Project CARS 2 Endurance Racing

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Tell us about your endurance races in Project CARS 2.

Post pictures or videos and tell the story of the race.

- What went well and what was frustrating or heartbreaking?
- What strategy did you use?
- How did the AI behave?
- Did you use Bob and how did he do?
- What were the time of day and weather changes like?
 
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I finally got to the WEC in my career!

I chose the Ferrari GTE from a crazy amount of available car selections, and I got a WEC Championship with LMP1's, LMP2's and GTE's.
It seems you pick a car and then the game generates the endurance championship. I'll have to see what combinations it generates, and whether the tracks in the championship change.
My first race is 4 hours of Fuji and I'm going to tackle it tomorrow.

I spent some time practicing with Bob and I think he may have a hangover!
Sometimes when I select driver swap from the ICM, he takes over the car within a few turns.
Sometimes he waits until I pit and then takes over the car.

When I request control back, sometimes he gives the car back within a few turns, but turns on the pit limiter!
Sometimes he pits and then gives me the car, but only after he insists on driving it to the pit exit before giving it to me!

I think the race is going to be interesting.
 
I finally got to the WEC in my career!

I chose the Ferrari GTE from a crazy amount of available car selections, and I got a WEC Championship with LMP1's, LMP2's and GTE's.
It seems you pick a car and then the game generates the endurance championship. I'll have to see what combinations it generates, and whether the tracks in the championship change.
My first race is 4 hours of Fuji and I'm going to tackle it tomorrow.

I spent some time practicing with Bob and I think he may have a hangover!
Sometimes when I select driver swap from the ICM, he takes over the car within a few turns.
Sometimes he waits until I pit and then takes over the car.

When I request control back, sometimes he gives the car back within a few turns, but turns on the pit limiter!
Sometimes he pits and then gives me the car, but only after he insists on driving it to the pit exit before giving it to me!

I think the race is going to be interesting.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the adventures of Bob and the Kiwi.
 
First endurance race I did wad 3 hours of Imola, GT3 custom race offline.

Qualified 14th, got myself up to 7th then pitted and swapped for tires, fuel and BOB for the next stint..

Bob came in for damage fix on his first lap, then kept on coming back in for damage fix next 3 laps cause I had 'repair damage' turned off under my pit strategy >. < Took over for final stint, finished 22nd.
 
Bob and I did the 1st race of our WEC Championship today, the 4 hours of Fuji.
I put the car on pole, we had our strategy worked out and were ready to go!

Fuji1.JPG

I got jumped at the start and fell to 2nd in class, but I got the place back braking into turn 1 on the 2nd lap. I had an incident free first stint of 1 hour and pitted to hand the car to Bob with a 20s lead. We were on hards and I had hardly any tyre wear so I chose a fuel only pit stop to double stint the tyres.

Fuji2.JPG

Well, Bob eats tyres for breakfast! He was wearing them out at a crazy rate. On top of that he got bumped when being lapped by an LMP and took quite a bit of rear damage. I pitted him in for fresh tyres and fuel and let him do the next stint so I could do the last hour.

Fuji3.JPG

By the end of his last stint, 3 hours into the race, our lead was down to 6s! I took over the car and slowly built the lead back up.
We won our class by 20s after 138 laps and we are leading the WEC Championship!
The weather played nice and we started with light cloud that became clear.
Next up is 4 hours of Silverstone.

Fuji5.JPG
 
@Animera How is your Global Endurance Championship Going?
Im up to Round 5 (The 24HRS of Spa). Crazy that it finishes with two 24hour events?! (Spa and Le Mans)

What do you think of the scoring system. Although I'm top of the GTE class its annoying that I won't get the trophy unless I'm top of the "overall" rankings. The LMP1 boys get a point for pole whereas GTE doesn't so they always have an advantage.

Also did you get double points at Silverstone? I did which I thought was strange......
 
Had a slightly strange experience with my first couple of proper Endurance races. I tried emulating the Daytona 24 hours with LMP2's, LMP3's, GT3's and GTE's over 1 hours with 25x time progression.

The first time I tried it I had damage on, ended up having an accident and finished second to last after a lengthy pit stop. What confused me in particular is the pace of the LMP3's compared to the LMP2's with the P3's finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I put this down to cars having to pit due to damage and re ran the race with damage turned off this time.

I managed to win the race but as you can see the AI's pace isn't quite consistent with each car class. I wouldn't expect P3's to be so strong and P2's to finish so low down. When I came to lap the P2's they were floundering at the same pace as the GT3's!
 

