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Bewildered by Tire performance

I'm so confused. How can someone come out of the pits with medium tires be running laps faster than someone on soft tires? Even on older tires, I just I can't wrap my head by the performance differences that seem counter intuitive. Then when I switch, I of course am way slower!

I'm not cooking the tires, i'm almost lap by lap updating the push levels to keep them where red meets black. I'm just so confused....

There are a few variables involved and it will be hard to provide an explanation without observing the race itself, or at least knowing the temperature of the race and what the tire temps were.

The other thing is, your car versus the other car may simply have been at a massive disadvantage at that particular track.

Your car might be strong in certain aspects that aren't favorable at a certain track.

I do get that various factors are to be weighed in; but no combination of factors should make it this hard to figure out / lack of predictability to where medium tires perform consistently better than faster tires when being used by a single pushed setting team due to not being their live. Only two managers even show up so I can't see that a single push setting is really the only reason why either.

This occurs on multiple tracks - and I've been waiting to see how the different weather plays in with today being different than the previous times. Same result on Sunny days versus cooler cloud cover days. Since real race weather is being used, sure the logo (sunny / cloud cover) may be different but overall temps have been fairly consistent.

Since the league is all first timers, I can't see how there would be any unbalanced advantages at this point especially given that my staff are stronger than todays winning car.

Question - Tire Economy. Does it simply mean longer lasting tires or ability to driver harder, get faster times, without cooking the tires?

Tyre Economy does indeed result in lower tyre temperature and thus might allow harder push. Trouble is once the stat is in double digits the gain is really very small.

A single push level doesn't mean it's lower than yours. It could be the ideal one for medium tyres and if he ran softer tyres before this might have concealed that his car, or more probably driver, is faster than yours but slowed due to cooked the tyres until the switch to mediums. Not to forget: The tyre wear stat of the track is at least as important as (air) temperature. Then there remains one question: How much older is on older tyres? If that's below 50% then tyres easily fall below the performance of the next harder compound.

If the game makes a difference of how cloudy it is I don't know. It might, on really sunny days the sun can heat tarmac way above air temperature. But at race time it might be night at the track, how it's now?

Races take place at official race times I think, it is why no matter what time you go to the track it's day light and Singapore is night. This is why we have the sun at 9:20pm when the race is taking place and not the moon and stars for weather icons :D

For me TE only extends the life of the tyre. All it is doing is pushing the drop off point back a bit meaning you are going further into the race before you need to rise the push level to maintain tyre temp.

Weather temperature changes the operating range of tyre temps and push levels, the higher the temp the lower the push level and then the other way around the lower the temp the higher the push level.Then you have track characteristics to add to mix as well when it comes to push levels.

Driver attributes also have impacts on the tyre temperatures, but these are all things you will notice and pick up on as you progress through your career here as a manager, the more sampling and tinkering you do with things the more stuff you will notice.

I guess the deal is, I expect tires to get slower (not faster) as they get older. I mean, setting a record in a race on 34% medium tires (which means beating every lap on SS set at the beginning of the race while in green %'s) is just not making sense.

The tyres do get slower. At the same time the track gets faster, due to the racing line getting cleaner and covered in fresh rubber, and the car gets faster with burning its fuel weight. Then there's DRS, KERS and maybe push. Still, the race record lap would have been faster with better tyres, if conditions or the temp reserve would've allowed a similar push level that is.

@James: Well, the graphics for the tracks might be just matching the official race times because there's only one and the weather symbol is always the sun, even in Singapore where it should be night at official race time. So who knows if the game always assumes higher tarmac temperatures if the sun symbol is shown, takes race time into account as well, or it isn't simulated at all and there's just air temperature.

It really looked like TE is influencing temps here but it might be just the car in general that was giving this impression and it's, if at all, a very small difference in any case. It's one of these things you just can't properly test. Not without stopping team development, building exact the same car and not train the driver that is, and then probably the weather is still different at the tracks when you want to do the tests.

Yes I have and the drivers were separated from all other cars. Field of 6 and the two I'm tracking are my own which had a decent separation so no DRS was kicking in and I didn't do any manual boost until 2 laps from the finish for personal entertainment.

I can understand a track getting faster by getting "rubbered up," but does that really translate into +5 seconds gain? I don't get to watch too many F1 races since i'm not subbed to any provider... if thats the case then wow, mind blown! I'll have to change my understanding.

https://igpmanager.com/app/d=resultDetail&id=6423836 M Melis driver is my comparison for the below, but I've seen this on last season as well for other drivers on other teams.

Lap 2: + .8 behind leader while in second place, super soft tire with 81 -> 66% tire remaining, fuel 20.2 - > 17.3, does a 1:36.531 (fastest lap set on super softs by this driver)

Lap 38: +1 second behind leader while in 2nd place. Medium tire with 46 - 43% tire remaining, fuel 21.6 -> 18.7, does a 1:35.369

Lap 6: +1 second behind leader while in 2nd place. Super soft tire with 34 -> 27% tire remaining, fuel 8.7 -> 5.9, does a 1:37.518

Lap 43: +2 seconds behind leader while in 2nd place. Medium tire with 34->28 % tire remaining, fuel 7.1 -> 4.2, does a 1:34.981


Also --- i do keep push levels and tire temps where black meets red for almost every lap. Some laps slip buy where it goes further into red but otherwise, tire temps are almost always black meets red.

I have a question too: I've noticed a number of people saying they keep their tyres in the "grey" zone (between red and blue). My question is, how do they do this? Because it is impossible for me to keep my tyres there even when on the lowest push setting. No matter what compound I use, it always creeps up into the red zone within the space of a lap. I can't set the push level into reverse!. I have very good driver, car levels, parts, design levels etc. I've been playing around all season with different tyre suppliers and trying different push strategies. Going backwards in performance. My conclusion is I should go back to my old strategy of keeping tyres in the middle of the red zone. Any thoughts?

Sounds a bit strange that you cant get the tyres in the gray zone Jack

for example last nights race at 12 degrees in Italy
very low push level on soft tyres where optimal for 7 lap stints for the full stint.
low push level on medium tyres was optimal for 7 laps then for the last 3 the tyres started going red, dropping to very low corrects it.

As for chopping and changing suppliers they are all the same, the only differences in the suppliers is the plus ones they give in car design

If push level isn't controlling it, I would consider what your Tire Economy is. Some tracks do run hotter even with lowest push but usually not for long as the tires get older and become more controllable. Also, consider that I'm on a 100% race at 2x speed. I think Jack mentioned in posts a while back that there is a mathematical difference (at least there was a plan to do so at that time, not sure if it was implemented).

It's only game speed! everything is just the same as normal speed, it just happens quicker ;)

preformance might not be as good as performance but it will still get you to the end of race.

Need a few more irish coffees to waken me up

My tyres always creep into the red zone by the end of 1 lap. Obviously they go into red quicker if pushing but always go into red. Today my race was in Japan. I went with 0 push. Still crept into red at the end of 1 lap. My TE was around 85%.

Supersoft is why they are burning up, everyone the same Jack. TE extends the life of the tyres by lowering the wear percentage it doesn't change the operating temperatures.

Slower drivers and cars use higher push levels might be why you are getting a bit confused.
I noticed this in Rookie & Pro Tiers

When you say zero push, do you mean you are all the way to the left, with defensive shield logo? Or do you mean neutral, in the middle?