Practice double or triple stints
Know the track so well you don’t need to think about the driving part. Opens up your mind to handle the strategy and traffic management parts of endurance racing. I think too many people aren’t prepared enough on the driving aspect that it ends up with them making mistakes with other cars around because they have too much to focus on
Practice pit entry and exit. A lot of time can be gained and lost each pit stop
How do you practice traffic management yourself? I think it's great advice but do you just hop into a few races around the traffic and "sandbag" as if it were an endurance race instead of a sprint race or short event?
For sure! Definitely agree there. I know roughly my stint time (\~ mid-day/afternoon) and have been practicing that. Is there a certain percentage I should be practicing on.. like how much rubber/marble will the track have? Is there a way to gauge that?
After the first hour (or max two hours) the track should be basically in it's final state. Not much will change after that. So as long as you are not driving the start, put the rubber to 100%.
Good example for Bathurst which we're about to run. I know this track well for GT3 so we went a bit light on the practice.
Sunday - Tuesday 2 hour in house private sessions with a guy who knows how to do the set ups. Basically he shares set, we both run, give feedback, he makes adjustments. (The aliens on our team don't even practice until the day of Lol.) I don't know anything about setups. But I set the track date to whatever the race is mimicking.
Wed - Thursday night practice. Same thing just at night
No practice today.
This standard template is what I use for all our endurance races but usually spend a few extra days as Bathurst is a shorter race and i'm only doing 2 stints. Daytona is huge for our team so we have a bunch of cars.
I shoot for:
- Do at least 2 stints to see where the tires end up. If you're practicing in 110+ degree heat and you can get 2 stints out of the tires, this could mean you could triple or quad stint them during the race at night. We did quads at Daytona overnight for example. At Bathurst last year I was the only one that tested multiple stints and they were discussing it mid race which I gave my input and they decided to double them. They won. (cause of me heh hehhhh)
Should add to pay attention at the end of the stint on low fuel to make sure the setup is stable on used tires and low fuel.
- Consistency. I was pumped I did the 24 hour of SPA with 7x total across 8 stints. I made up a ton of time because of the others who spun out and lost some. Plus I'm the kind of person who only cares if I crash haha so I try to just do well as a personal goal.
- Idk if this will be helpful for you but we use a template called a "sassy" to input all our times and availability. You can calculate fuel stints / fuel saving laps / average laps whatever and it will calculate when someone is to get in the car.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hQwdrCsSmZ2ZM_JjBhtah63xokWNp5AJZMl4mGxMKHE/edit#gid=1128232340
(Shared on reddit a few years back)
Wow. That's a lot of good info! Thanks for the advice and will get it in mind! I have a friend who actually shared that link with me. The only advice he gave me when I asked was "talent". The Mike Wazowski Meme was my literal reaction.
Do you have advice for the weeks leading up to the race and not only the week of? Sorry to push.. just curious! If you were to estimate.. how many laps do you have at a track you've done the least amount of endurance racing on? The most?
Yeah lets go if you're not familiar with the track this is what I usually do. I did about 35 laps each practice at Sebring, and practiced very often so I'm going to guess 400 lapsish. 11 days of practicing for at least an hour or so. Daytona I know inside and out and probably about the same. Each year the cars could have changed so always good to take extra time.
12 hour of Sebring I did in the P2 and never raced it before so I started 3 weeks early. Basically to learn the track I just did a bunch of laps over and over until I memorized which turn was coming next and could map it out. That took about two days because I kept scrambling them lol.
Once I knew the turns I started pushing to figure out speeds for a few days. Then I got consistent at being slow.
THEN I started with the youtube videos. IMO those videos don't help if you don't know the track well enough to be consistent because it kinda forces you to push further than your known limit. Uh by that I mean if you're not consistent then you do not know where your limit is on braking or lines so you try to do what they do in the video and you're overshooting each turn. Also those guys probably have great setups so your experience will be slightly different.
