Community Question | Have You Ever Run An Endurance Race?

Paul Jeffrey

Premium
I love endurance racing! But does our community?

By endurance racing, I mean an event over 4 hours in racing time - either as a solo driver, or part of a larger driving team. Personally I think 4 hours is a sprint, but hey, we have to put a limit on the article somewhere, don't we?

The question of the day today is... have you ever raced in an endurance event online before, and what did you make of the experience?

(again, in this case we are calling anything over 4 hours 'Endurance').

Goooooooooooooooo.....

Endurance Footer.jpg
 
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Drove in the RDGTC a few years back. 24 hours of Le Mans was a total disaster, the game glitched and DNF'd us after 6 hours. Drove 5 out of 6 hours at the Bahrain race, that was tiring like a mad man. And more recently 12 hours of Bathurst and 9 hours of Imola. Great events!

Really enjoy the long races, driver swaps etc. Even when the fighting settles down on track it is still a great experience, lots to learn from your teammates and other drivers and it feels really rewarding when you finally hit that chequered flag.
 
Endurance racing is epic, sadly I think I’d be punched if I spent much more than a couple of hours at a time in the hot seat these days.

Managing your pace/fuel/tyres/ERS and being smooth and consistent is so rewarding. Plus just getting right into the groove and hunkering down for the long run.
 
I did
3x 24h le Mans (LMP1, LMP2, GTE)
2x 12h Bathurst (GT3)
3 Season VLN (4h and 6h races on the Nordschleife in GT3 and 911 Cup)
2x 24h Spa (GT3)
1x 12h Sebring (Corvette DP)
1x Petit Le Mans (10h Road Atlanta in a GTE)
2x 24h Daytona (GTE and GT3)

All on iRacing. Please don't ask for results :D
What I really never did was the 24h Nordschleife because I don't find it appealing to do 24h on such a large track with ~ 55 cars (or less if they crash out)
 
P3 at the 2019 iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona in a Ford GT, that's been my only online endurance race. But offline I've done a few, my favourite was a 64 car 8 hours of Spa with x3 weather in Assetto Corsa. Came P2 in a McLaren 720 cause I got spun by a backmarker Porsche last lap :mad::mad:
 
I took part in a 24 Hour Le Mans race a couple of years ago at a SimRacing venue with 16 simrigs set up in a room. The more experienced sim racers were put in GT cars, and the less-experienced were given the LMP1s. There were 5 of us on our team, and as a team of Motorsport Engineering students we went full sweat on everything. We took it waaaaay too seriously, but that's exactly the right attitude for something this long.

We has planned out our stints from the start, as with 5 of us there was always enough time at night for three people to have a good few hours of sleep. We brought a whiteboard with us to use as a pitboard to pass information to the driver, and had got our fuel strategy mapped out perfectly as well to maximise the amount of laps we could do between stops. Of course, being the sweats we were, we managed to eke an extra lap out of each stint and enter the box with 0.5L or less each and every stint.

The race was frought with the glitches and chaos you'd expect with a long race in a virtual world. The kerb on the inside of Indianapolis was especially bad, as pretty much every team got sent into orbit from it for no apparent reason, always bouncing across the grass behind the barriers and losing countless minutes as the coordinators tried to find a way to get them back on track. The exit of the Porsche curves had an equally evil set of kerbs that were at least visibly bad - even if the extent you went into the sky seemed too much. However, pretty much every team got screwed over by these glitches that it equalled out in the end.

There was one poor guy in the LMP category who wasn't expecting anybody to turn up from his team for a few hours, so he was looking at doing the first half of the race by himself. As such, he put out a plea for anyone else who was interested in doing a stint for him. In one of my gaps I spoke to him while he was in the pits, and he was happy for me to take over after his next stop. At that point I took over and had a great time in the LMP. It was so much quicker, and it was fun to actually pass cars, rather than be passed by the faster. Being an "experienced" driver in the car for the lesser drivers, I ended up setting the fastest lap for the race on about my 4th tour, which wasn't beaten until about Hour 22, and had a great time. Lots of drivers in the LMP category ended up sat behind watching me to see what lines and stuff I was doing (I ended up taking the entire Porsche Curves section flat out because the power was really down on those cars for some reason. Everyone went mental when I did that because they were all going through in 5th or 4th gears even). It was also a cheeky chance for me to help my team. I may have overtaken my rivals in an inopportune spot that would have lost them a little bit of time, while sat behind my team's car until a long straight and used the extra power of my car to bump-draft them down the entire run to the first chicane! (even if they said it scared them sh**less because they didn't realise it was me doing it). A cheeky bit of subterfuge is always a bit of fun.

The other thing I remember about that race was that track limits were supposedly being looked at, but nobody ever saw them being punished, so it took us about half a stint to work out they could be completely ignored. Tertre Rouge was supposed to be a big brake and down 2 gears, but it became a lift off down to 5th and try not to hit the tyres on the inside you aim at. The Force Chicanes also ended up becoming a kerb-hopping dance through the tyre walls. The best bit though was the double-chicane pit entrance which I just took flat out and gained about 5 seconds on our rivals.


All-in-all, it was an epic adventure and experience which I both learned from and thoroughly enjoyed. I think we came 4th in class by the end, but the result didn't matter (lol of course it did, but we just didn't have the pace of the guys in front so it was a fair result) so we left happy.
 
Yeah, was part of 'Red Dragon Racing' for the Arcis 8hrs of Donnington. Was in a Seat Leon Eurocup. Definitely the weakest of the three drivers haha I don't even seem to have the skin on AC anymore
 

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