  Increasing attention to autonomous passenger vehicles has also attracted
interest in an autonomous racing series. Because of this, platforms such as
Roborace and the Indy Autonomous Challenge are currently evolving. Electric
racecars face the challenge of a limited amount of stored energy within their
batteries. Furthermore, the thermodynamical influence of an all-electric
powertrain on the race performance is crucial. Severe damage can occur to the
powertrain components when thermally overstressed. In this work we present a
race-time minimal control strategy deduced from an Optimal Control Problem
(OCP) that is transcribed into a Nonlinear Problem (NLP). Its optimization
variables stem from the driving dynamics as well as from a thermodynamical
description of the electric powertrain. We deduce the necessary first-order
Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE)s and form simplified loss models for the
implementation within the numerical optimization. The significant influence of
the powertrain behavior on the race strategy is shown.