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@Animera How is your Global Endurance Championship Going?
Im up to Round 5 (The 24HRS of Spa). Crazy that it finishes with two 24hour events?! (Spa and Le Mans)

What do you think of the scoring system. Although I'm top of the GTE class its annoying that I won't get the trophy unless I'm top of the "overall" rankings. The LMP1 boys get a point for pole whereas GTE doesn't so they always have an advantage.

Also did you get double points at Silverstone? I did which I thought was strange......

I struggled with Bob at Silverstone. When the rain started he didn't know what he wanted and was pitting every lap. :(
I reduced the length of the race and did it myself. I don't remember if I got double points or not.

Next up for me is COTA. I'll try to tackle it this weekend.
 
I struggled with Bob at Silverstone. When the rain started he didn't know what he wanted and was pitting every lap. :(
I reduced the length of the race and did it myself. I don't remember if I got double points or not.

Next up for me is COTA. I'll try to tackle it this weekend.

My bob struggles every race. I tend to do the first hour in the races then let him do the next stint until he runs into trouble then I take over until the end. I've had issues with him pitting for no reason many times

He tends to be quite slow in the 488 GTE I found. In practice he tends to run in the bottom 2. However when I was racing the 488 GT3 in another Championship he was right on the pace.
 
Must be a Daytona issue. Career mode racing in the wscr @Daytona, the P3's out qualified all of the P2 class.

I've seen most of the LMP3 field beat the majority of the LMP2's in both qualifying AND the actual race at Long Beach (same series too, WSCR), so it seems to happen in more places than just Daytona.
 
I thought it may also be something to do with the AI and aggression settings so I tweaked them a little between the two races first time was AI 70 and Aggression 80 and second time was AI 75 and aggression 95. It didn't make much if any difference though.

Hopefully there's a re-balance between LMP2 and LMP3 in the next patch to make Multiclass racing a little more realistic. Saying that I'm just happy there's a game that I can play on console that mimics my favourite style of racing at all!
 
I have the A.I. settings I used written down, i'll check it later. I re-ran the Long Beach qualifying a bunch of times with different A.I. #'s trying to find the sweet spot.
 
Considering buying PC2 but want to know if it is possible to do a full 24hr race (like Le Mans) in an offline custom race, was thinking of doing it with a friend
 
Considering buying PC2 but want to know if it is possible to do a full 24hr race (like Le Mans) in an offline custom race, was thinking of doing it with a friend

I'll check this when I get home but you should be able to do so.
 
Hey there endurance folks. I need your wisdom.

Assuming you're using real time, how long after rain stops do you typically start seeing AI pit for slick tires? I did a 20 minute race at x15 so it would cover 5 hours with four slots set to sync to race. Light Rain - Overcast - Heavy Cloud - Medium Cloud. I also tried it with Light Rain - Clear - Medium Cloud - Heavy Cloud just in case having it be clear skies right after would dry the track quicker.

It didn't make much and after 20 minutes nobody changed tires. There was a clear dry line and the spray coming up off line was very low but not entirely gone. What have you guys seen from your endurance experience?
 
Hey there endurance folks. I need your wisdom.

Assuming you're using real time, how long after rain stops do you typically start seeing AI pit for slick tires? I did a 20 minute race at x15 so it would cover 5 hours with four slots set to sync to race. Light Rain - Overcast - Heavy Cloud - Medium Cloud. I also tried it with Light Rain - Clear - Medium Cloud - Heavy Cloud just in case having it be clear skies right after would dry the track quicker.

It didn't make much and after 20 minutes nobody changed tires. There was a clear dry line and the spray coming up off line was very low but not entirely gone. What have you guys seen from your endurance experience?

I've never seen the AI pit for slicks either. They'll go in for wets 1-4 laps after the precipitation starts (unless the first weather slot is inclement, in which case they'll already start with them), but they seem to just keep the wets on for the remainder of the race.

----

Uh...okay, so I just had a pretty interesting experience. 28 laps around Monza Classic Combined. Not super long, but no sprint either, so I suppose it fits here. All Group 5s, max grid size (me + 21 AI), with myself using the 935-78.

For the first 5 or so laps, everything is fine. I've got the 935-78/81 on my tail, with another 935/80 behind it. Then I start noticing the number of cars on-track began shrinking rapidly (i,e, at the start, my position would read like "POS 1/22," but then it was "POS 1/18," and then "POS 1/15" a lap or so later.) Also, the two 935's that were chasing me had vanished/retired. Then I saw this (this was taken on lap 9 I believe):
zfWHc7r.jpg

Look at all those retired cars! Obviously a few had to retire due to damage, as I could notice lots of debris shadows on certain parts of the track, plus it's visible on the cars themselves, but, at that point, it was just me and 9 other AI on-track. I had a hard time believing that so many AI were crashing like this, so I started to investigate what was going on.

