Rain tyres and Racing Softs

[hazellnut134]

Hi, I've done 21 hours out of 24 in the Le Mans Endurance. It's been raining 100% for a while now, and most of the race I cut corners to stay ahead of the AI. Due to the rain, they closed that gap, to the point where I got overtaken once.

Firstly, is it possible that I'm slower because I crashed my car a lot during the race?

And, are Racing Softs better in full rain than Rain Tyres?

 

[aadil717]

It all depends if the track settings are set to real. If they're not then rain tyres aren't really simulated properly IIRC.

 

[Ryk]

Not sure where about to start to help you here...

Crashing hurts lap times.

When I ran LeMans - I was pulling 4 lap every 15 minutes, A crash would not only hurt that lap but also slow down the final lap as my tyres would be past their sell by date for that final lap.

Running a safe slow pace though can leak lap times. Pushing hard in the right places can keep lap times low while leaving your tyres in good shape and also not running too many risks of a high speed crash.

The age old maxim of Slow in: Fast out should be the only way to drive in an Enduro, It makes for less mistakes and less off track visits.

RAIN -
I would guess that any slick (Racing Soft - Racing Medium or Racing Hard)will be next to useless in heavy rain.

Inters should be good for slightly wet conditions, but once it gets too wet then they should perform like slicks in the wet, Full Wets should be your best bet at 100% rain -

I can't give any numbers as it is a personal thing driving in the wet, some guys take to it like a duck to water... others don't. - If you are having trouble then it maybe prudent to turn on the ABS/TCS and other driver aids to prevent damp spins.

Good luck -

 

[Morgoth_666]

The A-Spec endurance races all use Low Grip Reduction, so full wets are much much slower than Inters. Everyone seems to say that the racing tires are even better but I never tried them, though I'm sure at least softs are. Sports tires might even be better than wets, but even though it rained for an hour in my 24 hours of the Nürburgring which I ran on sports softs, the water never built up on track so I didn't get to find out.

The only reason to run on wet tires is because it seems like the right thing to do, or to be fair to the AI. But -at least in my case- the AI is really hard to keep up with at Le Mans if you are both on wets. At best I was about staying even with them but their tires lasted longer. I was able to easily gain huge amounts of time at Le Mans on them by running Intermediates however, saved my hopeless race in fact. Intermediates will last for your entire fuel tank, by the way. I think slicks will too, especially after the latest update.

The rain system works fairly well with Grip Reduction set to Real, but PD in their oh-so-infinite wisdom decided not to let us experience the otherwise beautiful 24-hour races (or Suzuka) that way.