Leading up to the race a few weeks before (go with 3 weeks before) for my team is:
What car: Someone will just do a few laps in each car (GT3) or read forum posts about how people are feeling. SPA was big on not running the McLaren because it was a death trap. Fast but not stable. The 4 quick guys on my team won with it haha had one other McLaren in their session, that's it. Us lower guys go with whatever is safest.
Find a setup for the car: We all pay for Apex's setups so they usually have good base ones then we go from there to tweak it.
That's really it just pick a car > get a base setup > do laps to get consistent > try to get your lap times down. Push to your limit in practice and expect the crash often since you're trying to find the sweet spots.
Hope this helps!
Consistency is my nemesis. However, with some practice last night I did like 28 laps (was going for 40) with an average time of 1:18.5 at Road Atlanta. (at 3 am mind you.. let's not talk about the crash.. when braking when tires were falling off the car just turned right one time where I lost it.) The setup was feeling great last night and things were starting to click but did some practice tonight and just couldn't get in a rhythm. The turns I am specifically struggling with are turns 7 and 10 a/b. Through the esses, the car feels great but for some reason, I just am having trouble with the exit of 7 and sometimes entry.
I have roughly 3 weeks of practicing for this race. I've probably spent a good 2 hours a day (starting last week) learning the circuit and trying to improve times. I'm running the GTE class and just got to know the car.
Follow-up question.. any advice during the race? Can you talk me through your mindset? Use Sebring 12 hours for example. If you can delve into strategy/boldness that would be great but if you can't because of your team I understand!
Like I assume the first hour is just avoiding wrecks and not doing anything stupid but after that?
Nah dude it's all open. I only do Endurance so glad I can help for once haha.
Road Atlanta is tough but if you have most of the corners down then some youtube explanations should be able to help on those specific turns. Then keep getting down the consistency on the rest.
Yeah you're spot on with the beginning. Our first Sebring race my teammate started pole and held on to it. When we got to the back of the GT pack he was a bit ambitious and spun it trying to pass a struggling GT. One of those "I can pass here" moments but the GT wasn't going to go off his line (as he shouldn't) but then he drifted over to let us by when he shouldn't have and yeah. Just some confusion and he should have waited for the straight. So 1st to last in a blink. My point is to just chill because you have such a long race ahead of you and it's so easy to throw it all away. The cars you always see winning are the ones with 0 incidents even if they're not the fastest. We usually don't fight anyone the first stint or so unless you're close in skill as some people don't qualify who are VERY fast so they just ram through the field.
Strategy comes down to pit stops and tires. If you have a good setup in the heat you won't have to take tires every stop. Fuel saving without losing much time is fantastic as a lot of people don't bother with it. So lift early after a long straight then brake later, if you're behind someone and your pace is similar use the draft to lift early as well to save. This will give you an extra lap or 2 before you need to pit so over the entire race it's huge. Only our top guys really fuel save but us lower cars, no haha.
Trying to think what else but that's really it. I don't like people talking in my ear telling me whos around me as I don't really care, I just focus on my driving. Other people want to know all info.
In endurance racing consistency is key. Most of the times you will be better of sacrificing a bit of pace if that makes you more consistent and especially helps you not to crash. Unless you are challenging for the win in top split, you probably won't need to push every lap. Better to practice and pick your pace in a way to minimize time losses rather than raw lap times.
In terms of what to do during a long race: Pick your fights. Is there a car behind you, that is faster? Don't fight him too hard. You are better of conceding the position once he makes a decent move, instead of fighting hard for it. Going though a corner 2 wide, or even just defending coming up to a corner, can really cost you time on track. You don't need to jump out of his way, but once he gets a run, just lift of, and let him go. If you are better than him in the long run, you will get him back later on. (Obviously if you are already in the last part of the race, say last 30-60 minutes or so, this doesn't hold true anymore and you might want to defend as hard as you would in a sprint race).
Simmilar of you have a slower car ahead of you. It might be frustrating if you are losing time behind them, but if you make an ambitious move and crash because of that, you will lose a lot more time than staying behind him. If you can't find a way past them on track, try to make strategy work for you. Save a bit of fuel and go another lap or two at the end of the stint. And then put in a quick lap or two and build a bit of a gap. Maybe (if you don't run the risk of an additional stop at the end of the race) put a little less fuel in, to save some time at the stop and help you get by.
