My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Monday January 10, 2000

How I Avoid Finding Enduros Boring

Someone expressed the opinion that Enduros are boring, and said that they could not endure, ahem, racing them.

This led me to wondering what I do to avoid being bored by them, and I did come to some conclusions. Perhaps these will help you find them more interesting. But on the other hand, perhaps your life be better off if you continue to find them boring.

Perhaps I find them interesting just because I'm a boring person in general. That's a definite possibility.

Anyway I must say, most of the new GT2 Enduros are currently a little boring. The GT2 cast-of-characters is not well enough defined for me yet to be able to apply the same analysis to them that I was able to in GT1. In GT1, the Grand Valley 300 became my way of finally analyzing a car, and I ran it 49 times. See summarized results here. Detailed results are in the following thread.

The field was fairly consistent. The best AI car would be the NSX-R LM GT2, which could manage about 1-41:50, while the Impreza would only do about 1-43, almost 1-44. That was the slowest AI leader I ever saw. The other major cars were in between, mostly doing 1-42's. The cars which were slower than the Impreza I generally considered "filler". "Moving chicanes", perhaps. GT2 fields appear to be more varied than this.

So I had a reasonable idea of what it took to win the Grand Valley 300--namely, a sub 1-42 time. 60 laps for the race, implied lap times must average below 1:42, with pit stop time included, meaning times consistently below 1-41 were actually needed.

When I was racing I very fast car, I was not really racing the field at all, but viewed the race as sort of one very long time trial.

So, anyway, what kept it interesting?

Basically, I would try to do each lap as fast as I could, which was made tricky by the tire wear. At the start, or after a pit-stop, tires were cold, and the car could not be pushed. The next couple of laps should be the fastest, and after that times would generally drop naturally, and then, when trying to push the tire wear to avoid extra stops, conscious care was sometimes needed to avoid losing control and thereby losing lots of time. In general, too, lap times went up when I got towards the end of the race, as I got tired.

So, watching my lap times was interesting--I had an idea of fast and slow times for a particular car, and liked seeing myself do well. I would have an idea of what lap times I needed to achieve my goal for the race, which often went beyond winning. Two things make this even more interesting in GT2, actually. First, the best lap is not preserved between races, so you actually see a reasonable goal time all the time, since what is shown is your own best lap for this race. Secondly, the split times help you realize when you are on your way to a new record, and help confirm what sections you may have done better or worse than before. (In fact, I used to observe "split times" in the GT1 GV300, too. For what it's worth, I'd usually note the time after the second hairpin, just before the girder bridge, and just before entering the final esses.)

Sticking to, or appropriately modifying, my pit strategy occupied my mind, too. Typically, I'd do some tests to determine how long the car could last on its tires, and adjust that number up or down so that shifts of even lengths could be made. 60 laps is nice, it divides evenly by many numbers. Everything up to five stops (that is, every 10 laps) could be done evenly. With cars where I knew I had reduced the shift length to make it even, I could employ strategy. Basically, I wanted to avoid passing the same cars twice whenever possible, since passing cars usually cost time. So, if I were coming up behind some cars and a scheduled pitstop was a lap or two away, I could pit early and make the laps up on some other shift. Or, if I had just passed some cars and a stop was due, staying out another lap or two might allow me to get far enough ahead that they would not pass me when I stopped. But I had to be careful to remember my tires were wearing, so I could not push it, but had to be careful to go fast enough to open my lead.

When passing cars, by-the-way, I used to try and make a game of trying to do it as elegantly as possible, with no contact. Since I usually had much better acceleration than them, the easiest way was to pass them accelerating out of a corner. The straight after the second hairpin was a favourite. The AI cars never seemed to get the hang of the final hairpin esses--you need to take the first one tight to allow a faster exit from the second--so often I would end up with a double pass there, as an AI car I had recently passed might temporarily pass me going in, while I'd pass them again at the exit. Sometimes there'd even be no contact there.

