A Race Simulation for Strategy Decisions in Circuit Motorsports

Abstract

In motorsports, every racing participant pursues the goal to finish the race in the shortest time possible. There are several ways to influence the race with race strategy decisions, e.g. the timing of pit stops and the choice of tires. In order to be able to evaluate the race strategy before and to quickly adjust it during a race, a tool is required that simulates an entire race in a short time. For this purpose, the paper presents the methodology of a race simulation for circuit motorsports. It simulates races in dependency of various race strategy inputs and is based on a lap-wise discretization. It includes the effects of tire degradation, fuel mass loss, pit stops and overtaking maneuvers. The simulation parameters are chosen in such a way that they can be determined based on publicly accessible lap time data. The Formula 1 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is analyzed as an exemplary result. An application area is the support of race engineers in present motorsports. Future work aims towards the automation of strategy decisions in motorsports with autonomous racecars.