It will definitely be affected by octane, as the octane level is directly connected to the burn rate
Indeed it is, absolutely I agree with that.
But the burn rate and the fuel mixture arent correlated in the way that you are implying.
You said fuel trim, which to me means making the car fuel richer or leaner, and the speed of burn isnt what governs that, its the stoich value of the fuel which does so.
A faster burn rate (ie lower octane) will need ignition r****d to cope with not fuel trim.
ecu startegy should store the "new" learnt values as it goes along so it wont have to always be detting inorder to find the issue(also apart of injector drift due to aging)!
Again injector drift is a different thing to different octane ratings, injector drift has no real implications for ignition timing requirements but has a lot of implication for injector timing requirements.
You seem to be getting confused between injector timing and ignition timing perhaps?
and as I work in an oem car company I know first hand that it is not great to run a car that is mapped for 98ron on 95ron,
On that I think we all agree, and its that which wasnt coming across in some of the previous posts which were implying there was no downside to 95 RON fuel, there is, and potentially in the F4R in particular, there is an issue with the pistons breaking up in extreme cases.
but as we factor into account "rest of world fuels" not being as good as European fuels the manufacturers will take into account different fuels when calibrating the engine
While I am sure that you do so right now to a very high standard, did renault do so well enough more than a dozen years ago when these cars were developed? Im guessing not or they wouldnt have been sticking an octane sticker in the petrol cap of everyone so that they could point to it in order to avoid warranty claims if someone ran the wrong fuel and killed their engine?
because if they were so sure that all the fuels would be the same in the areas the car is being sold they would (for this reason) not have bothered to put knock control on the enigne! point taken about the wide band didn't know as haven't looked into it yet with this engine but it will have a fuel trim to compensate injector ageing etc.
Compensating for injector ageing (or lower voltage for that matter which also requires a longer opening and closing time) is a very different algorythm to the one required for a lower octane value which requires a different ignition timing.
I cant help but feel you are posting based on snippets of info you have probably heard from some very knowledgeable people (as its clear from the way your posts are worded that someone who knows a lot about mapping has been involved in where you got the info from) but that perhaps you have slightly misinterpreted some of that info due to a lack of firsthand experience with regards to mapping?