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CoolHand [soylentnews.org] writes:

Hypermiling [wikipedia.org] is always a geeky subject. Well, it was just done successfully at speed on the biggest sports stage in the world, the 100th running of the Indy500. Racer.com [racer.com] has a great article detailing the hypermiling techniques rookie American Alexander Rossi (and the Andretti/Herta team) went through to gain the victory at Indy using a fuel saving strategy. From the article:

"We knew we had pace – we knew that if we got the track position back we had plenty to win this thing," he [Rossi] said. "It just became a race about conserving fuel. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in a racecar, to drive around here – on a lap where you are normally flat out, to drive [at] 30 percent [throttle] sometimes.

"It is all new to me. I was figuring it out on the fly and trying a lot of different things over a 70-, 80-lap period. And some things worked... I actually stumbled upon what worked the best and I actually almost ended up in the wall in Turn 2 and I had to bail out."

Instructed to avoid using the throttle at all costs, Rossi took to drafting behind other cars to use their tow and save fuel. And then it almost ended in disaster behind 2008 Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon.

[...] Just as Rossi was learning on the fly in the cockpit, the team responsible for coming up with the race-winning strategy and coaching were on edge. Herta and company had to come up with a plan to help their driver stretch a tank of fuel to 36 laps – four laps more and 10 full miles longer than anyone else.

[...] Imagine being on fumes and trying to make it to the gas station before running out, but also being in the closing stages of the Indy 500 and lapping at over 200mph. The faster he went, the more he would have to save – but if he slowed too much to save, he'd lose positions to faster cars. It's also worth remembering this seemingly impossible task was being thrown onto the shoulders of rookie.

[...] Destined to run dry before the finish, Rossi got the call to try something crazy. Leaning out the fuel mixture is a common way to save fuel, which he did, but it wasn't enough. The one electronic option left was to use the fuel map designed to use little more than drops of fuel while running at reduced speeds behind the pace car. Take the tiny amount of fuel provided for puttering around at 75mph, then try holding position with it while racing well over 200mph, and you have Rossi's reality as the 500 sped toward its conclusion.

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