I’m mainly a Sim racer for endurance events and was curious how many others there are out there that mainly focus on these events. I find shorter sprints a little too punishing in that one mistake/incident can cost you the entire race whereas enduros can be a little more forgiving.
I find personally a lot of satisfaction in doing the strategy as I’m not necessarily the fastest driver, but it can come up with some good strategies to find time over a long race.
What about anyone else? Curious to hear about your experiences and opinions!
I played rFactor 2 for a couple of years and raced GTEs and GT3s in the Virtual Endurance Championship and GT3 Endurance Series.
I really enjoyed the team aspect of the races and built some great friendships that have lasted even now I’ve taken an extended break from sim racing. The highlight every year was the 24 Hours of Le Mans - I have really fond memories of doing the night shift at 4am with the one or two other people online, knowing we had to carry the car to the morning.
I really enjoyed the multi-class racing. There was always someone in my mirrors and the first couple of times the prototypes would come to lap us each race would always be so hectic. I can vividly remember the feeling of dread being in a very intense battle at Spa, having the leaders stream past us leading up to Eau Rouge.
Another thing I loved was just racing as part of a team and the pressure of not letting me teammates down. In a weird way I enjoyed the underlying feeling of dread in the couple of days leading up to each race, the peaking in the laps before I took over the car, and then in longer races, the way the fact it didn’t go away after my stint as I knew I had to get in the car again later on! Then when we’d cross the line, there was always such great relief knowing that I wouldn’t have to get in again.
That would’ve been an awesome experience!
It’s definitely a great way to form friendships. Le Mans is definitely one that’s on my list and the N24! Any tips for preparing?
I’m trying to improve my SR in iRacing but I’ve a long way to go I fear!I love the team aspect also, being able to sit in chat and have a laugh in between stints and plan out your next move is always a lot of fun. Especially in a race with changing conditions where you’re trying to figure out the best point to pit for tyres and so on. It’s one of the things I love about ACC with having to deal with rain and so on which can really mix things up
Any tips for preparing?
I found getting teammates to sit in the server with me and analyse my driving / give me live feedback was really helpful! We would rotate and give feedback to each other. Often it wasn’t just what they were telling me, but the fact I knew someone was watching made me more focused on what to improve.
This is probably too specific to be helpful, but because the VEC had 3 divisions at the time, in the few days before a race the practice server would have 70-80 cars on at peak times, which was absolute chaos. That was pretty useful for practicing traffic, for sure! But any way to practice with real drivers definitely helps.
It’s one of the things I love about ACC with having to deal with rain and so on which can really mix things up
Definitely, I love how dynamic the sims are getting and hopefully this will keep getting better across the sims! It makes it much more interesting when there’s a bit of rain in the mix :)
My team has a fair few people in it who pretty much only do the big enduro events, and it bugs me how they can not touch the sim for months and still be so dang fast 😂
I have a teammate who is legit Pro pace that does that. I have to practice so much and he comes out after a couple days practice and is like top 10 in pace! It’s so frustrating sometimes! haha.
Be fair to us mortals!
Dang I’m jealous! 😂
Interesting take. I’m trying to settle into this mindset with GT7. I will say though that it takes patience, and you have to reframe the way you approach the game - literally.
You have to be rested, no distractions, time to sit down long enough to get the race done, so many factors.
I’ve found I usually only have time for a few short races so I don’t do well with endurance races but I’m trying.
It’s definitely something you have to have a lot of commitment for! The series I race in is monthly, so usually I blank out a Saturday and spend the month beforehand practicing either in shorter lobbies or vs AI.
Hey, on a side note are we all excited for the Gran Turismo movie or what??
@Deftdrummer @ChoccyMilk I’ll probably watch it just cause, but i’m not holding my breath on how well it will hold up. It would be nice if it exposed the world to what a real sim racer could achieve, but I feel like there will be a lot of Hollywood flare…
I think there will be but I’ll bet it’ll be more aimed at getting kids excited over sim racing and trying to get them involved in the hobby!
