I've done quite a few custom races against a full field of 15 AI cars for practice now. I've learned a few things.
First, the AI is stupidly slow on the entry to every corner and impossibly fast out of the exit, which makes them a hazard on the way in and out of reach on the straights -- at least when on the same tire compound and rubber banding hasn't kicked in.
Second, the 'competition' damage is absolutely brutal. Bumper damage lasts more than a full lap. There have been so many times that I've been on the verge of having the damage repair itself only to understeer out into a wall and keep the damage going for another lap and a half. And it can really slow you down, too. In one particularly bad race, I remember losing 10 seconds in a single lap just from the damage slow down -- no crashes or spins, just going slow from damage. A good result is almost certainly going to depend on avoiding damage.
Third, going for a spin can destroy the tires. There have been a couple races now where I hit the curb badly on the RS stint and spun out. On a clean stint, I can do a 12-laps on RS tires and still have 15-20% remaining on the rear left tire. On the ones with the spins, the tread completely wore through on the 11th lap, leaving me do to pirouettes to the pit lane. I don't know if it was the spin itself or me spinning the tires as I tried to recover, but I lost more than a full lap of tire tread as a result. If you go for a spin, be prepared to adjust your strategy.
I've tried a three-stop strategy (10RM-1RH-12RS-12RS) a few times and it seems viable when I compare it to my two-stop times (20RM-2RH-12RS). It feels like the the RS tires will have a big advantage on the straights. Combine that with the custom slipstream and I expect it should be pretty easy to get by RM and RH drivers on the straights even if you have to bide your time through the middle section. And in the three-stop, most of the race is on RS tires, so
the risk of getting held up is maybe not as severe as in other races.
In these practice races, I've been putting the RH stint in the middle, but in the actual race tomorrow I feel like it might be good to leave it to the end, just to have some buffer in case the RS tires don't last as long as I expect them to.
Whichever strategy I go with, I think clean air and avoiding damage are going to be key to having a good result.
Good luck to everybody racing!
