Just joined today, looking forward to my first race!

nice one

heres a tip seeing as you've just joined, it worked for me

start with just one driver and try a one pit strategy for now

later you'll have to use a 2 stop

Quote from X tempor :

start with just one driver and try a one pit strategy for now

later you'll have to use a 2 stop

Here's a better tip:

Write a compounding calculator in whatever scripting language you prefer, figure in around 0.300 per lap of fuel taken on during your pit stops, and then you can just enter the number of laps and fuel penalty per-lap and it will tell you which is the fastest pit strategy.

I should really re-examine how long my stops take because I've improved my tech department a lot, but tbh if I see an option for more stops with marginal timing I always pick that one anyway for the benefit of having fresher tyres (which my calculator doesn't factor for). Works a treat.

no wonder my team has been in a slump, I always either take 1 pit or none...im so ashamed. Either way i will win next season , thanks for the advice.

There isn't a circuit where you should do no stops. The only races where one-stopping is a sensible option are: Europe (Nurburgring), Monaco and one other... the name of which I forget, but it will be the last race of next season (there are two race calendars that alternate). The rest you should be looking at two or more stops.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Here's a better tip:

Write a compounding calculator in whatever scripting language you prefer, figure in around 0.300 per lap of fuel taken on during your pit stops, and then you can just enter the number of laps and fuel penalty per-lap and it will tell you which is the fastest pit strategy.

I should really re-examine how long my stops take because I've improved my tech department a lot, but tbh if I see an option for more stops with marginal timing I always pick that one anyway for the benefit of having fresher tyres (which my calculator doesn't factor for). Works a treat.

I don't get it, can you explain it better please?

By the way, is that 3rd track Canada by any chance?

I just signed up and after getting my confirmation code and locking in I get this:

Quote :

Your account has not been associated with a league, this could occur if you experienced problems during your account creation or if you have recently re-enabled an account that has been dorment for some time. Please wait until after the next end of season tick when you will be assigned a league number.

Would anybody happen to know what that means? Afaik I didn't experience any problems during account creation and I certainly didn't re-enable an old account .

Quote from diablo21 :

I don't get it, can you explain it better please?

The race weekend page shows you the fuel penalty per lap. Let's say it's 0.1s per lap. So if you're going to run 10 laps before you take a pit stop you'll lose 1s on the first lap due to your fuel load, 0.9s on lap two, and so on. So you can use a compounding calculator to figure out exactly how much time it will cost you to run different strategies.

There are a couple of other factors: Tyres (you lose time as they wear out, so sometimes more stops will be better than less stops - especially if your tyre supplier's hard tyres are crap), and the actual time you spend stationary in the pits. If you analyse your earlier races and how long the stops took, you should be able to figure out how long the pit stops would've taken for other strategies too. It seems to be a base time in seconds, plus a fraction of a second for every lap of fuel you take on board. I think that fraction is different depending on how good your technical department is.

You could probably set all this up in Excel actually, I just cobbled it together in PHP because that's easier for me.

Quote from diablo21 :

By the way, is that 3rd track Canada by any chance?

Nah, I'm doing 4 stops in Canada. It's the last race of next season, I've got it listed as "England" but it can't be Silverstone (we had that this season) so I'm not sure what it is. Might be Brands Hatch.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

You could probably set all this up in Excel actually, I just cobbled it together in PHP because that's easier for me.

This sounds very much like an off-topic improvement suggestion...

How about letting us share this magic calculator please Kev..My brain goes into overload when I see the letters P&H&P together!

The upside of this is that the LFS 'managers' in the game can have a slight advantage over the non-LFS'ers

Don't forget that you don't lose 0.1 seconds per lap, you are 0.1 seconds per lap per lap slower. Everyone else has the same drop, so it's not as simple as 'big numbers = more stops'.

Quote from Bladerunner :

How about letting us share this magic calculator please Kev..My brain goes into overload when I see the letters P&H&P together!

It's not really suitable for public consumption at the moment - the pit stop duration isn't perfect, and I think it depends on how good your tech department is, and tyres play a part too, so it would be hard for me to provide a solution for everybody.

I'll have a crack at re-figuring out how efficient my guys are in the pits, and if you could do the same (at least for the races where you know how good your tech dept. was - how many stars, how many research levels) then maybe I could come up with a usefully accurate formula from there. So if you could tell me what lap your drivers pitted on, how long the stop took, how many laps fuel they took on board, and what circuit they were racing on then that would help a lot. If you could give me that info for a few different races (where your technical department didn't change between races) then that would be really handy.

OK, stats for this season, don't seem to be able to look back at previous seasons very easily, I'll maybe take a look later and see if they are still there to look at.
I'll add in race 10 - USA tomorrow.

HQ, CAD, Construction & Motor Home are at Level 5.
Design - Level 2
Technical - Level 2
These have been at these levels all season.