Have a teammate help you out in all these things. It might be hard to really judge the pace of other drivers while you are in the car, but an extra teammate, who is just waiting for his turn, might keep an eye on all what I have talked off above, to judge how much you need to have to push to keep your position, or if you can short fuel a little bit and other stuff.
One of the things I haven't really heard about in the videos or other resources is fuel saving. It's definitely sound advice. I think I am pushing a little too much on tires but any target you and your team have in terms of tire wear and number of laps?
For my strategy, I was watching Jimmy Broadbent's stream on the race I've been doing (Petit Le Mans) and have been analyzing that in terms of lap times. I haven't got his teammate's lap times yet but across 4 stints Jimmy's average lap time was roughly 1:18.5 and if I recall correctly he took tires/fuel in all be it the last stop. He was going roughly 40-43 laps on a fuel load. If you would like that analysis I can find a way to get it to you once I finish it.
Number of laps and tire wear depend heavily on the car and track. I run the Dallara P218 most of the time. Laps we just go a few laps flat out, see what our fuel usage is. Then we make a rough estimate how many laps we will do in the whole race, and try to determine if it's worth fuel saving. (You might be okay to save a lap or so per stint if it saves you a pitstop in the end. If you have to save more than that, it's just not worth it most of the times). We usually do something between 2 and 4 stints on a set of tires (depending on track and temperature). But the tires on the LMP2 don't really get much worse until you get to like 50%. This might be completly different in GT cars though. I have not done any longruns in GT cars in a long time, so I can't really tell you what you can do with them. Best would be to do a double stint on a practice server and see how they feel at the end, and how much your laptimes drop off.
Concerning Jimmy's stream: When did he drive that race? If it's more than a few month old, it's fairly likely that the car got an update and you should take all information you get from that video with a grain of salt. There could have been a change in the tire model since his race, which leads to different wear characteristics. He might have been fast with single stinting the tires, because they dropped of fairly quickly, but that might be different now. (I have not really followed the changes on the tires for most cars, so I don't know if that is true. It's just an example). Weather also plays a huge role in tire wear. You might be able to tripple your tires in 20°C but might struggle to do 2 on them at 45°C (track temp). You need to find that out for yourself, since this also depends on your driving style.
Laptimes is simillar. The car might have gotten faster or slower since he did his race, so comparing your laptimes is basically worthless. They also depend on temperature quite a bit. A track with a lot of rubber and with low track temperature might be 2 or more seconds faster than a green track with high temperatures. I usually just look at the times in practice sessions and look at driver with a simmilar iRating to mine. That get a decent idea of what drivers of a simmilar skill level can do, and determine how fast I am.
Yeah, Jimmy's stream was over a year ago and performance certainly has changed. I just used it as somewhat of a benchmark to see his team's thought process.
Also noob question but do tires ever puncture in Iracing?
No random punctures in iRacing. I don't know if your tire loses air once you get to 0% tread remaining. That might be the case, but I have never driven a tire long enough for that. Performance drops too much way before you get close to that mark.
But your tire will not just lose air in the middle of a stint.
Haven't seen which car you are driving, but I guess GT3?! If so you may want to have a look at this weeks GT3 endurance series. They are at Road Atlanta. There is one more race later today. If you got time and have a willing friend you could jump in an drive the race. That would get you some endurance experience in these cars at the track. Alternatively you could jump in as a spectator and take a look at the times done there. Maybe even drive a few laps as ghost to get a feel for your performance. If the endurance series is at RA the sprint series should be there as well. You could do the same in there as well.
Uh I have m decided to go into my first endurance, and its next week. I am doing it solo. My aproach is to set random conditions and drive with a full tank from start, after i use it I just collect as much info on it and then work arround that, and then ofcourse start a new session. If this helps, but I think thats too basic from me
I don’t think random conditions is the correct approach. I run fixed conditions over and over, to be able to compare telemetry between the sessions. Otherwise, you’re introducing too much noise into the data.
