms of "fuel burn" efficiency.
Have to say, with refuelling I never plan to use less then "high" engine mode.

Lol, I know the fuel weight is meaningless and just fluff. That's why I joked about watering the fuel down on each track. I can also take it further and work out the approximate weight of the in game car, same thing though, it's based off meaningless fluff and actually wrong.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean with fuel burn but I'll give it a try. In Singapore, a very high fuel burn track, 1 lap of fuel adds 0.104s to your lap times per lap. The fastest qualifying time that weekend was 74.749s so this translates to 0.139% time saved per lap. In Phoenix, a low fuel burn track, 1 unit of fuel adds 0.107s/lap and again fastest quali time was 58.726s meaning you save 0.182%.

So on the track with high fuel burn, where we'd expect 1 lap of fuel to be more actual fuel (if measured in regular units instead of lap units) than 1 lap of fuel on a low burn track, the percentage tells us that taking out 1 of these relatively larger quantities saves less percent time per lap. Shouldn't it be the opposite? I can double check with more tracks later since I currently only have the fastest quali times for those 2 tracks.

[Mr. Nice]

Huh, that one example does seem the wrong way around, is that for the same class of car?

[Fritz]

Most of my data comes from a WMC car that is actually the best car on the grid and currently being driven by 2 of the top 5 drivers in the series. Settings are on long races but I'm not sure which gma race length rule is in effect. Here's some more data from couple other tracks

Guildford-very low burn 0.132s/lap. Fastest quali 60.702s which means 0.217% per lap.
Cape Town-low fuel burn 0.091s/lap. Fastest quali 66.405s which saves 0.137% per lap.
Rio de Janeiro-high burn 0.138s/lap. Fastest quali 87.428s which saves 0.158% per lap.

So when you compare everything you'd expect a descending order from high burn to low burn as each singular lap of fuel becomes relatively less and less.
Singapore-very high 0.139%
Rio-high 0.158%
Cape Town-low 0.137%
Phoenix-low 0.182%
Guildford-very low 0.217%
It's more or less increasing? Earlier I joked that it feels like the numbers are getting pulled out of a hat with no regard to what that track's fuel burn rating is since the values where all over the place. This % data is odd but interesting though.

[Lilebilb]

This SHOULD be a combination of average Speed (the higher the more fuel useage) and track layout (many slower turns after each other -> low fuel, slow turn with highspeed straight afterwards -> more fuel).
If weight really IS a factor it should reduce fuel usage on tracks like Phoenix where most of the track is the same Speed and add on tracks like Monza with a mix of slow and highspeed sectors....
Finally refueling is allowed so I will add the time/lap of fuel from now on.

[Fritz]

I don't understand how you want me to compare them. I can try comparing avg speed.

Since we have a general idea how long each lap is (I think, unless I'm mistaken or its just descriptive fluff that isn't used in actual game engine calculations) we can work out approximate avg speed. I'm not confident in the track distance values though, for some reason I have different numbers for some tracks and I'm not sure where I got the first set or why they're different.

Avg speed calc
Guildford (B) very low
3mi/60.702s=0.04942mi/s or 177.92mi/hr

Cape Town (A) low
2mi/66.405s=.03012mi/s or 108.42mi/hr

Phoenix (C) low
3mi/58.726=0.05108mi/s or 183.89mi/hr

Rio de Janeiro (A) high
3.5mi/87.428s=.04003mi/s or 144.11mi/hr

Singapore (A) very high
3mi/74.749s=0.04013mi/s or 144.47mi/hr

[Lilebilb]

I dont want you to com...on second thought I do!
I guess average Speed is not easy to find out as track lengths are rounded on X.5 miles (Need to check my Settings, maybe I have km, which would be more accurate. Can tell you tomorrow :) ) If they are different it is (read: SHOULD) be either because of imperial/metric or track layout. I´ll add my data tomorrow - next Weekend at the latest.

[Mr. Nice]

Well if you want to be tricksy, you could check both the rounded mile and km lengths, then you bound the set of "real" track lengths which would round to those two.

[PUNISHER]

heinz.jannach님이 먼저 게시:

I dont want you to com...on second thought I do!
I guess average Speed is not easy to find out as track lengths are rounded on X.5 miles (Need to check my Settings, maybe I have km, which would be more accurate. Can tell you tomorrow :) ) If they are different it is (read: SHOULD) be either because of imperial/metric or track layout. I´ll add my data tomorrow - next Weekend at the latest.

Can you tell me how or why is it more accurate using km than miles???? Seriously!
That's like saying 10 inches is not 25.4 cm because cm is more accurate. WTF!
litres are more accurate than gallons too???
And just for the record Phoenix is not same! Phoenix-nascar/oval track is only in european racing and the other two is not oval track.