Race 1 - Bahrain - 57 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:33.517
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:33.512

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 20 - 14:0925
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 21 - 14:0925
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 39 - 14:0925
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 40 - 13:3525

Race 2 - Sepang - 56 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:36.596
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:36.587

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 20 - 14:0925
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 21 - 14:0925
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 39 - 13:7225
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 40 - 13:3525

Race 3 - Melbourne - 58 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:27.725
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:27.734

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 20 - 14:0925
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 21 - 14:0925
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 39 - 14.4625
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 40 - 14.0925

Race 4 - San Morino - 62 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:23.698
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:23.763

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 20 - 15.2025
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 21 - 15.2025
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 42 - 14.8325
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 43 - 14.4625

Race 5 - Nuburgring - 60 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:21.686
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:21.716

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 21 - 14.4625
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 22 - 14.4625
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 41 - 14.4625
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 42 - 14.0925

Race 6 - Catalunya - 66 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:18.013
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:18.060

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 23 - 15.2025
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 24 - 15.2025
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 45 - 15.2025
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 46 - 14.8325

Race 7 - Monaco - 78 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:17.649
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:17.687

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 27 - 16.6825
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 28 - 16.6825
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 53 - 16.6825
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 54 - 16.3125

Race 8 - Silverstone - 60 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:20.984
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:21.058

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 18 - 14.8325
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 19 - 14.8325
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 39 - 15.2025
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 40 - 14.8325

Race 9 - Gilles Villeneuve- 70 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap - 1:16.020
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap - 1:16.092

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 22 - 15.9425
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap 23 - 15.9425
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 46 - 16.3125
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap 47 - 15.9425

Race 10 - USA - 73 laps
Driver 1 - Fastest Lap -
Driver 2 - Fastest Lap -

Driver 1 - Pitstop 1 - Lap -
Driver 2 - Pitstop 1 - Lap -
Driver 1 - Pitstop 2 - Lap -
Driver 2 - Pitstop 2 - Lap -

Ooh, data!

Let me see if I can draw any conclusions comparing this to my own data...

Seems tech. department doesn't gain you any time in the pits. Your times are the same as mine, and I've got a 5* tech department and five levels of research.

Still trying to see what's causing the differences, but tbh it's starting to look unimportant.

Edit: Would like to hear from anybody who didn't 2-stop in the Bahrain GP.

my fastest laps this season

race 1
Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:33.492

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:33.514

race 2

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:36.420

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:36.450
race 3

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:27.732

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:27.746
race 4

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:23.802

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:23.829

race 5

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:21.649

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:21.695

race 6

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:17.980

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:18.021

race 7

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:17.717

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:17.751

race 8

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:21.035

matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
1:21.107

race 9

Ray Tupper
Super Speed Racing
1:16.052

Matthew Villeneuve
Super Speed Racing
Crashed

race 10 isnt untill tomorrow

OK, I think this is working quite well now.

Pit strategy calculator

I did a one stop strategy at Bahrain

Details (just for that race, more to follow)

Driver 1: qual time= 1.33.610 / race fastest lap= 1.34.836
Driver 2: qual time= 1.33.652 / race fastest lap= 1.34.841

D1 pit@lap 29 Out in 17.7925 secs
D2 pit@lap 31 Out in 17.0525 secs

Facilities all at 5* except Research Facility 1* and no test track yet

Oh, it's the same as all the others then.

Thanks for that.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed with this game.
I was a bit sceptical when I signed up because it looks like the graphics were designed by a blind chimp, but the depth of the content is pretty good.

At the end of last season I moved from 219th devision to 44th, which I was quite happy with. But it's not going as well this season - my upgrades are coming very slowly and I'm struggling at the bottom of the league. Still having a lot of fun though, and I think when I've finished with my upgrades I'll be back in the game!

Highly recommend this to anyone. I'd like to see a tin-top version in the future too, as well as a bit of a graphical overhaul.

Quote from Dajmin :

I have to say I'm pretty impressed with this game.
I was a bit sceptical when I signed up because it looks like the graphics were designed by a blind chimp, but the depth of the content is pretty good.

At the end of last season I moved from 219th devision to 44th, which I was quite happy with. But it's not going as well this season - my upgrades are coming very slowly and I'm struggling at the bottom of the league. Still having a lot of fun though, and I think when I've finished with my upgrades I'll be back in the game!

Highly recommend this to anyone. I'd like to see a tin-top version in the future too, as well as a bit of a graphical overhaul.

I must admit that the graphics aren't that great...and while we are at it, how about the option to view the race in real time?? (only kidding!!!)
Don't forget, one of the most successful PC game franchises EVER has probably the worst graphics ever..in fact, I would go as far as to say that the graphics are virtually non-existent!
I'm talking about the famous SI Games footy manager games..I've had every version since the very first release back in my Atari ST days...and although the gfx sux, the gameplay is second-to-none!

it is a fantastic game only thing it bothers me is the race tic that doesnt start till 8pm that sucks!

Quote from Bladerunner :

I must admit that the graphics aren't that great...and while we are at it, how about the option to view the race in real time?? (only kidding!!!)
Don't forget, one of the most successful PC game franchises EVER has probably the worst graphics ever..in fact, I would go as far as to say that the graphics are virtually non-existent!
I'm talking about the famous SI Games footy manager games..I've had every version since the very first release back in my Atari ST days...and although the gfx sux, the gameplay is second-to-none!

They said it's being worked on.

They've put me in league 5 - I'm racing El Cristoph! He's ranked below me too, hehe.

Finished 3rd in league 8, not bad. I'm the youngest team in my league by a few years again, so I think top 3 is the best I can hope for. All this promotion is ruining my race win percentage.

I see Tristan's rise has stalled at league 4. I'm coming to get you, Tristan!

I'm still in league 27

How many seasons have you played?

Again in division 11
How long does it take from payment to get your pro account? I would like to have my level 5 engine facility before I start developing a new one. Oh, and I used different email-accounts

Yup, stuck at League 4, despite putting over 10m per race into research and development!

My race drivers Scawen Roberts and Victor van Vlaardingen aren't as good as I'd hoped (too much time at home sitting in front of PCs I think), but Eric Bailey is learning fast with 1100 testing laps per race!

My 1032hp/20334rpm engine should finish next race, and then I'll try and get some more horsepower in 3 or 4 race jumps.