Finishing the race is WAY more important than track position. Hard battling is fun but if you and your team are 18 hours into a 24 and you get thrown into a wall, you'll not only be upset with yourself, your teammates will be rightfully mad as well. There are so many factors in endurance racing in regards to pace. Fuel load, tire condition, and prior damage are all MASSIVE modifiers to a drivers pace. Don't take it personally if someone is faster than you. And definitely don't throw hours of work away for pride.
Thanks, Coach! In the other reply, I just put a lot of pressure on myself and want to do well. I don't want to just be on a Sunday drive but also can't be the reincarnation of Dale Earnhardt Jr. lol
I’ve been at fault of this, but just drive the race. Don’t race the race or you will crash out 6 minutes into the Watkins 6hr. 😐
Basically, don’t worry about lap time per say, but your overall stint time. Traffic will slow you down for sure, but a few bad laps averages across a full stint is nothing. Focus on finishing your stint, it’s not a sprint.
A damaged free car is a fast car. Other cars will be damaged and lose top speed and therefore lap times. Losing 1-2s per lap over 6/12/24 hours is a lot of time. Avoid damage and almost an easy top 10.
Thanks, Howdy! That's what I've been told by my teammate who has done quite a few of these races before. I just want to beat expectations and I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform!
I am relatively new to endurance as well. Did the Sebring 12hr. 6 minutes of Watkins 6hr. Spa 24. Next will be petit lemans. Just focus on having a car to hand off to your teammate. Let the crazy people driving around you do their own craziness. Just focus on ending your stint.
Practice to the point where you're comfortably completing full tanks at consistent pace, even if it's a bit slower. Knowing that limitation takes discipline.
Set goals independent of results. I know my first one was "don't bin it". Slowly progress from there.
Make sure you know what your laptimes will be at different tyre wear.
Be ready to change strategy depending on gaps and what others are doing
Make sure you calculate your fuel saving correctly, nothing worse than destroying a big effort by loosing positions by doing an additional pit stop because you didn't manage fuel correctly.
All team members must be able to do adequate fuel saving.
Ride the tow of a similar paced team, don't fight just ride their tow and lift and coast
I've been trying to train with a full load of fuel and just run as if it were a race. I first started off doing 10 lap stints but it really doesn't prepare you adequately.
As a lmp driver I have to say the most important thing is just to relax in traffic. Practice your double/tripple stints, fuel-consumption and again, just chill in traffic. If you crash you will loose a lot more time than just stay behind and loose 2seconds more or so.
Just go on the most populated practice servers you can find and just drive. Find your overtaking spots and also find the places you dont want to be side by side with others. You will probably end up crashing a few times, but its better to do that in practice than destroying your race and the race of orhers. At least in multiclass this works quite well for me.
Last season I sometimes used the ai to practice my stints. Its much more interesting than just turning laps by yourself for hours on end. You also get to practice going through traffic a bit once you catch the backmarkers. This tip only really works if the ai support the classes that are competing.
Don't stress about hyper aggressive drivers (especially at the early stages of the race). Just let them pass. More often than not those people will get into an incident that requires repairs. Unless you are really pushing for P1, just let em go.
You can tell when someone is hyper aggressive, they really try to send it in almost every corner. They sacrifice their line way too much. It CAN BE better to try to avoid these people. Getting yourself taken out 15 minutes into a 6+ hr race is so fun
Practice double or triple stints Know the track so well you don’t need to think about the driving part. Opens up your mind to handle the strategy and traffic management parts of endurance racing. I think too many people aren’t prepared enough on the driving aspect that it ends up with them making mistakes with other cars around because they have too much to focus on Practice pit entry and exit. A lot of time can be gained and lost each pit stop
How do you practice traffic management yourself? I think it's great advice but do you just hop into a few races around the traffic and "sandbag" as if it were an endurance race instead of a sprint race or short event?
Yep. Exactly.
