Sometimes, just going as fast as possible is not the best way to win races. In some scenarios, it might be faster to spend less time in the pit stops by doing an extra lap in your stint, and you can do that by saving fuel. But if you want to save more time in the pits than you would lose by trying to save the fuel on track, you have to know exactly where to save it.

Understanding Lifting Coast Technique

Lifting Coast is a technique used in racing where you release the throttle, or lift, before reaching the braking zone and let the car coast without applying the brakes. In real-life motorsports, left-in-coast is used mostly for three things:

• Fuel saving: Left-in-coasting is commonly used in endurance racing to conserve fuel, allowing you to extend your stint or reduce pit stops

• Tire management: Decreasing tire wear under braking

• Brake temperature management

In the simulator, we generally use it only to save fuel and endurance events. We normally spend almost all of our time accelerating our braking. To save fuel, we need to spend less time per lap on the throttle while using inertia to let the car roll in a little bit more during the lap. But of course, by doing that, we do lose time, so the secret is to know exactly what places it would be worth it to leave the car rolling or coasting on the track without losing too much time per lap.

So the math should be pretty simple. If you lose less time lifting, then the time you will save in the pits refueling.

Three Ways to Use Less Throttle and Fuel

Now, let's discuss three ways we could use less throttle and fuel and why lifting and coasting in the braking zone is the only way you should do it. Let's say we have three corners: one deceleration, pretty low speed, another corner, low speed, and then a long straight that leads into a harder braking zone, also to a low speed.

Method 1: Accelerating Later (NOT Recommended)

The best place to save fuel is always going to be at the very end before the braking zone. Now, let me explain why. Let's say we're trying to save fuel in this purple and one of the attempts is to just accelerate later. Well, when we do this, we lose time throughout the whole straight. So all this area here is time lost. So lifting on the exit of a corner makes you lose way too much time that is definitely not going to be worth the time that you're going to save in the pits.

Now here we are lifting for, let's say, one second. One second lifting here makes you lose a lot of time throughout the straight.

Method 2: Lifting Before Braking Zone (RECOMMENDED)

Now let's replace this. Instead of lifting here, we're going to lift for the same amount, one second, but right here. Now what happens is this. If you exit fast, you carry the same amount of speed and then we lift for one second here and then we get to brake a little bit later.

Now the amount of fuel we saved is actually exactly the same because when you're full throttle, the car doesn't know what speed you are. The car just knows how much fuel it's injecting, right? So you save the same amount of fuel by lifting for one second here that it would save here. The amount of time you lose is a fraction of a fraction. So it's definitely not worth it to lift on a corner exit or on the middle of the straight. You always want to lift only at the very end before you start braking because that's where you lose the least amount of time.

Choosing the Right Braking Zone

Now we know that we want to lift before a braking zone, but should we do it in this corner where we don't have a lot of straight line speed to speed up the car, or should we do it on this one where we are at a much higher speed? Well the best option is actually this one here. The higher the speed, the better it's going to be to save fuel and there's a reason for it.

The speed percentage that you lose on the high end is going to be way lower than the speed percentage that you're going to lose here. So relatively speaking, one second lifting here will make you lose a lot of the speed. If you're at 50 km/h and then you're at 45, that makes you lose a lot of time because relatively speaking 45 km/h at a lower speed is a lot of speed. But comparing 300 to 295, proportionally that's a very small amount. So when you are at higher speeds, lifting will make you lose a lot less time than you think. So it's much better to save fuel at top speed before corners, like for example Daytona Turn 1.

Method 3: Half Throttle (NOT Recommended)

Another thing you should not do is half throttle. You don't want to accelerate less and lose progressively more speed just because the same way we're spending all this time, the area under the curve of the speed graph determines how much time we're losing and that area is much bigger when we don't go full throttle.

Key Principles for Fuel Saving

So in other words, to save fuel you want to:

• Be extremely aggressive on low speed corners

• Only lift before the braking

• Prioritize lifting before long braking zones after a long straight

The Best Way to Save Fuel: Drafting

And the absolute best way to save fuel is by being behind someone and getting their draft. This is the way most people win races in endurance events. If they find someone that is fast enough so that they can just stay behind because the draft pulls you and gives you a little bit extra speed, right? So you gain that speed and then you lift earlier, you lift, you lift, you wait and then you brake and you continue benefiting from the draft.

As long as the other driver is fast and keeps you on a very good left time, that's the absolute best way to gain time because if you do this over a stint, we could be talking about three for five seconds that you save in a pit stop. It's a lot of time and in a competitive scenario, it's a little brainer and it can be the way you are going to win a race.