Been slowly wearing out a 120i over the past couple weeks to run through 1-series, Euro Hatch, and Schwartz A... won the 1-series at grand valley without much difficulty, but I'm getting abused at Infineon. Been running worn out oil, N1, 190 ballast (centered), FC suspension and tranny (default final, auto 4).
I can make it up into 3rd, but the front couple cars separate from the pack before I can catch up to them. I think I'm losing by about 6 seconds - certainly within the boundaries that continued practice should make up most of it. It ocurred to me after my frustration subsided that I should be on N1/N3, and minimize the ballast to an exact figure... but does anybody have some recommendations for suspension and gearing. I'm going to play around with it a bit later, but I'm stuck at work and looking for a glimmer of hope...
Also, I'm sure this varies driver to driver - but for races like these do most of you cut straight to the needed points, or work your way down to it by starting on N3's no ballast, winning, then stepping up the difficulty? I usually try to work on max points, but with a lot of easier wins out of the way, I'm not sure that approach is going to serve me very well from here on.
At the moment I can't locate the settings I used on the 120i but it is one of the better turning cars on N1s. Generally when I'm faced with using N1s or a car that is a "Push Meister" aka "won't turn", I found in the front you will need to jack up your front spring pressure, use low to medium shock bound, hi rebound, 4-4.5 camber, and hi swaybar. In the rear, lo to med. spring pressure, lo bound, medium rebound, 0 camber and medium to hi swaybar. Max brake on the rear. About 6 clicks less on the front.
Depending on the car and track, toe out front and/or rear can significantly help get the car to turn and improve lap times. It is usually more effective on the shorter, sharp turn tracks like Opera house and Cote d Azur but can be helpful elsewhere.
Lower ride hieghts and positive ballasting (to the front) can help too but can make the car twitchy and more difficult to drive. In some instances to get results you may have to learn to drive it that way.
Try the Camaro race with the iroc for max points. With out a doubt one of the pushiest cars in the game. That car with N1s wouldn't turn on fly paper.
Something that will help too is take the car to the track of the race, and run some practice laps, trying diffrent settings to see where you can improve it. Set your gear to red line out at the end of the longest straitaway.
For FF cars, most of the time you will need to decrease decel and increase initial and accel rear diff to increase traction and help turn the car.
If max pts is what I'm after, I just figure, why waste time running for something less.
At Infineon you can wallride the last sharp righthander before the start/finish and pickup sometime if you need to, but you can win that race without it. On that particular subject; if they make you run a grossly underpowered, overwieghted car with tires on the front that hydroplane on dry pavement, and then put you in 6th place with a running start, I figure, you have to even things up wherever you can.
I hope this will at least point you in the right direction.
I do know what I'm talking about, that was just a typo [goes off to edit]. And I would call 111813 a theoretical maximum since it's literally impossible to be offered more. I guess it depends on how you define the word. And hard? Tell me about it! 
Those two enduros are painful; even the hardest one-makes don't begin to equal their difficulty IMO.
