Bit of a background story: Me and DrGreenThumb were the only two Insights entered so we kept going back and forth with our mpg numbers as the event unfolded. At the end of the day my FCD read 75.4mpg and the fill said 75.32mpg. DrGreenThumb's said 76.2mpg but the fill said something like 48-55mpg. There must have been a fuel fill error by an official at some point. Our cars were judged by fill measurements, even though our FCD's were apart by 0.8mpg. So it was a mixed feeling to get the award for first in class.
Which is why i wanted to get a bottle of wine to give to him as consolation. (really, i have never drunk a drop of alcohol.)
I had really low expectations comparing my car to previous MT Insight entrants getting about 65mpg in past years. Climbing the long hill to get to the track i got 40mpg. It wasn't until the first two laps that i knew i had a shot at pulling into the mid 70's mpg. I was averaging 80mpg lap to lap and i just had one eye watching my trip meter climb into 50's, 60's and 70's as the day wore on.
I did 160% over epa in my CVT Insight. On the track you never need to use your battery, in fact if you have to use it i would say your doing something wrong unless you can manually control it with mima. I probably put in more charge than i had when i first started at the gas station.
I think the CVT isn't so far disadvantaged. Even without leanburn or engine off coasting. Except if you were to P&G in the MT version i think you would get 80-100+ mpg. Lean burn is much better than putting in enough throttle just to overcome engine braking. But the hilly layout out of the track equally favored driving with load as much as lean burn though. Saving fuel going uphill is more important than saving fractions going downhill. Which meant not having to change gears helped. I'd ease into the gas on turn 1 doing 125mpg gaining speed downhill. As i approached the bottom i held 50mpg which was enough to reach 55+mph, and i just held 50mpg the third of the track that was uphill, seamlessly bleeding off speed and holding at 50mpg at 40mph. That's where the CVT payed off the most.
The bottom hill caused a bottleneck a few times as most cars did not drive with load properly and i was going 10-15mph faster than most other cars (only at that point of course
)
75.4 mpg (+/- 1mpg) i think is the baseline for the CVT Insight. I don't think it could be topped without light-weighting and aerodynamic modifications. My best tank with the car was 73.5 mpg.