Back to the start for a sec - the race started at 3:00pm with Clear conditions during the summer, with the weather slots set to "Clear -> Rain -> Thunderstorm -> Light Cloud," syncing to the race. I went in for wets as soon as I saw rain drops, around lap 6, way before any of the AI, so I had dropped quite a few positions, from 1st down to 9th (out of 13). I quickly caught up to the AI, who, even though the track had gotten really wet, had still not went in to pit.

I'm in first place again, and after a while the gap between me and second place is over a minute and fifty seconds. That's unusual, even though the 935/78 is faster on the straights, the Capris and BMWs especially should be faster through the corners. At least fast enough that such a large gap should not be occurring.

Paying attention to the gaps and number of cars had caused me to run off the road and damage my front end, so I request a pit stop and head in.

Maybe if I had manual pit stops on, this would not have happened, but the AI drove me right by my crew, and I proceeded out the pits, still damaged. This happened to me a few times in both games, so I just request another pit stop and will try again. Keep in mind, at this point, second place was still over a minute and thirty seconds behind.

As I come in to pit for the second time, I notice this:
D1J6tCC.jpg

Two things to notice here: first, there are only 9 cars on track now. 13 had retired at this point. Secondly, you'll notice that I'm now in fourth place. I sat here at the pit entry and waited for them because there are two things I wanted to confirm.

Here's one of them:
xqHcYel.jpg

One of the cars that retired, another 935, was actually blocking my slot. I thought that I would just clip through it and the pit stop would proceed as normal, so I drove in slowly, but, sure enough, once the AI took over my car, it drove right by them.

So I figured if it's possible for me to have a blocked slot, the other AIs must be unable to pit for this reason as well. This is the second thing I wanted to confirm:
l6dh9ez.jpg

I waited for the other AIs so that I could drive up behind them, illuminating their tires. The remaining AIs were all on slicks. In all of my past races, AI will pit either as soon as the rain starts falling, or no later than like 2-3 laps after, but this was ~8 laps after the first drops of rain. No wonder they had slicks, they couldn't pit.

This suggests, to me, that the AI were unable to pit due to a bug, and raced until they ran out of fuel. This would explain why the two 935s that were close behind at the beginning of the race just vanished, even though I did not see them wreck. I'm sure that all of the cars that retired early on due to damage and took up most of the pit space didn't help, but I don't know if that's related.

Either way, there was no way I could finish the race, I'd run out of fuel myself eventually, so I retired.

Have you guys encountered anything like this before? The only somewhat similar experience I've had was a 100-lap Group C race at the Daytona oval, where only 11 out of 32 cars finished, but that was obviously due to the hilariously bad pile-ups that can occur there (the AI still went in to pit with no issue in this case).
 
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The AI used to have problems sometimes with not wanting to pit in the first game and running out of gas(whether the pit was blocked or not). They also would sometimes pit and refuse to leave because they know that they'll get disqualified like I did when I tried to pit and then leave. I know there is a bug I've seen mentioned in PC2 where the AI gets disqualified when they pit, at least on some tracks. One of those "we're working on it" things for now I think.

This also kind of sounds like what happens all the time at the end of a race for me. Half the cars pit on the cooldown lap and then the other half (I suspect)gets the message that their pits are blocked so they refuse to come in and just drive around forever. It often tells me that my pit is blocked on the way in but it always lets me squeeze in because of how it sort of "warps" you into your spot once you get close. If you have auto pitting on I imagine it would just drive on past because it gets the "pit blocked" memo.

They should probably move the cars into the garage when they are either retired or after parking so the pit lane doesn't get blocked. Those pictures appear to show only one car in what passes for a "garage" spot so maybe that's the only one that actually died on track and the others got DQ'ed when they pitted? It might be a decent fail-safe way to prevent problems also that if one car refuses to leave the pit after a stop for a couple minutes you call it a DNF and move it to the garage to keep from causing a traffic jam like I've seen in a couple games. Or they should maybe fix whatever it was that caused that pit DQ/AI pitting forever bug if it's carried over from PC1. Or hopefully they fix the new one.
 
They should probably move the cars into the garage when they are either retired or after parking so the pit lane doesn't get blocked. Those pictures appear to show only one car in what passes for a "garage" spot so maybe that's the only one that actually died on track and the others got DQ'ed when they pitted? It might be a decent fail-safe way to prevent problems also that if one car refuses to leave the pit after a stop for a couple minutes you call it a DNF and move it to the garage to keep from causing a traffic jam like I've seen in a couple games. Or they should maybe fix whatever it was that caused that pit DQ/AI pitting forever bug if it's carried over from PC1. Or hopefully they fix the new one.

