Pitstop with enough fuel

Fuel consumption over the previous 4 laps: 3.7l per lap
I had 7.8l begining the penultimate lap (fuel value is taken at the end of the lap)- at 3.7l per lap I was on course to consume 7.4l  leaving me 0.4l after the flag, but my driver pitted.
Disappointing, cos it was going to be a great finish, hopefully a 1-2 for me on the final lap.

I think it's wrong to provide values for fuel consumption and fuel load and then have a mechanism that automatically pits a car despite the numbers looking good, with some margin (0.4) is good margin for 2 laps of racing if you ask me, it lets me consume 0.2 MORE than I anticipate per lap.

If there is a magical margin that the game ignores, please document it. Otherwise, it's broken.

Could have been an epic race for me :/ My new signing finished 37s up the road from 2nd place, Menarguez recovering from an ailing 1 stop strategy, hunting down 2nd place at 2 seconds a lap through good tyre management and overheating tyres on the 2nd place car. The fairy tale ending? After closing to less than half a second behind 2nd place with 1 lap to go, Menargeuz pits unexpectedly taking on 52.8l of fuel and a new set of cold, hard, tyres. She finished 7th. Boo.

Are you sure you didn't hit the pit button by mistake? I only ask because you must have been using 2D since your tyres and fuel loads differ to the pre-race strategy. Not a common mistake but I've seen it done before by accident.

I was under the impression that the game auto-pitted you if it was suspected that you could run out of fuel whether this is a mystical number [prob 0.5 because after that the display rounds down to 0] or different for each track

2 main points are you pitted with 2 laps to go [if you autopitted it would have been on the final lap], + assuming you were on back off, if you changed to push hard you "might" not have had enough fuel [looking at the most fuel used per lap which was 3.9l

looks more like a lag spike [and while its sorting itself out you well pulling upto the pits] or you clicked it yourself by accident. I'm sure someone can pull the race details and check either way.. best thing to do is either try and finish each stint with about 1l or fuel, or if you've going to run it that close keep the pit window open so you can cancel the pit stop

theres a massive thread away back in the forums discussing margin for error and it how it was approx 1l on longer circuits and then reduced to around 1/4 of that value  http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=forum-thread/777

Looks to me like the margin of fuel left was too tight ths the driver pitted. I always make sure there's enough fuel to get to the end of the stint (like in your case 0.4) round it up and then add 1 litre to make 100% sure this never happens.

Most of the time its the driver that makes the choice. i had two drive not long ago on the same fuel same lap, One of them pitted a lap earlier than i wanted and the other carried on. now it down to how your driver feels i think, once again i have to driver but one of them they heat up there tyres alot quicker than the other.

So i think your problem is one of two things, your feul load was just to tight which in future add an extra litre of fuel to be safe.

or

The game lagged and screwed you over ethier way if you dont use 2d this is a prime example of y you suhd have it

No, I didn't accidently pit.

I suspect it's the mystical value. I guess I'll just add an additional litre to my calculated figure, but it makes it ridiculous since you can't say whether pushing and using that extra 0.1 per lap is going to leave you with too little fuel at the end, since you don't know what the magical value is.

I was autopitted pitted with 1 lap to go. My driver pitted on the penultimate lap. Therefore was on the final lap after exiting the pits.

I don't sit with the pit window open because I'm not expecting my driver to pit with enough fuel left to get to the end of the race.

If it was ~1l and reduced to 1/4, that makes it 0.25l - it must have been >1.6 in this case (1.6/4 = 0.4)

That whole table is wrong/confusing because your pit box is before the start finish line.. but yeh your right you pitted at the end of lap 27 but you dont know how much fuel you had in the car at the end of the lap because you stop & refuel before the line [based on the assuption you were on back off you still had 4.1l or so] and therefore would have easily been able to finish the race

BUT... if you were on push hard [lap 27&28] you wouldnt have had enough fuel [assuming 3.9l a lap], so i assume that the calculation is not based on how hard you are pushing, but rather if you were to push the car to its maximum,

Discussion is good though, i'd be quite happy if they removed it totally [if you are logged into 2d] but some form of failsafe has to be included for those that dont run 2d, and i am guilty or running out of fuel in the actual pit lane [abu dhabi i think] so it must be different on different tracks

.Brady.

