What a ballbreaker that was. So happy it's done. I'll share my thoughts and tips now.
Overall not an extremely difficult race in terms of skill, it's more mentally and physically taxing. In shorter sessions though that wouldn't really be a factor. I was just paranoid I'd lose my save when GT7 updates itself, so that resulted in me doing much longer sessions than i'd prefer (especially after work) and finishing it tonight racing for 5 hours straight.
If you only want to do this race once, I'd go right ahead and use the Audi. Yes it's challenging, but there is PLENTY of room for mistakes. I must have spun out at least 15 times from exhaustion, and crashed maybe 10 times and still comfortably won it with almost a 3 minute lead on Drumont.
For reference my best lap was at the end of the race where I switched to softs and gave it one last victory send, but overall it went something like this:
Pushing to try and create a bigger delta: 8:18-8:21
'Phoning it in' laps (just racing on autopilot without thinking): 8:22-8:27 (closer to 8:27 at night as harder to judge apex)
Laps with mistakes and just bad driving: 8:28-8:40
If you can keep that kind of pace, you'll win it comfortably using the racing mediums method.
I only used softs twice, once near the start of the race where I saw a raincloud on the radar and thought by the time the softs wear out I'd need IMs, but that cloud came and went. Then once at the end.
In terms of AI behaviour I thought they raced very fair if you excuse the blue flag ignoring, I suspect that was on purpose to keep it challenging. I saw one dumb comment on a YT vid where someone claimed the AI was rubber banding because an AI driver in the same Audi blasted past the player on the straight. Absolute nonsense. If anyone cared to check, the Audi in stock form has 576hp. The Audi you drive for the 2 chili race is detuned down to 496hp and also has around a 200KG ballast making it an absolute dog on the straights but competitive in corners. That's the point of the 2 chili car, it's supposed to be the most trash option.
You can see from the results the AI is using the same amount of fuel and same amount of tyre wear give or take an extra pitstop or 2, with P Urra pitting the most (Viper probably drinks fuel).
I also witnessed the AI bin it a few times, and have bad exits with excessive oversteer. They drive much like real players IME. They even divebomb like real players lol.
Onto the tips/tricks:
- Get your gear set up nicely. No point having your max brake pressure at some obscene KG level else you will burn your joints out after a few hours. I had my brake pressure on the RS50 to 35 which was sustainable for me, and the wheelbase down to 5.5NM which gave me all the feedback I needed without being too taxing. I was in a Playseat Trophy and after a while I threw a cushion on it and sat on that for most of the race.
- If you find yourself crashing and making mistakes, just switch it off and come back to it later.
- Stretch, stay hydrated and have breaks.
- You definitely don't need consistent 8:20 lap times to win.
- There's no need to qualify. If you can maintain that sort of pace you will win anyway.
- Use mediums and pit when you're low on fuel, fuel map 1.
- Drumont seems to be the MVP of the AI's, if he is close behind don't worry too much as every now and then he will switch to hards and you can catch up.
- After a lot of testing, brake bias doesn't matter. It entirely comes down to your driving style. I prefer full rear bias, but Digit Racing who has some of the fastest laptimes I've seen and he's often top 10 on time trial leaderboards keeps it central. But his driving style is different to mine, and when I tried his way of driving I just overdrove the car and made mistakes so just use whatever feels right for you. All I would say is don't fully bias to front, under hard braking the rear tyres lose traction and the car can become unsettled.
- If a massive rain cloud is approaching like I had at around 10am game time, once the moisture meter is 1/4 full switch to wets as it will only continue to get wetter for the next few stints. The AI will vary between IMs and wets. Wets do perform better on the wetter parts of the track (i.e not the racing line). The other benefit is they take ages to wear out. I used this to my advantage by short shifting and adjusting the fuel map and got an extra lap out of a tank of fuel. I used TC3 for all the wet weather driving, then down to 2 when it was dry enough for IMs.
- As the track starts to dry out, the racing line will appear much darker, now is the time to switch to IM's and use those until it dries out enough for mediums. Drumont made a mistake here, he switched from wets to IM's for one lap, then switched to mediums. The IM's work well on a mostly dry track but they will wear out FAST if it is too dry. I got an extra lap out of them and absolutely destroyed them which was quite fun, before the track was fully dry for mediums.
- Try not to get frustrated at backmarkers. God help you if you run into P Urra in that relentless Viper. You will constantly be getting past him only for him to blast past you on the straights then park his car on every corner. Several times I crashed from not being patient, especially at night.
- Enjoy it. As the sun goes down and the lights come on around all the campers on the side of the track, its very immersive.
That's about all I got, YMMV. Glad I got the hardest one out the way. I'm sure Le Mans won't be easy but it's at least a much simpler track to master.
To be fair
