AI tyre strategies and wear (in 100% race?)

@BadMayh3mOn-Diff For Monaco it was 54% so pretty low. On other tracks it is generally higher for me, about 70-80% most of the time.

In which way does it affect the tyre wear exactly?

I did also race in Spa yesterday, and I looked at the AI lap times over the course of the race. The AI was generally able to do almost pin perfect the same lap times on the specific set of tyres every lap. They did a very long medium stint again, but their times were the same at the beginning and end of the stint. I guess that the lower fuel made up for their loss in grip.

I generally had good tyre wear that race, but when my mediums got close to 50% I started feeling the effect of it, going around 0.5-1 sec a lap slower than my fastest lap so far. Even with lower fuel.

I mean, I didn't lose too much time, because I stopped when I realized my times were falling off, and it was okay for me. My last lap on hards was also maybe 0.5 secs slower than my fastest on hards, with about in the 40s tyre wear.

But AI again managed to pull a fastest lap at the end of the race with, as suggested above, round about 66% tyre wear, which would be completely impossible for me.

And it should be that way, the Mediums are faster than Hards in the beginning, but after some time, it turns around. This happens for me when I am on the Mediums against the AIs Hards, so it should also be the other way round. But it's not ...

So my point is, the AI does suffer tyre wear but they can handle the loss of grip so much better than the player that the lower fuel offsets the loss of grip even at 66% wear.
It feels like for the player (at least for me) there is a "drop off" point where the grip is not enough to put consistent fast lap times anymore. But the tyre wear might be more gradual, and the AI can handle that so much better.

Anyway, the tyre strategy for the AI is really weird, being longer on mediums than on hards, or doing a short stint on hards while driving the medium for much too long. I wonder if they would be even faster with the "optimal" strategy and that may be the reason why it is coded that way? Or is it the other way round and the AI actually knows they are faster on a longer medium stint, because they don't suffer on the tyre degradation in the same way the player does?