Winning B Class: part 1, fuel consumption

When I built my 2007 Toyota Yaris for racing, I aimed it at the SCCA B-Spec rules. Only after competing in an SCCA sprint race did I realize that sprint racing is not for me. It’s much more expensive per hour, the “win every corner” mindset makes it more dangerous, and it’s lonely not hanging out with a team. With that in mind, the decision was clear: re-build it for endurance racing. Sadly, it’s a little too slow for most applications. In Lucky Dog, it’s slower than most class C cars (when it doesn’t get protested for being too new). In ChampCar, the build is 120 out of 500 points so there are plenty of points to work with. But in order to compete it would take an engine swap or forced induction. Given that I want to keep it emissions legal in California, these options are mostly out of the question. Neither World Racing League nor American Endurance Racing league run events out West, so the target is Lemons. In 24 Hours of Lemons, it would probably be placed in class B. Could we win the B class with a little luck and a lot of planning? Well, this post is the first in a series where we document our efforts.

So what are our advantages? Reliability and economy. Unlike half of the cars in B class, we have a very good chance of running the whole 14.5 hours of a typical race (8 hours on Saturday and 6.5 hours on Sunday). However, we will be competing against much faster cars. We need to be on track as much as possible. This means zero black flags, of course, but it also means as little time as possible in the pits. In fact, we’re hoping to cut out one pit stop.

Most endurance driving stints are 2 hours or less. Lucky Dog and ChampCar actually limit drivers to 2 hours. Lemons has no such rule. However, most cars burn fuel fast enough that they pit between 1.5 and 2 hours. That means that a typical team will run 4-5 stints on Saturday and 3-4 stints on Sunday. I believe our best chance to win means driving only 3 stints on each day. The question is, can a single tank of fuel last 2 hours and 40 minutes on Saturday?

Our previous racing at Thunderhill, Laguna Seca, and Buttonwillow shows that the Yaris burns about 4 gallons per hour. With its 11.1 gallon fuel tank, it should be able to run 2:45. That’s no problem for Sunday but Saturday could be. If our calculation is off by 10%, we might find ourselves running out of fuel, and there would be no chance of winning if that happened. So we need to figure out how to extend our range.

The simplest answer is to install a fuel cell. That would instantaneously solve the range problem but would bring up new problems. They’re expensive. It would require removing the stock fuel tank and fabricating a new structure. The car would also no longer be street legal. The center of gravity would be higher. Too many negatives, so I’m not getting a fuel cell. Lemons does not allow one to modify OEM fuel fillers, so I can’t increase capacity with a fat intake tube either. So if we can’t increase fuel capacity, we’re going to have to increase efficiency.

Economic driving

Who knows how to get the most miles from a tank of gas? Hyper-milers. I’m sort of a closet hyper-miler myself. On the street, I often drive under the speed limit, conserve as much momentum as possible, pump my tires up pretty high, and draft trucks on the highway. I don’t go as far as making aerodynamic improvements though. But we will on the racecar. However, that’s a topic for another day. Today we are going to consider the act of racing more conservatively. The driving can’t change so much that we do more harm than good, though. We have these two connected questions to consider.

1. How much fuel do we save by changing our driving style?
2. What style of driving optimizes our chance of winning?

To answer these questions, I’ll be using Assetto Corsa, Brands Hatch, and the NA Miata. While I do have a Yaris model for Assetto Corsa, I don’t think it’s very accurate. The NA Miata is one of the highest quality models and besides, Miata Is Always The Answer. The car is loaded up with 5 liters of fuel, “Street” tires at 30 psi, max camber, and zero toe.

So let’s define a few different driving styles.

• Hard – Hit the brakes hard. Hit the throttle hard. Steer like a mad man. In slow, out fast. Brake in a straight line. Shift at red line (7k). Lots of amateur racers drive like this, especially those in powerful cars. Clearly we’re not considering this, but I wanted to investigate the efficiency of a typical sucky racer. Intensity 9/10ths. Intelligence 3/10ths.
  