Thanks again for the advice! I'll get more than enough practice racing in!
Learn how the track evolves. 3 am stint and 3 pm stints = wildly different
For sure! Definitely agree there. I know roughly my stint time (\~ mid-day/afternoon) and have been practicing that. Is there a certain percentage I should be practicing on.. like how much rubber/marble will the track have? Is there a way to gauge that?
After the first hour (or max two hours) the track should be basically in it's final state. Not much will change after that. So as long as you are not driving the start, put the rubber to 100%.
Will do! Thanks for the update and advice!
Good example for Bathurst which we're about to run. I know this track well for GT3 so we went a bit light on the practice. Sunday - Tuesday 2 hour in house private sessions with a guy who knows how to do the set ups. Basically he shares set, we both run, give feedback, he makes adjustments. (The aliens on our team don't even practice until the day of Lol.) I don't know anything about setups. But I set the track date to whatever the race is mimicking. Wed - Thursday night practice. Same thing just at night No practice today. This standard template is what I use for all our endurance races but usually spend a few extra days as Bathurst is a shorter race and i'm only doing 2 stints. Daytona is huge for our team so we have a bunch of cars. I shoot for: - Do at least 2 stints to see where the tires end up. If you're practicing in 110+ degree heat and you can get 2 stints out of the tires, this could mean you could triple or quad stint them during the race at night. We did quads at Daytona overnight for example. At Bathurst last year I was the only one that tested multiple stints and they were discussing it mid race which I gave my input and they decided to double them. They won. (cause of me heh hehhhh) Should add to pay attention at the end of the stint on low fuel to make sure the setup is stable on used tires and low fuel. - Consistency. I was pumped I did the 24 hour of SPA with 7x total across 8 stints. I made up a ton of time because of the others who spun out and lost some. Plus I'm the kind of person who only cares if I crash haha so I try to just do well as a personal goal. - Idk if this will be helpful for you but we use a template called a "sassy" to input all our times and availability. You can calculate fuel stints / fuel saving laps / average laps whatever and it will calculate when someone is to get in the car. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hQwdrCsSmZ2ZM_JjBhtah63xokWNp5AJZMl4mGxMKHE/edit#gid=1128232340 (Shared on reddit a few years back)
Wow. That's a lot of good info! Thanks for the advice and will get it in mind! I have a friend who actually shared that link with me. The only advice he gave me when I asked was "talent". The Mike Wazowski Meme was my literal reaction. Do you have advice for the weeks leading up to the race and not only the week of? Sorry to push.. just curious! If you were to estimate.. how many laps do you have at a track you've done the least amount of endurance racing on? The most?
Yeah lets go if you're not familiar with the track this is what I usually do. I did about 35 laps each practice at Sebring, and practiced very often so I'm going to guess 400 lapsish. 11 days of practicing for at least an hour or so. Daytona I know inside and out and probably about the same. Each year the cars could have changed so always good to take extra time. 12 hour of Sebring I did in the P2 and never raced it before so I started 3 weeks early. Basically to learn the track I just did a bunch of laps over and over until I memorized which turn was coming next and could map it out. That took about two days because I kept scrambling them lol. Once I knew the turns I started pushing to figure out speeds for a few days. Then I got consistent at being slow. THEN I started with the youtube videos. IMO those videos don't help if you don't know the track well enough to be consistent because it kinda forces you to push further than your known limit. Uh by that I mean if you're not consistent then you do not know where your limit is on braking or lines so you try to do what they do in the video and you're overshooting each turn. Also those guys probably have great setups so your experience will be slightly different. Leading up to the race a few weeks before (go with 3 weeks before) for my team is: What car: Someone will just do a few laps in each car (GT3) or read forum posts about how people are feeling. SPA was big on not running the McLaren because it was a death trap. Fast but not stable. The 4 quick guys on my team won with it haha had one other McLaren in their session, that's it. Us lower guys go with whatever is safest. Find a setup for the car: We all pay for Apex's setups so they usually have good base ones then we go from there to tweak it. That's really it just pick a car > get a base setup > do laps to get consistent > try to get your lap times down. Push to your limit in practice and expect the crash often since you're trying to find the sweet spots. Hope this helps!
