F1 2016 Hamilton Crazy Tyre Management in Bahrain/Ultimate AI?

PR3D4TOR · Feb 8, 2017

Hi,

I am racing a 50% race/Ultimate AI in Bahrain and i was wondering what the heck was going on there.

I was doing a Soft (Q2 Tyre), Medium, SS strategy, just like always in Bahrain, thats what i am used to do.

See this picture (left side is my strategy, right is LH44)

So what was Hamilton doing here?

First of all he ran freaking 13-14 laps with Soft tyres with not that much pace deficit at all? More important: Mandatory tyres are mediums i think? So what is this strategy/bug? Sounds like a Ferrari strategy in Real life but i could never do that many laps on Softs and i would not do that because i HAVE to use Mediums obviously once.

Am i missing something?

What are your strategies in Bahrain (50%)?

Mark Saunders · Feb 11, 2017

Your first soft run was 9 laps, his 10. His second stint on softs was 14 because they were fresh; the previous set would have done out lap, fast lap, in lap during quali as well as those 10 laps so adding one extra over the 10+3 isn't so much of a stretch. If you want to stretch your opening tyre set a little more from this, don't return to pits via the menu in qualifying, instead drive out very slowly and drive back in as slowly so you don't add wear. When you auto-return, it adds the amount of tyre wear simulating a fast lap which can add up pretty damn fast!

It looks like your mediums didn't drop off during your 2nd stint whereas he dropped by about 1.2s on the softs which seems about right. It also shows he did pit for mediums at the end which is a bit weird; he could have just pitted a single time doing soft-medium but it looks like a strategy blunder which is a bit randomised in f1 2016 (has to be really, otherwise AI would just do optimal strategies all the time).

I don't know what your tyre wear percentages would have been and I've not done 50% around Bahrain before but it looks like soft-medium would be feasible based on those pictures. To save tyres a bit more to be able to do this, under fuel your car by a couple of laps worth in your setup and run lean more often; you can also short shift and be sure not to spin up the rears coming out of corners. It really can make a very large difference and eventually you'll find you don't loose much time per lap by doing it. In a way it's frustrating on some tracks you can't run flat out and keep the tyres in check but on the flip side, I guess they're aiming to make it a bit more like real life F1. If you want to run flat out, you might get away with SS-SS-Med or something, all depends on your driving style.

Hope this helps.