Well, as long as we speak about aero, every molecule (and not only air one, also cars) is "variable", or input. I bet you don't want to build pre-calculated table for that. 
Not with human computers, in this decade.
So there is some "heuristic" going on in games, creating some fake input variables according to wing setup, car position on track, wind, other cars around it, etc.. and from there you get maybe toward some table values. But it has actually very little in common with the real thing. That's why F1 designers use CFD (simulating something like air molecules, but probably in larger chunks), and not games-like formulas.
Racer X NZ:
"this is not AI" ... actually I don't think it differs that much from game AI.
But I never really worked on simulator game, so I didn't code any fake aerodynamics simulation :/. But I did work on some AI for games in several games, and it doesn't sound that much different from what I would do with the fake aero simulation. I mean that much different, that it requires special category and online forum argument, of course the code and formulas would look different, but the principles used to design it would be very very close.
Also I'm not sure where's modern AI gone, maybe it's very far from what I did back then around 2000...
Then again I somehow doubt it, watching the modern games AI results..
Not with human computers, in this decade.So there is some "heuristic" going on in games, creating some fake input variables according to wing setup, car position on track, wind, other cars around it, etc.. and from there you get maybe toward some table values. But it has actually very little in common with the real thing. That's why F1 designers use CFD (simulating something like air molecules, but probably in larger chunks), and not games-like formulas.
Racer X NZ:
"this is not AI" ... actually I don't think it differs that much from game AI.
But I never really worked on simulator game, so I didn't code any fake aerodynamics simulation :/. But I did work on some AI for games in several games, and it doesn't sound that much different from what I would do with the fake aero simulation. I mean that much different, that it requires special category and online forum argument, of course the code and formulas would look different, but the principles used to design it would be very very close.
Also I'm not sure where's modern AI gone, maybe it's very far from what I did back then around 2000...
Then again I somehow doubt it, watching the modern games AI results.. 