Lap Time
Simulation

This project is a full OptimumLap simulation workflow built around a recreation of an autocross course laid out in a campus parking lot. The goal was to estimate lap performance and study how the vehicle behaves through the course before running it physically.

The course was reconstructed from a drone image, traced into a centerline, broken down into individual track sections, and run through OptimumLap to produce per-distance results for motor speed and lateral acceleration.

Starting from an overhead drone photo of the course, I traced the driven path through the cones and extracted a clean centerline to serve as the basis for the simulation track.

Drone image of the autocross course, with the driven path traced in yellow and cone positions marked

The course centerline extracted from the aerial image

The centerline was broken down into 21 sequential sections, each defined by type (left, right, or straight), section length, and corner radius. The tightest corners are roughly 6.6 m in radius, and the longest single element is the 38 m start and finish straight. Summing the section lengths gives a course length of about 162 m, which matches the elapsed-distance axis on the simulation results.

OptimumLap Track Configurator: each section defined by corner direction, length, and radius

OptimumLap outputs per-distance channels for the simulated lap. The simulated lap time was 10.58 seconds, with peak lateral acceleration around 18 m/s² (roughly 1.8 g).

Motor speed over the course (labeled "Engine Speed" by OptimumLap). Speed drops into each corner and builds back up on the straights, peaking at the end of the 38 m straight

Lateral acceleration over the course. The sign indicates cornering direction, the flat sections mark where the car is at its grip limit, and the trace returns to zero along the final straight

My motivation for this project was to learn the full OptimumLap workflow end to end, from turning a real course into usable track geometry, to defining the vehicle, to reading the simulation outputs. Recreating an actual autocross layout rather than a generic track made the results easier to sanity-check against how the car would really drive.