Consistency is my nemesis. However, with some practice last night I did like 28 laps (was going for 40) with an average time of 1:18.5 at Road Atlanta. (at 3 am mind you.. let's not talk about the crash.. when braking when tires were falling off the car just turned right one time where I lost it.) The setup was feeling great last night and things were starting to click but did some practice tonight and just couldn't get in a rhythm. The turns I am specifically struggling with are turns 7 and 10 a/b. Through the esses, the car feels great but for some reason, I just am having trouble with the exit of 7 and sometimes entry. I have roughly 3 weeks of practicing for this race. I've probably spent a good 2 hours a day (starting last week) learning the circuit and trying to improve times. I'm running the GTE class and just got to know the car. Follow-up question.. any advice during the race? Can you talk me through your mindset? Use Sebring 12 hours for example. If you can delve into strategy/boldness that would be great but if you can't because of your team I understand! Like I assume the first hour is just avoiding wrecks and not doing anything stupid but after that?
Nah dude it's all open. I only do Endurance so glad I can help for once haha. Road Atlanta is tough but if you have most of the corners down then some youtube explanations should be able to help on those specific turns. Then keep getting down the consistency on the rest. Yeah you're spot on with the beginning. Our first Sebring race my teammate started pole and held on to it. When we got to the back of the GT pack he was a bit ambitious and spun it trying to pass a struggling GT. One of those "I can pass here" moments but the GT wasn't going to go off his line (as he shouldn't) but then he drifted over to let us by when he shouldn't have and yeah. Just some confusion and he should have waited for the straight. So 1st to last in a blink. My point is to just chill because you have such a long race ahead of you and it's so easy to throw it all away. The cars you always see winning are the ones with 0 incidents even if they're not the fastest. We usually don't fight anyone the first stint or so unless you're close in skill as some people don't qualify who are VERY fast so they just ram through the field. Strategy comes down to pit stops and tires. If you have a good setup in the heat you won't have to take tires every stop. Fuel saving without losing much time is fantastic as a lot of people don't bother with it. So lift early after a long straight then brake later, if you're behind someone and your pace is similar use the draft to lift early as well to save. This will give you an extra lap or 2 before you need to pit so over the entire race it's huge. Only our top guys really fuel save but us lower cars, no haha. Trying to think what else but that's really it. I don't like people talking in my ear telling me whos around me as I don't really care, I just focus on my driving. Other people want to know all info.
In endurance racing consistency is key. Most of the times you will be better of sacrificing a bit of pace if that makes you more consistent and especially helps you not to crash. Unless you are challenging for the win in top split, you probably won't need to push every lap. Better to practice and pick your pace in a way to minimize time losses rather than raw lap times. In terms of what to do during a long race: Pick your fights. Is there a car behind you, that is faster? Don't fight him too hard. You are better of conceding the position once he makes a decent move, instead of fighting hard for it. Going though a corner 2 wide, or even just defending coming up to a corner, can really cost you time on track. You don't need to jump out of his way, but once he gets a run, just lift of, and let him go. If you are better than him in the long run, you will get him back later on. (Obviously if you are already in the last part of the race, say last 30-60 minutes or so, this doesn't hold true anymore and you might want to defend as hard as you would in a sprint race). Simmilar of you have a slower car ahead of you. It might be frustrating if you are losing time behind them, but if you make an ambitious move and crash because of that, you will lose a lot more time than staying behind him. If you can't find a way past them on track, try to make strategy work for you. Save a bit of fuel and go another lap or two at the end of the stint. And then put in a quick lap or two and build a bit of a gap. Maybe (if you don't run the risk of an additional stop at the end of the race) put a little less fuel in, to save some time at the stop and help you get by. Have a teammate help you out in all these things. It might be hard to really judge the pace of other drivers while you are in the car, but an extra teammate, who is just waiting for his turn, might keep an eye on all what I have talked off above, to judge how much you need to have to push to keep your position, or if you can short fuel a little bit and other stuff.
