Surface Water and Tire Choices

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D_Shark10
I've been wondering how to factor in the surface water meter into tire choices, such as switching from full rain tires to intermediates or vice versa.

At first I figured intermediates could play in when the meter was ranging from 40% to about 75%, but after some B-spec Formula GT racing I noticed the AI has completely different numbers. From 100 to 90% it uses/recommends rain tires, which I thought was a little extreme, asking intermediate tires to handle a track that's 89% soaked.
Then once the meter dropped to 59% it sent all its cars, including mine, to switch to dry tires, granted the dry line had already been formed, but still, anything outside that line was wet asphalt, made me nervous when my Bob would pass a backmarker 'cause he'd have a nice rooster tail while on those slicks.

Are those percentages a good indicator or are they only suited for Bobs? 'Cause say what you will about them, but I think our Bobs can drive the FGT way smoother than we ever will.
 
Well i'm halfway in the 24hr of Le Mans A-spec right now. It's been raining since i started the race so i've tried everything and strangely enough my findings are that intermediates always beat rain tires by far. Even on a 100% wet surface i'm up to 8 seconds per lap faster than i am on rain tires and the intermediates even feel more grippy. It shouldn't be so but well, try racing softs in the pouring rain and you'll know PD didn't get it right at all!
 
Well i'm halfway in the 24hr of Le Mans A-spec right now. It's been raining since i started the race so i've tried everything and strangely enough my findings are that intermediates always beat rain tires by far. Even on a 100% wet surface i'm up to 8 seconds per lap faster than i am on rain tires and the intermediates even feel more grippy. It shouldn't be so but well, try racing softs in the pouring rain and you'll know PD didn't get it right at all!

From what you're saying I guess the game puts more weight on how much rubber is in contact with the track than how much grip is lost by surface water. I have tried racing softs in a soaked track though, it was pretty useless, but I understand you can drive on racing softs for a long time while the track is getting wet though.
 
Offline races have grip reduction set to low, so racing soft tyres are the best tyres in all conditions. If there was an option to change grip reduction to real, like there is online, you'd probably be best on intermediate tyres from something like 20-50% surface water, and anything higher would be full wets. (I haven't done a wet race since they added the graphic showing how wet the track is)
 
I have found that even at 100% water, intermediates were better than rain tires. Didn't believe it at first, so I took a GT-R to Monza against LMPs. On rains, they out cornered me, but I could make it sporty. On intermediates, I was about 4 seconds quicker than them per lap.
 
Just had the weirdest race at Suzuka in the B-Spec Super GT series.

Started in the rain, surface water to 100%, everyone on rain tires, although I should've switched to intermediates. Anyway 13 laps in surface water began decreasing slowly, I figured rain was thinning out a little, same thing happened at Monza. About 6 laps later I went for intermediates, track was at 93% I believe, and yes, laps times were much better on those tires. Next lap the AI took all their cars in for intermediates.

Here's the curious part, rain kept coming down and the track was still getting drier, matter of fact the dry line was forming :boggled: rooster tails were gone, but outside of the line the track was soaked and stayed so, and at about 67% the AI went for Racing Hard tires (regulations restricted slicks to that compound) which meant all its cars had to tiptoe their way on the seemingly bone dry racing line (did I mention it was still pouring?) and off they went into the sandtraps. Again and again.

Just couldn't wrap my head around it. By the end of the race the meter was at 48% even though the downpour never stopped.
 
There was a huge thread about this a couple of days, guess this will be locked in a few minutes. But go use the search engine to find the thread. Its very usefull
 
So is the spell checker.
I'm guessing you mean this huge thread? I guess I missed it, I apologize. I've added some B-spec tidbits to this one at least I suppose.
 
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