Now that you mention it, I have had races where quite a few AIs retired, and, when I would pause the game, their status would read "DQ," rather than "Retired." I didn't even think to check that this time around.

Unfortunately I can't find any correlation between being DQ'd/Retired and whether or not the car will take a "pit" or "garage" spot. It seems to be totally random in my experience.
 
Thankfully I don't run with damage on past performance impacting and no mechanical failures. I like some realism but I don't want my race to end and I think with this level no cars will retire and block pits.

Thankfully there are some cars that don't need to pit when it rains, like the Lotus 51 and 25. The Ginetta Juniors can switch to All-Weather tires as they don't get dedicated rain tires, but the All-Weathers work just fine on a dry track and don't overheat or wear substantially faster than slicks. I figure start a race on All-Weathers and you don't have to pit.

Basically I want to make a race that forces a pit stop but not with a mandatory pit stop because AI pits at random times for that instead of around the halfway point. I thought going from wet to dry would create a pit stop but it appears I'll have to make it hard on myself and go dry to wet. At least I can make it rain for only one slot so everyone pits and the track wets but it's not insane with the wipers and overspray affecting visibility everywhere
 
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Thankfully I don't run with damage on past performance impacting and no mechanical failures. I like some realism but I don't want my race to end and I think with this level no cars will retire and block pits.

Thankfully there are some cars that don't need to pit when it rains, like the Lotus 51 and 25. The Ginetta Juniors can switch to All-Weather tires as they don't get dedicated rain tires, but the All-Weathers work just fine on a dry track and don't overheat or wear substantially faster than slicks. I figure start a race on All-Weathers and you don't have to pit.

Basically I want to make a race that forces a pit stop but not with a mandatory pit stop because AI pits at random times for that instead of around the halfway point. I thought going from wet to dry would create a pit stop but it appears I'll have to make it hard on myself and go dry to wet. At least I can make it rain for only one slot so everyone pits and the track wets but it's not insane with the wipers and overspray affecting visibility everywhere
Do light snow instead of rain :)

@DesertPenguin Try this,
Start at 12 noon with real time, sync weather to race.
1st slot = very sunny or anything dry I suppose.
2nd slot = wet of your choice or snow :).
3rd slot = back to very sunny again.
4th slot = very sunny again.

Hopefully by 12:15 (presuming you're doing 20mins) the track might have dried up enough to force the 2nd pit stop due to high temperature & bright sunshine.

You might need to go slightly better than light rain though as I'm not sure if it's enough to make the 1st pit stop happen.
 
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I did a 20 minute at Silverstone like that but with time also set to x15 so the world time covers 5 hours, just a little speed up. Nobody pits. I think they somehow knew it was going to rain and started on wets. Wets on a dry track aren't the worst thing in the world, especially if only for a few laps. This might only work if we stretch it out to a longer race time like an hour or more. :(
 
Had a slightly strange experience with my first couple of proper Endurance races. I tried emulating the Daytona 24 hours with LMP2's, LMP3's, GT3's and GTE's over 1 hours with 25x time progression.

The first time I tried it I had damage on, ended up having an accident and finished second to last after a lengthy pit stop. What confused me in particular is the pace of the LMP3's compared to the LMP2's with the P3's finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I put this down to cars having to pit due to damage and re ran the race with damage turned off this time.

I managed to win the race but as you can see the AI's pace isn't quite consistent with each car class. I wouldn't expect P3's to be so strong and P2's to finish so low down. When I came to lap the P2's they were floundering at the same pace as the GT3's!

In my first round of the wscr an lmp3 car won the race and I was mid lmp2
 
One of my first races I did was a 32 car race at Le Mans with 4 classes (group c, gr6, gr5, gr4) and weather was heavy cloud, overcast, storm and thunderstorm.


As soon as the rain hit 4 cars had retired for some reason and I forgot it was about to rain so when i remembered I was leading with a few drops splashing on the track. I went to pit but a notification came up saying “pit box currently occupied “ and so I had to do 1 extra lap of la Sarthe in the rain on slicks


I was already second for having to waste time driving at the pit speed limit and on that lap I spun twice
And got suspension damage. I was down to sixth after repairs with 10 minutes to go so I unlapped myself and fought up till fourth.

In the last 2 Laps while trying to pass 3rd for a podium I spun hard into a barrier and got heavy suspension damage.

I didn’t want to quit so I fought the Sauber through the pouring rain to a 4th place finish. 2 more cars had retired by the end of the race. I was sweating all over after that one
 
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