Race day · Topic

Race Strategy

Load a long run (a race, a long practice, anything of 30 minutes or more, or any session with a pit stop) and Race Strategy turns it into the plan an engineer would hand you before a race: how many stops, how many laps each stint, how much fuel to add, what ends a stint, and how your pace really held up once traffic and mistakes are counted.

Where: Race Strategy, in the menu on the left You need: a session of 30 minutes or more, or one with a pit stop Reading time: 7 minutes
On this page
  1. The tab at a glance
  2. Race plan
  3. Stint limit
  4. Fuel
  5. How this session ran
  6. Pace, lap by lap
  7. Race reality
  8. Tyres · end of stint
  9. Tyres · lap by lap
  10. Pit stops
  11. Questions
Race Strategy in AB Racing Line after a long practice at Spa: the race plan, what ends a stint, fuel, the session on one line, and pace lap by lap
Race Strategy after a long practice at Spa in the BMW M4 GT3. Click any picture to see it full size.
In 30 seconds
  1. Load a long practice (30 minutes or more, ideally with a pit stop) and open Race Strategy.
  2. On Race plan, pick the race length: you get the stops, the laps for each stint and the fuel to add.
  3. Stint limit tells you what ends a stint, the fuel or a tyre.
  4. Plan around Race reality, your pace with traffic and mistakes counted, not your best clean laps.

OverviewThe tab at a glance

Everything on this tab comes from your own telemetry: it describes what actually happened in this session, so you can plan the next race on facts rather than hope. The plan is at the top and the evidence below it.

The whole Race Strategy tab with its cards numbered
  1. 1
    Race planThe stops, the stints and the fuel for the race length you pick.
  2. 2
    Stint limitWhat ends a stint: the fuel, or a tyre.
  3. 3
    FuelYour burn per lap, and what a full tank gives you.
  4. 4
    How this session ranStints, stops and the fuel in the tank, on one line.
  5. 5
    Pace, lap by lapEvery lap you drove, clean and messy.
  6. 6
    Race realityYour pace with traffic and mistakes counted.
  7. 7
    Tyres · end of stintEach tyre when you pitted.
  8. 8
    Tyres · lap by lapHow hot each tyre got, and its pressure.
  9. 9
    Pit stopsEvery stop: what it cost, the fuel and the tyres.

The selector at the top shows the whole session or any single stint on its own. Every card has an i that explains it, and Edit layout lets you move and resize the cards: press Done when you're finished, and Reset layout brings the original back.

Too short to plan from? A session shorter than 30 minutes with no pit stop is too short to plan a race from, and the tab says so.

The planRace plan

The Race plan card: race length buttons, stops, stint length, fuel per stop and the stints in a row
  1. 1
    Race length2, 4, 6, 12 or 24 hours.
  2. 2
    The stintsEach stint's laps, with the stops between them.

Pick a race length and the card plans it from this session:

The stint length is set by whichever runs out first, the fuel or the tyres.

What ends a stintStint limit

The card that shapes the whole race: what ends a stint, FUEL or TYRES. The bars show how many laps a full tank lasts, how many laps the most-worn tyre lasts, and how far the tank goes if you lift and coast. If a tyre is done first, saving fuel won't make the stint any longer, and the card says so rather than suggest it.

Tyre life needs a pit stop. iRacing only reports tyre wear when you pit, so a session with no pit stop has no tyre reading, and the card can only tell you about fuel.
The Stint limit card: laps on a full tank against laps on the most-worn tyre

FuelFuel

Your fuel use per lap once the car has settled, from every stint in the session (the first two laps of each stint are left out). The warm-up figure is the first laps of the first stint, when the tank is heaviest. Underneath: how many laps a full tank gives you, and how many if you lift and coast.

The plan adds a small safety margin and always keeps two laps in reserve, so the full-tank figure is laps you can actually run.

The Fuel card: burn per lap, warm-up burn, laps on a full tank and laps lifting and coasting

The sessionHow this session ran

How this session ran: stints in green, pit stops in amber, and the fuel in the tank as a blue line
Stints, stops and the fuel in the tank, on one line.

The whole session on one line, in time order: each green block is a stint (with its laps, time, burn and best lap) and each amber block a pit stop. The blue line is the fuel in the tank, falling through a stint and jumping back up when you refuel. The lap numbers underneath mark where each lap started.

