Hey guys the rain did stop at about the 4 hour mark.
I'm 19 hours in and 5 minutes down.
IT'S GO TIME
Whoa that's a lot of time to make up with not much time to get it back.
I just did it over the past 2 days and mine went as follows...
I used my favourite Purgeot 908 with a PP of 732, courtesy of the high RPM Turbocharger. My brake balance is set as Ft7/Rr10, customisable transmission's top end speed was set to 380 kms and suspension's anti-roll bars are set to 7. Of course, i made sure that the engine had been overhauled & body rigidity restored before practicing 2 stints, each with soft & medium tyres in the dry daytime. I can do 4 laps with softs using 60 liters and 5 with mediums using 70. Then prior to entering, i gave it an oil change. With driving options, driving line was on, abs was set to 1, and all other aids off. NO TCS! I need to feel what the tires are doing and it reduces your top end speed by about 10 kms.
I hit the lead at the 1st corner but slipped up shortly after. The fact that it was raining didn't help. The worst thing for me tho is that i hadn't practiced in the rain, so there were a lot of unexpected slips at certain corners that i didn't expect. It seems the driving rhythm is quite different in the rain, so i guess i learned that the hard way.
My race started with 100% rain, but started to dry up after only 5 laps. By this stage i was 2 mins behind, & the more it dried up the more i could catch up. When i was within 20 seconds of catching the leader, it started raining again. Great!
Within an hour of being 100% wet and still raining, it started to get dark. My worst nightmare was being realized as i was hoping to not have to deal with both rain & darkness combined.
3 or so hours after being pitch black and now 3 mins behind i thought i noticed midnight blue in the sky/horizon, but thought it couldn't possibly be morning twilight yet. It turns out that it was the weather clearing up because soon after the track started to dry, albeit very slowly. It was still drizzling with rain, just enough to keep the water surface at 94% for several laps. With intermediates, i was able to reel in the leader rather quickly and got within 13 seconds.
At this point, the surface was 75% and he leader pitted while i decided to stay out an extra lap, hopefully 2, but probably just 1. This was a blunder with disastrous consequences. I knew that from 30% to 99% requires intermediates when the track is getting wetter, so i wrongly assumed it was the same as when the track dries. I lost way too much time and when i pitted, i was so focused on calculating how much fuel i'd need that i neglected to check the tires. I just assumed intermediates would still be the default selection. Instead i was stuck with racing hards. I had to do a whole lap before i could change them, which then cost me an extra pit stop. STUPID GAME!! -_- 👎 But surprisingly i discovered that it was suddenly drivable and, had the game not done this to me, i may not have learned this valuable lesson. So in future i know that when the track is drying, to change to racing softs as soon as it's around 75%!
Now, 12 hours in, i was 5 mins 20 secs behind! When the track was completely dry i wasn't really able make up any ground. I was only breaking even. I'd spend a whole lap gaining a 5-10 seconds seconds back, only to have a crash & squander my hard work.
I couldn't figure out why i couldn't gain on them with soft tires while they had mediums. I was getting so frustrated, which only breeds more costly mistakes, that i was just about ready to give up!
As far as i was concerned, daylight could not come soon enough!
However, i knew morning twilight would not be far away and just when i needed it, my luck changed for the better. I also had come too far now to quit, so i started contemplating the reality of finishing 2nd, 3rd, or even my current position 4th.
I started feeling a little depressed, but knowing the mistakes that could have cost me will put me in good stead for next time. It seems strange logic, but when i started becoming indifferent to whether i'd win in the end or not, i started doing better. I wasn't making so many mistakes because i wasn't getting so flustered!
After sunrise, the sky was clear and dry and it remained so for the rest of the race. 👍
I knew the Audi R8 - Playstation pitted in every 4 laps and the Bentley pitted in every 5 laps. But i could never be sure which one was my nemesis. It was only when i pitted in with the Bentley, jumped him in the pits and still discovered i was in 2nd, that i knew for certain that it was the Audi. I could pull away from the Bentley quite well, but that Audi was very fast in the slower sections where i wasn't. The main thing now was to not have any more crashes. It's better to be held up with a slow car and lose 2-3 seconds than to crash and lose 10-15 seconds. If i had a perfect lap, i'd reel him in by 0-8 seconds or even lose a second or two, depending on which lap of the stint he & i were on and how much much of an affect slow traffic would have on us. I was still 3 mins behind with 4 hours to go. I couldn't calculate whether or not i would catch him, but it was gonna be close!
At this point, the lead (or 2nd place if i was in the lead) kept swapping between the Audi and the Bentley because of their different pit strategies. I was doing the same thing with the Bentley, trading 2nd & 3rd places!? But now that i knew that the Audi was my only real concern, i decided to pit in with him. So to simplify things, i pitted after 2 laps (making sure i only took on 1/2 the fuel i normally would) just so i could keep pitting in with the Audi from this point onwards. 💡 This way, i could always have a true representation of what the gap really was. (Except when the Bentley jumped us due to the extra pit stop every 20 laps. But i was making ground on the Bentley fast enough to know that catching him was inevitable anyway.) With 1 hour & 23 mins to go, i was 45 seconds behind the Audi and every time during the next 2 stints i passed the Bentley earlier each time. Also, calculating that there was time for 11 more laps, i realized that the Bentley would be pitting in before the final lap.
On the long straight just before my last pit stop with 20 mins on the clock knowing there was time for 3 more laps, i finally passed the Audi and took the lead for real for the first time since the start. Knowing there was only time for 3 more laps, i jumped the Audi by taking on only enough fuel for 3 laps +5 litres (erring on the side of caution). However, i had no idea how much of a difference that had made because the Bentley had passed him while he was still in the pits whereas i'd managed to come out just in front of him! YES!
I now had the Bentley hot on my tail, but knowing he would pit in before the final lap anyway took the pressure off. It was only a minute into the final lap, that i knew my true gap and it was 30 seconds. Phew... The final lap was the only lap when i could relax and enjoy a cruise to the checkered flag.
My God... Talk about a come-from-behind victory!? I thought i'd celebrate, but instead i just breathed massive sighs of relief. That was indeed the most grueling race i've ever done! And due to costly decisions with tire choices, etc & having not practiced in the rain/night which resulted in countless slip-ups; i sure did it the ...kin' hard way!!
I bet no one had alltime rain 👍
