GEAR-SET OPTIMIZATION OF A RACE CAR

The problem considered in this paper is the optimization of the gear-set of a race car. In order to solve this problem, a dynamic simulator, which can efficiently compute the lap-time as a function of the gear-set, must be developed. This task has been split into three sub-tasks: first, the maximum achievable speed (as a function of the local curvature radius) in every position of the circuit has been computed; then, the lap-time has been computed with an innovative forward-backward integration procedure; finally, using the lap-time computation algorithm, the best gear-set is obtained by a multi-dimensional optimization procedure. All the results have been developed and tested on real data, and the gear-set optimizer has been implemented in a stand-alone software package.