Okay, I'm facing a math problem in a game that I play online. It is to do with car part setups in order to get the fastest time in a lap. In the game, there are 6 parts that can be configured, but for simplicity, we will pretend that there are only one.

A person sets up a car with a component, and a value can be assigned (between 0-999) and you can do a test lap to see how fast you go. For each track, there is an optimum value (O) which will give you the fastest time. In this example, we will pretend that is is 400

I run a few test laps, and get some information

LAP	VALUE	TIME
1	500	1:40.000
2.	600	1:42.000
3.	300	1:40.000

I see that the values 500 and 300 are exactly the same, so I can conclude that O is 400.

Forgetting we know the new value and using the same optimum value as 400 , we do a new run:

LAP	VALUE	TIME
1	500	1:40.000
2.	350	1:39.200


Coming from a programming field, I realise that I can take this data and calculate the optimum value for this. I just have unfortunately not touched a math book since high school, and I have forgotten how to make this stuff useful.

QUESTIONS:
1. What field of math should I research to help myself.
2. Using the above example, I believe that 3 attempts are required to get O. Is it possible with just 2?
3. If I was tuning 2 components, not just 1, what would be an optimum way to get O?


Thanks for reading. :)