• Soft – Conserve momentum as much as possible with early apex lines. Coast slightly before braking zones. Shift at 6K and choose a higher gear if there’s any question. Steering corrections are unnecessary driving like this. Intensity 5/10ths.
• Enduro – Drive fast but with a lot of margin for error (not much yaw). Shift at 6.5k. Use lots of trail-braking but only a little brake-turning. Intensity 7/10ths.
• Sprint – Drive faster with plenty of yaw. Still keep some safety in reserve. Shift at 7k RPM. Intensity 8/10ths.

The most interesting finding for me was that Soft driving increased fuel economy by an amazing 40% over Hard driving while having nearly identical lap times. My typical Enduro style results in decent fuel economy and speed. I’m only about 1% off my Sprint pace but my economy is up 13%. Compared to driving Soft, Enduro is 3.3% faster at the cost of 22% less economy. So which style is best for endurance racing? Is it better to drive slowly to get a tank of gas to last 148 minutes, drive as fast as possible while only getting 103 minutes, or something in between?

Style	Laps	Fast	Median	Laps	Minutes
Hard	10.3	63.96	64.18	98.88	105.8
Soft	14.5	63.84	63.97	139.2	148.4
Enduro	11.9	61.31	61.91	114.2	117.9
Sprint	10.5	60.84	61.29	100.8	103.0

The track is live for 480 minutes on Saturday. But not all of those 480 minutes are hot. Lemons does live towing and when there are several tow trucks on track at once they will fly full course yellows. Sometimes that goes on for 5 minutes and sometimes for 30. I recall one race where they threw a red flag and I waited nearly 20 minutes with the engine off. It’s hard to predict how much of the 480 minutes are green and how much are yellow. So we need to investigate what happens with 10 to 120 minutes of yellow flag time, which results in 470 to 360 minutes of race time.

The next thing to consider is how many driving minutes there are. The car isn’t lapping when it’s in the pits. My calculations use a pit stop time of 10 minutes. It doesn’t take that long to fuel a car and change drivers, but Lemons pit stops occur in the paddock, outside the timing loop on the track. So every time you pit, you lose 1 lap in addition to transit time.

Taking into account lap times, fuel burn, yellow flag time, and number of pit stops, we arrive at the table below. I have highlighted the driving style that produces the most laps in red.

Yellow	Hard	Soft	Enduro	Sprint
10	401	412	426	420
20	392	403	416	411
30	383	393	407	401
40	373	393	397	391
50	364	384	387	381
60	364	375	377	372
70	355	364	368	372
80	345	356	358	362
90	336	347	348	352
100	327	337	339	342
110	317	328	329	332
120	308	318	319	323

When Enduro beats Sprint, it does so by 5.67 laps on average. Conversely, Sprint beats Enduro by 3.67 laps on average. The difference comes down to how many stints there are. Enduro sometimes runs one less stint, and when it does, it has a huge advantage. It doesn’t impede lap times that much and has the added benefit of reducing fatigue and the chance of a black flag (which pretty much guarantees we won’t win B class). Driving Soft never wins. It can be as much as 10 laps better than driving Hard, and there are a few situations (highlighted in blue) where it is better than Sprint. But it never beats Enduro. There isn’t much point in driving super Soft. The hyper-miler in me wanted that to be useful, but it isn’t.

Telemetry or it didn’t happen!

The line colors are:

• Red Hard
• Blue Soft
• Green Enduro
• Black Sprint

The panels from top to bottom are:

• Brake pressure
• RPM
• Speed
• Steering angle
• Throttle
• Time delta

Click on the image to open it in a new window and then follow along with the text below.

There are 4 braking zones (top panel). In Soft style I only applied brakes in 2 of these. Note how low the RPMs are in general. You can also see long periods of coasting in the 5th panel (throttle). But the speed graph (3rd panel) isn’t that terrible. Driving economically is a kind of intellectual challenge, which is why I hyper-mile in real life. I have to do something to make street driving entertaining.

Hard style sees me sawing the fuck out of the steering wheel (4th panel) and mashing the brake and throttle pedals mercilessly. The brake trace (top) shows early and hard application of the brakes followed by no trailing pressure. Just on/off. It’s not a fast or economical way to drive.

There isn’t a huge difference in driving style between Enduro and Sprint. I use more brake pressure in Sprint mode to turn the car and I also choose a lower gear in a couple of places. I consciously take an earlier apex line in Enduro to favor momentum over engine.