Still something that I think I’ll check out though.
I’m with that, but it’s a true story about a dude who battled with the best in real life.
This is our sport, this is our hobby, this is our sport and our hobby rolled into one with major studio backing.
I don’t understand the sour grapes, watch Barbie I guess if the movie bringing attention to the sport is such a problem.
I tried endurance racing a little bit in ACC and I’m not aversed doing more in the future but compared to your regular Sunday evening 1 h league races it takes a lot of commitment, not only from yourself, but also from your teammates. It’s actually a lot of fun and driving 4.5 h alone when your teammates need to cancel is f’n intense.
You’re absolutely right! There was a guy in our series that had to do a 12h solo! He used the stint penalties as a chance to go to the toilet! haha
There’s definitely a lot of commitment involved, but there are also quite a few people looking for teams as well so there are certainly options out there!
I frequently run enduros in iRacing with my permanent team. I posted a Spa24 summary a while ago, where we had many little mistakes over time causing us to quit when we fell too far behind. Looking forward to the Petit LeMans at Road Atlanta later in the fall though. Also rain will be quite interesting.
From my experience doing 6-12h events in ACC rain can really add an interesting element to racing in general. It’s quite terrifying when your entire field of vision is nothing but grey! We did a 9h at Imola earlier this year and I think 6 out of those 9 hours were wet, it was a very difficult race but very rewarding if you manage to keep your nose clean that whole time!
I’m looking forward to the introduction of rain in iRacing, it definitely mixes things up setup wise in some cars! Though I must admit I’ve only limited experience in iRacing
I did a 6hrs of Bathurst once, no rain but ACC is def more of a workout to drive than iRacing regardless, with how much more effects and noises and ffb you get. Can’t imagine doublestinting as much in ACC as I usually do.
I run irFFB for iRacing and with some tinkering I’ve got the FFB to where I reckon it’s comparable.
There are some folk who’ve soloed entire races, they’ve gone down in folklore in some communities haha.
I tend to go for more short sprint style races, preferably fixed series on iracing. I like them for that punishment factor it forces me to drive more consistently and build more spacial awareness. But I am also relatively new to sim racing without any real-life racing experience outside a couple of laps at an indoor Karting track. I’m not big on formulating strategy or setups yet as I am more focused on trying to improve/learn proper techniques in my driving so those differences can fuck with me a bit more as I’m not sure if i am just overdriving the car or if i fucked the setup. I’m sure as I get more time in the sim these preferences will change a bit, also because as it sits I don’t even have an endurance races available to me yet in iracing so my only other experience is like 20min races in ACC 😅.
That;s definitely a good point! The shorter races do help you improve on those factors.
I find a tool like CrewChief really helps with your spatial awareness if you’ve not used that. The spotter call outs I find are much better than those in both iRacing and ACC. Being able to plug into other sims as well is a huge bonus! The coaching and other stuff is a great boon as well.
For strategy, I use a spreadsheet and just have it do most of the math for me haha. And as for setups… there are some great guides out there on what to change to try and improve things, it’s a big learning process though!
Good luck on your improvement journey! It’s definitely one that takes a huge amount of time. Trail braking took ages for me to wrap my head around and even then it’s still something that I’m trying to work on!
@ChoccyMilk that’s an interesting take that I had not thought of. I always avoided longer races because it was more of a commitment, time-wise. Not that I didn’t want to, but just seemed like more of a big deal. Maybe I should give longer format races a shot! I know iRacing does a nords eduros that is like 2 hour long races iirc.
There are a lot of T1 heroes out there, you can at least recover in those instances!
The league I race in is once a month so it’s not too extreme a commitment. Usually have to block out a Saturday and that’s about it. 6-12h races in teams of 2-4 so usually depending on your team mates there can be done flexibility if you need to run to the shops or anything. It’s definitely still a big commitment but I find one a month to be a good balance and also offer plenty of time to practice. I find after 60-70 mins I definitely need a break haha
