Good cars for endurance races.

  • Thread starter gt3kid89
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Hi, everyone! I have a question for you:

I've already completed all the endurance races, except Laguna Seca, SSR5 and Rome. I can't decide for a good car to use:confused: i want a fast car, but fair enough to put a challenge. Any suggestions?

If this have been covered before, i'm sorry.

Thanks:tup:
 
The car for endurance should satisfy several criteria.
First, you must be able to achieve consistent lap times with it. That means that the car should be easy for you to drive, perhaps even sacrificing the sheer speed a bit. For example: if you choose the NSX, you should use front-stiff springs setup - that makes the car more understeery and slightly slower at some corners, but much easier to drive. Also don't tune your car to specific type of tires - that can backfire badly when tires start to fade.
Second, it should keep tires alive for as long as possible - that means you need light car (but not too light - mind first paragraph) with as much traction as possible. Also, avoid cars where tires do double the work, i. e. FWD and 4WD cars. For the same reason, your car should have sensible aerodynamics.
These are the requirements for fast cars.

Now about the fair challenge. As for me, I never use tires better than racing mediums (well, except for some experiments), and also keep the power not too high.
More certain examples: for enduros with LM cars (like the ones you are going to do) I use GT300-class cars, since they are light, nimble and easy to drive. Among the usual RMable cars the good choice might be some 450-500 hp MR cars, such as NSX and Venturi 400GT. The RX-7s are also good. That all being said, for Rome I probably still would go for something faster, maybe even like Esprit GT1 - just because AI are fairly fast at Rome.
For enduros with regular tuned cars I use sports tires and various cars. Seattle can be good fun if you're racing a muscle car (which doesn't satisfy any of requirements above, but the AI here is not too strong either), Grand Valley, I think, is good for S2000. Also there are some threads about enduros with different cars, although not all of them were close.
 
i did:
Trial Mountain: '92 Mazda Protege GT-X (my starter car)
Apricot Hill: Mildly tuned Toyota Supra RZ '97
Seattle: '97 Camaro SS
Grand Valley: Mazda RX-7 GT-C
Im thinking of using a Concept Car LM on SSR5, maybe a Supra in Laguna Seca or a GT-One in Rome. What do you think?
 
Concept Car LM is kinda OP on SSR5, although it depends on tires. You can try regular one (RMed), should be great fun, although probably supersofts will be needed.
Supra - depends on which one is it, but in general they shred their tires too much for my liking. TS020 at Rome can be a bit boring, I think.
 
Well, what about a Castrol Mugen NSX GT '98 in SSR5, maybe the Zexel/Kure Skyline in Laguna and a R390 GT1 '97 in Rome:)
 
Well, for me JGTC machines are still too fast for SSR5, but that's because I had a lot of practice with this circuit and quite confident at it.
I wouldn't recommend Skylines for endurance racing in general for the reasons from previous post.
I feel like I should note that my preferred choices are highly based on my personal driving preferences (which is natural). I think for your first endurance race on a particular track you should choose the car which is suitable for endurance (in discussed sense) and with which you are comfortable with. I never had the close competition at my first endurance race of each kind, although Laguna Seca with RE Amemiya RX-7 still was a bit scary. Also, at my first ever SSR5 enduro I completely forgot to tune the car (RX-7 LM, the one with RE Amemiya bodykit from GT1) - and I still came a lap-ish ahead of couple of GT-Ones. Btw, this is how I discovered that normal tires on LM cars are equal to racing hards :)
 
For SSR5...try an RM-ed road car. A fairly high-end one. I say this because a while back, I tried to win the SSR5 enduro in a RM-ed Audi S4, 4WD and about 550hp but still VERY heavy. Race report is here if you fancy some light reading ;) I only lost in the last 3 laps due to a mistake on pit strategy and running Race Medium tires which wore out too quickly and gave the GT-One a chance to catch and pass me at the end. BUT had I run Super Softs, I might've won it...I've even got a Nissan GTR R32 RM built and ready for a re-run at this race. 💡

It's important to note too that you can exploit a glitch in GT2 which means that Racing tires (not sure about Sports) all degrade at the same rate, regardless of compound. So you can run the same amount of laps on Racing Softs as Racing Hards, and they will degrade at the same rate. I think...I can't remember if that's the way it goes. Will have to check my notes. But certainly an RM road car with Super Softs or Softs will be very competitive in SSR5.

I'd imagine it would be similar for Rome, as that race features a similar AI lineup of cars. And for Laguna Seca - I won that race in the Alfa Romeo 155 Touring Car, and was about 2 laps clear of 2nd place by the finish. So that's probably overkill for that race.
 
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