I know this is an old thread but I wanted to share what I learned until I finally beat this race today.
The main opponent is Gallo in the Nissan R92CP. While he pits in the very last lap he still makes it over the line before the 30 minutes are up for the 25th lap. All the other drivers usually only do 24. Therefore you need to be able to go 25 laps which usually means one stint with one lap more than the usual stint.
It is possible to manage 8 laps per stint for a 2 stopper fuel saving heavily. Maybe going all out for a 6 lap 3 stopper is faster, but I haven't tried.
Hard tires probably last a whole race, maybe even mediums even you're food at tire saving. Personally I went with softs since I needed to stop twice anyways. The 3 or so seconds saved when Not changing tires wasn't worth it for me.
The AI behaves weirdly in this. While they break very early and take corners very slowly (rear ending them is very easy) they literally explode out of corners. Their acceleration up to 3rd gear is insane. However this levels off from 4th gear on and top speeds aren't extraordinary either.
I set myself the challenge to win this race with a non VGT Gr. 1 car on hard difficulty. A modern one and without added turbo if possible.
I tried the Toyota TS030 Hybrid first. I was completely outclassed. While this was also due to Road Atlanta being the hardest and least intuitive track in the game for me the car didn't seem to be good enough to win this race even with lots of practice. At least for me. At first I also didn't fuel save and did 3 stoppers.
Since a Peugeot 908 came 2nd after Gallo's Gr. C car I decided to give it a shot. While it was easily 1 to 2 seconds faster than the Toyota it was also very thirsty. I only managed 6 laps per stint and was at the back of the field once again. Probably with a crash sprinkled in for good measure but still it didn't feel competitive.
I then bit the bullet and took the Nissan (love this car anyways) but once again out of luck (or maybe skill). This car has worse aero but slightly higher top speed.
Finally I decided to try the Peugeot again but with added turbo this time. Combined with racing softs this put the car at about 925 ish or so PP (can't remember).
I also decided to go fuel map 6 with a lot of short shifting (roughly at half the red bar) to make it 8 laps per stint. I managed to eek out 9 laps for the last stint by short shifting as soon as I heard the engine reving up (there is distinct change in pitch at a certain rpm) well before the red bar appeared. My lap times were only about a second slower doing this.
I won the race comfortably this way despite spinning once after experimenting with reduced TC (went back to 2 after that).
Wong and Hizal seem have made to the 25th lap as well in this one. I guess this is due to the rubber banding in GT7. In this race they didn't artificially slow down at the end as they do when you trail them.