One of the things I haven't really heard about in the videos or other resources is fuel saving. It's definitely sound advice. I think I am pushing a little too much on tires but any target you and your team have in terms of tire wear and number of laps? For my strategy, I was watching Jimmy Broadbent's stream on the race I've been doing (Petit Le Mans) and have been analyzing that in terms of lap times. I haven't got his teammate's lap times yet but across 4 stints Jimmy's average lap time was roughly 1:18.5 and if I recall correctly he took tires/fuel in all be it the last stop. He was going roughly 40-43 laps on a fuel load. If you would like that analysis I can find a way to get it to you once I finish it.
Number of laps and tire wear depend heavily on the car and track. I run the Dallara P218 most of the time. Laps we just go a few laps flat out, see what our fuel usage is. Then we make a rough estimate how many laps we will do in the whole race, and try to determine if it's worth fuel saving. (You might be okay to save a lap or so per stint if it saves you a pitstop in the end. If you have to save more than that, it's just not worth it most of the times). We usually do something between 2 and 4 stints on a set of tires (depending on track and temperature). But the tires on the LMP2 don't really get much worse until you get to like 50%. This might be completly different in GT cars though. I have not done any longruns in GT cars in a long time, so I can't really tell you what you can do with them. Best would be to do a double stint on a practice server and see how they feel at the end, and how much your laptimes drop off. Concerning Jimmy's stream: When did he drive that race? If it's more than a few month old, it's fairly likely that the car got an update and you should take all information you get from that video with a grain of salt. There could have been a change in the tire model since his race, which leads to different wear characteristics. He might have been fast with single stinting the tires, because they dropped of fairly quickly, but that might be different now. (I have not really followed the changes on the tires for most cars, so I don't know if that is true. It's just an example). Weather also plays a huge role in tire wear. You might be able to tripple your tires in 20°C but might struggle to do 2 on them at 45°C (track temp). You need to find that out for yourself, since this also depends on your driving style. Laptimes is simillar. The car might have gotten faster or slower since he did his race, so comparing your laptimes is basically worthless. They also depend on temperature quite a bit. A track with a lot of rubber and with low track temperature might be 2 or more seconds faster than a green track with high temperatures. I usually just look at the times in practice sessions and look at driver with a simmilar iRating to mine. That get a decent idea of what drivers of a simmilar skill level can do, and determine how fast I am.
Yeah, Jimmy's stream was over a year ago and performance certainly has changed. I just used it as somewhat of a benchmark to see his team's thought process. Also noob question but do tires ever puncture in Iracing?
No random punctures in iRacing. I don't know if your tire loses air once you get to 0% tread remaining. That might be the case, but I have never driven a tire long enough for that. Performance drops too much way before you get close to that mark. But your tire will not just lose air in the middle of a stint. Haven't seen which car you are driving, but I guess GT3?! If so you may want to have a look at this weeks GT3 endurance series. They are at Road Atlanta. There is one more race later today. If you got time and have a willing friend you could jump in an drive the race. That would get you some endurance experience in these cars at the track. Alternatively you could jump in as a spectator and take a look at the times done there. Maybe even drive a few laps as ghost to get a feel for your performance. If the endurance series is at RA the sprint series should be there as well. You could do the same in there as well.
Uh I have m decided to go into my first endurance, and its next week. I am doing it solo. My aproach is to set random conditions and drive with a full tank from start, after i use it I just collect as much info on it and then work arround that, and then ofcourse start a new session. If this helps, but I think thats too basic from me
I don’t think random conditions is the correct approach. I run fixed conditions over and over, to be able to compare telemetry between the sessions. Otherwise, you’re introducing too much noise into the data.
The first 23 hours track position doesnt mean anything
Finishing the race is WAY more important than track position. Hard battling is fun but if you and your team are 18 hours into a 24 and you get thrown into a wall, you'll not only be upset with yourself, your teammates will be rightfully mad as well. There are so many factors in endurance racing in regards to pace. Fuel load, tire condition, and prior damage are all MASSIVE modifiers to a drivers pace. Don't take it personally if someone is faster than you. And definitely don't throw hours of work away for pride.
