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## WHAT IS IT?

During the F1 Singapore Grand Prix in 2023 a situation arose whereby the cars were driving behind the safety car and most decided to take a pit stop at the same time. This model tries to figure who will usually be the winner or loser in this scenario.

## HOW IT WORKS

20 cars are created and appointed randomly to a track position and to one of 10 teams. As the cars are behind the safety car there is no overtaking on track and overtaking is not allowed in the pit lane. The cars leave the track and drive through various zones - some are speed 1imited and some are not. Once at the team garage, the team car in front of its team mate gets worked on first and the trailing team car is stacked (sits just outside the garage) if the lead car is still being worked on.

Once worked on the car will try to leave its garage. It might be blocked if there is other traffic in the pit lane (which takes priority) or if a car is stacked in the garage immediately in front (that is, the garage nearer the pit lane exit).

Having left the garage the car makes its way to the exit (in speed limited and non-limited zones) and rejoins the track.

With 20 pre-pit positions, 19 distances from team mate and 10 garage pit locations there are 3,800 combinations of starting conditions.

## HOW TO USE IT

The number of cars, teams and garages are set at 20, 10 and 10.

The sliders give:

average_pit_time : number of ticks for an average pit stop (once in garage). The actual pit time is varied using a normal sistrubition based on this average

SD_pit_time : the standard deviation of ticks used with the average above to arrive at a normal random distrbuted pit time.

pit_error_prob : the probability of a pit error (the consequences of which are decided by the next two sliders). A setting of 10 is a 10% probability of making a pit error.

pit_error_average and pit_error_sd : if a pit error occurs (see preceding setting) then an exta amount of time is added to the pit stop (measured in ticks). These settings allow a normal randon distrubition to be used (average and standard deviaiton).

move_count_ns_max and move_count_s_max : these set the speed that cars can travel (if not blocked by traffic ahead). ;'ns' sets the speed (maximum number of patches moved per tick) in a non-speed limited zone and 's' in a speed-limited zone. [Immediately before and after the garages there is a speed limit].

The variables collected are:
pre-pit track position;
cars' team number;
position of garage in pit lane;
whether lead or second team car (that is in front or behind team mate);
pit time;
distance between team mates;
post-pit track position.

## THINGS TO NOTICE

Having the garage nearest the pit lane exit is most beneficial - this is not immediately intuitive. In F1 ususally the winning team from the previous season takes the first garage in the pit lane (the garage furthest from the exit).

## THINGS TO TRY

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## EXTENDING THE MODEL

To what extent is it better for a car to not pit and instead take an extra lap? This could be behind or without safety car. What is the impact on overall strategy?

## NETLOGO FEATURES

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## RELATED MODELS

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## CREDITS AND REFERENCES

Written by Wilf Amor and Kevin Amor