@Luke Barton-  You are best to keep it open it fits nice at the bottom right corner just incase they decide to come in all by them selfs. by the looks of it bradys right you wud have got round the last to corners and it wud have said 0ltrs and then crossed the line no problem. but as i said keep the box open when the lags it can throw up a few surprise like drivers wanting to pit

Myself and brady are in the same league and we run the same way how many laps times the fuel then add a ltr or ltrs depends if it comes out at say 45.9

The same happened to me, my last race was messed up because both of my drivers pittet twice with 4l left in the Tank ( 3.7l was predicted for a lap ). There's a change been made in the race engine or the predictions did not work like it should work. Before my drivers never came into the pits if they had more fuel left than the amount wich was predicted.

He could be right though.

I did a race today at Malaysia, and my driver tried to pit when he had 5.something L left in the tank, on one of his three stops. I quickly realised (on the last straight) that he was trying to pit a lap early, so I clicked the green box and forced him to stay out there for another lap, which he managed fine.

Now, when he tried to pit he was on 5/5 so I can only guess there is something going on with the fuel calculation on the autopit when you are on 5/5? I'm not sure, maybe it thinks you use more fuel than you do.

Just food for thought.

Maybe that is caused by rounding the fuel value.
Because in 2D we only have integer values (e.g. 5 or 9). Probably it would help to see float/double values (e.g. 5.6 or 9.2).
That's only a guess. I will inform Andrew about that problem and hope we will find a solution fast.

Last race it was Ok when I've used consistent strategy and calculated just 3 x 37l for 30 laps ( 33.7 predicted for a lap ).

Just right now with a "push hard strategy" and a little amount of extra fuel they pitted too early again and surely will mess up the race pitting 1 or 2 laps from finish. Unfortunately. It's impossible to calculate how much more fuel they need as Freeuser when changing from consistent to push hard strategy because it won't show in the results. Look into my other thread for more info.

If i look into all my results they never use more fuel for a lap than the predicted amount, so i wonder how you would calculate changing strategy before a race if ou never know how much fuel is needed to stop the driver from pitting with enough fuel on board.

There must be a bug introduced recently. Please look into it because as Freeuser ou have no chance to adapt your strategy before a race to have any chance, you just can't do the math. You only can race with consistent strategy to stop this strange behaviour, or fill so much fuel ( guessing that there is a amount to stop the driver from pitting too early ) that you will never win against the subscribers who can supervise the fuels and plan pitstops during a race!!!

There was originally a fairly substantial margin of error factored into the drivers decision about whether or not to pit.  This was largely to cover a list of issues that were not being intelligently factored in.  However as the driver's AI has been refined this is probably no longer needed at all but I didn't want to remove it on the live game until we could do sufficient testing.  So up until now I have only reduced it's impact.  Currently the driver will pit if he expects he will not be able to make another lap with 5% of a lap's worth of fuel to spare, which works out at just under 0.2L in Luke's case.

Also, since you control the push levels, the drivers play it safe and assume they will not be conserving fuel during the lap ahead.  This is something else that I expect we should change, since if you start pushing hard, then it wouldn't be such a surprise if you run out of fuel!

Although this wasn't an issue in Luke's case, your drivers may pit with more fuel than you might expect if your garage is quite far passed the finish line.

I'll aim to have these calculations improved and properly tested for the Q1 update.

To be fair i think the lowest i've got is 0.1 so far. I try and run as little fuel as possible. never ran out of fuel i know of people who hav run out of fuel in the pits pretty much right outside there garage. Could you not include a decimal point in the fuel left section on the 2d viewer say just ever 0.5 a lap wud make a huge difference

My drivers pitted with 5.1l in the tank twice, the laps before pitting they spend only 3.7l per lap. It happens everytime i select a higher strategy than "constant". Really odd...