Every lapPace, lap by lap

Pace, lap by lap: clean laps in green, messy laps in amber, the best lap in pink
Every lap: clean in green, messy in amber, your best in pink.

Every lap you drove, in order. Green dots are clean laps; amber dots had traffic or a mistake in them. A lap too slow to fit on the chart is a grey triangle along the top, so one slow lap can't squash the rest. Pink is your best lap. The green dashed line is the lap time the race plan uses, and the amber one is your racing pace with the messy laps counted in. Hover a dot for its time, and Open a lap in Telemetry takes you to that lap's traces.

Plan on thisRace reality

Your clean laps are the best case. Your racing pace is the middle of all your green-flag laps, traffic and mistakes included, which is what a race actually looks like. The big number is the difference a lap, and it's the one to plan around. Below it: the laps that cost the most, and what to budget for, a little extra fuel or an unplanned stop if enough of your laps were disrupted.

Cautions. When a session has full-course yellows, the card says how many and how long they lasted, and laps under a caution are left out of both pace figures. A stop under caution costs about half the usual time.
The Race reality card: the difference a lap between clean pace and racing pace, and what to budget for

TyresTyres · end of stint

Each tyre when you pitted at the end of your longest stint, laid out like the car. The three bars are the outside, middle and inside of the tread: their height is the tread left, and their colour is how hot that part ran in the corners (green is the working range, blue cold, red too hot). The big number is the most-worn part of the tyre; under it, how hot that part ran and the tyre's average pressure. The line under the tyres says which stop the tread was read at and names the tyre that limits a stint. It's the same card as on the Overview.

What to look for: one part of the tread wearing much faster than the others. A hot, worn middle points to too much pressure. An inside edge that's hot and worn can mean too much camber, but only on a tyre that was actually carrying the car: on an oval, or a strongly one-sided circuit, the tyres on the inside of the corners barely load, so they read hot on the inside whatever the camber. The app judges camber only on loaded running for that reason.

Tyres at the end of a stint: tread left and temperature across each tyre
No pit stop, no tread reading. iRacing only reports tread at a stop. Without one, the bars are drawn faint and coloured by temperature only, and the big number is the tyre's average temperature.

TyresTyres · lap by lap

Tyres lap by lap: for each tyre, the hottest the tread got each lap and its pressure
For each tyre: how hot it got each lap, and its pressure.

For each tyre, the hottest the middle of the tread got on each lap (when it's working hardest, in the corners) and its pressure. Laps in the pits are left out. The green band is the working range for a racing slick: lap after lap, a line under the band means that tyre isn't getting up to temperature, and above it, it's running too hot.

One lap opened: temperature and pressure through the lap, with a faint line at each corner
One lap opened: temperature and pressure through the lap, a faint line at each corner.

Pick a lap (on the strip under the title, or click it on any of the four charts) to look inside it: the same two readings through that lap, start to finish, with a faint line at each corner. Hover to read them anywhere ("T7 111°"), and All laps takes you back. Inside one lap the tread cools on the straights, so the line dips under the band between corners: what matters is how hot it gets in them.

StopsPit stops

Every pit stop: the lap you came in, the time from pit entry to pit exit, the time the car was stationary, the fuel added, the tyres changed and whether repairs were done. The race plan uses the average time a stop cost you here. A stationary time much longer than the fuel needed points to time lost to tyres or repairs.

The Pit stops card: lap, time in the pit lane, time stationary, fuel added and tyres

QuestionsQuestions

Why does the plan use a faster lap time than I really race at?
The plan is the best case: your quicker clean laps on light fuel. Race reality shows your real racing pace with traffic and mistakes counted, and what to budget for it. Plan around that.
Why is there no tyre reading?
iRacing only reports tyre wear at a pit stop. Do one stop in your practice, ideally after a full stint, and the tyre cards fill in.
Does it work for any race length?
Pick 2, 4, 6, 12 or 24 hours on the Race plan card. The plan is built from the session you loaded, so the more it looks like the race (the same car, track, fuel and conditions), the better the plan.
Where is the live fuel call during the race?
On the Live Pit Wall: it reads iRacing while you drive and tells you when to pit and how much fuel to add.

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