I always used soft tires, by-the-way, and pitted just about as soon as they turned yellow. For most cars that would give shifts of 10 to 12 laps, but some were better and some were worse.

My Gran Turismo screen is beside our other TV screen, and sometimes I'd half-watch a program at the same time as doing an Enduro. It was often "Law and Order", actually. But, actually, I think my times were slightly better when I was not.

Synthesizing all this, I seem to be saying that to avoid finding Enduros boring you must view them as races against yourself and not against the AI cars.

Once I got really familiar with the cars I could do both by picking cars which I knew I should be able to drive to a very close win. Those can make exciting races, although it's strange how just half-a-second a lap speed advantage (i.e. about 30 seconds lead at the end) can translate into reasonable domination of the race if you don't make major mistakes. With that margin, for instance, by about your second pit stop you usually should be able to keep the lead.

TVR [R]Cerbera LM             1-42:08.6   (2nd)
Dodge N.A. Concept Car        1-34:05.4
TVR [R]Cerbera LM             1-38.03.8
Subaru [R]Impreza RLY Edition 1-40:24.9
Mitsubishi [R]Eclipse GT      1-46:31.1  (5th +236.260)
Mitsubishi [R]FTO LM          1-39:37.3
Nissan [R]S14 Silvia LM       1-39.05.0
Acura [R]NSX-R LM GT2         1-44:10.6 (5th +114.659)
Mazda [R]RX7 LM Ed            1-38:29.4
Mitsubishi [R]GTO LM Ed       1-41:54.6
Nissan [R]GT-R LM             1-40:30.4
Toyota [R]CASTROL SUPRA GT    1-39:20.4
TVR [R]Cerbera (not LM)       1-40:03.9
Toyota [R]Chaser LM           1-44:10.5  (4th +120.036)
Nissan [R]R32SkylineGT-R'89   1-39:54.7
Mazda [R]RX-7 A spec LM       1-40:07.3
Dodge [R]Viper GTS-R          1-42:03.7  (1st barely)
Honda [R]del Sol LM Edition   1-40:01.5
Toyota [R]SUPRA RZ            1-39:45.1  (prize car, not purchased)
Dodge [R]VIPER GTS            1-38:59.5
Mitsubishi [R]GTO'95 MR       1-36:13.9
Mitsubishi [R]GTO'95 MR       1-35:46.3
Mitsubishi [R]GTO'95 MR       1-35:15.6
Mitsubishi GTO'95 MR          1-42:21.3 (3rd, +26.609; purposely threw 2nd)
Dodge N.A. Concept Car        1-30:42.7
Nissan [R]S14 Silvia LM       1-39.31.6
TVR [R]Cerbera (not LM)       1-37:55.1
Dodge N.A. Concept Car        1-31:28.0
Acura [R]NSX-R LM GT2         1-40:26.1
Subaru [R]Impreza'94 Wgn WRX  1-36:47.5
Subaru [R]Impreza RLY Edition 1-36:00.2
Nissan [R]GT-R LM             1-37:25.6
Toyota [R]CASTROL SUPRA GT    1-37:58.1
Mitsubishi [R]GTO LM Ed       1-39:07.1
Mazda [R]RX7 LM Edition       1-35:58.3
Mazda [R]FC RX7 GT-X          1-40:10.3
TVR [R]Griffith 500           1-35:34.0
TVR [R]Griffith 4.0           1-35:46.0
Chevrolet [R]Corvette'96      1-40:02.6
Toyota [R]Celica GT-Four      1-39:54.1
Toyota [R]Chaser LM           1-41:21.9
Mitsubishi [R]Eclipse GT      1-41:19.9
Toyota [R]MA70 Supra          1-41:01.6
Mitsubishi GTO'95MR           1-41:10.9   (tuned, no race-modification)
Nissan [R]S14 Silvia LM       1-37:07.8
Nissan [R]S14 Silvia LM       1-37:40.8
Dodge [R]Viper GTS-R          1-39:59.7
Dodge N.A. Concept Car        1-29:51.8
TVR [R]Cerbera LM             1-33:48.2