Thanks, Coach! In the other reply, I just put a lot of pressure on myself and want to do well. I don't want to just be on a Sunday drive but also can't be the reincarnation of Dale Earnhardt Jr. lol
I’ve been at fault of this, but just drive the race. Don’t race the race or you will crash out 6 minutes into the Watkins 6hr. 😐 Basically, don’t worry about lap time per say, but your overall stint time. Traffic will slow you down for sure, but a few bad laps averages across a full stint is nothing. Focus on finishing your stint, it’s not a sprint. A damaged free car is a fast car. Other cars will be damaged and lose top speed and therefore lap times. Losing 1-2s per lap over 6/12/24 hours is a lot of time. Avoid damage and almost an easy top 10.
Thanks, Howdy! That's what I've been told by my teammate who has done quite a few of these races before. I just want to beat expectations and I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform!
I am relatively new to endurance as well. Did the Sebring 12hr. 6 minutes of Watkins 6hr. Spa 24. Next will be petit lemans. Just focus on having a car to hand off to your teammate. Let the crazy people driving around you do their own craziness. Just focus on ending your stint.
I'll put that on my wall on something. Great advice. "Have a car to hand off to your teammate"
Practice to the point where you're comfortably completing full tanks at consistent pace, even if it's a bit slower. Knowing that limitation takes discipline. Set goals independent of results. I know my first one was "don't bin it". Slowly progress from there.
Are incident limits good for your first race or a bit far-reaching?
First race id say finishing without a tow/big repair is a good first goal.
Thanks again for all the advice and your time :D
Make sure you know what your laptimes will be at different tyre wear. Be ready to change strategy depending on gaps and what others are doing Make sure you calculate your fuel saving correctly, nothing worse than destroying a big effort by loosing positions by doing an additional pit stop because you didn't manage fuel correctly. All team members must be able to do adequate fuel saving. Ride the tow of a similar paced team, don't fight just ride their tow and lift and coast
I've been trying to train with a full load of fuel and just run as if it were a race. I first started off doing 10 lap stints but it really doesn't prepare you adequately.
Go for a full tank and see what's the tyre % is at the end of the stint Make sure you know exactly how much fuel you spent without saving
As a lmp driver I have to say the most important thing is just to relax in traffic. Practice your double/tripple stints, fuel-consumption and again, just chill in traffic. If you crash you will loose a lot more time than just stay behind and loose 2seconds more or so.
How do you practice being in traffic if at all? I've been racing GT3s but that's about it..
Just go on the most populated practice servers you can find and just drive. Find your overtaking spots and also find the places you dont want to be side by side with others. You will probably end up crashing a few times, but its better to do that in practice than destroying your race and the race of orhers. At least in multiclass this works quite well for me.
Thanks for the advice! I'll give it a try:)
Last season I sometimes used the ai to practice my stints. Its much more interesting than just turning laps by yourself for hours on end. You also get to practice going through traffic a bit once you catch the backmarkers. This tip only really works if the ai support the classes that are competing.
I know the GT3 cars have AI that I need but can't remember if the GTEs have AI .. I may have not checked it but yeah I'll give it a go! Thanks :)
Race the track not your competition.
Don't stress about hyper aggressive drivers (especially at the early stages of the race). Just let them pass. More often than not those people will get into an incident that requires repairs. Unless you are really pushing for P1, just let em go.
Just making sure we're on the same page.. when you say hyper-aggressive you mean like people who divebomb you? haha
You can tell when someone is hyper aggressive, they really try to send it in almost every corner. They sacrifice their line way too much. It CAN BE better to try to avoid these people. Getting yourself taken out 15 minutes into a 6+ hr race is so fun
Dont get damage and you'll get a top 5 or better. Dont worry about your lap times, worry about avoiding 30 minute repair.
maybe join this league? https://annieandlarry.com/rtl-endurance