brute-forcing the pit window: when 'just try them all' is the right call

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

lights out. and this time the car has to stop.

two posts ago i drew stintlab’s charts in rust on canvas2d and swore a chart was just rectangles and lines. one post ago i fit the tire-degradation model by hand — ordinary least squares, cramer’s rule, and a singular-matrix guard that turned a collinearity bug into an honest None. both of those were setup. this is the payoff: the thing that takes that model and actually makes a decision.

because a degradation model, on its own, just draws a number — how much slower a tire gets, lap after lap. lovely. now what? a real race is decided in one call from the pit wall: when do you box, and onto what rubber? stop too early and you throw away tire life; too late and you bleed seconds to a fresher car behind. that call wins races. i wanted to make it automatically, and the algorithm i reached for is the single dumbest one in the book: try every option and keep the best.

and i’m going to argue that’s exactly right.

optimization on krtffl.dev

brute-forcing the pit window: when 'just try them all' is the right call