Le Mans 24 Hour Endurance (GT5 A-Spec)

[lestatdark]

So, today I decided to race the 24 Hour Le Mans. 

As I'm racing, I'm writing a report on the highlights of the race so far. This is my first time doing so, since I've read others over at GTPlanet and I've always been wanting to do one.

Here's the report from the first 12 hours of the endurance. I'll continue to update it tomorrow, after 9 A.M GMT.

Le Mans 24 Hour report:

Started with a Mazda 787b stock (oil change and racing Intermediate tyres), with another 787b  in the grid (3rd place), a Sauber C9 (5th place), an Audi R8 (2nd Place) and a Courage Judd (1st place). These are my most direct competition, especially the 787b, as it puts a serious dent in my lead if I'm not doing some pretty fast laps.


1st hour - The race started with rain. As per custom with C class cars, I started with Intermediate instead of Rain, because of higher grip while exiting the corners, while Rain tyres tend to over-spin too much if the acceleration is anything above 80%.

Got in the lead after the first chicane in Mulsanne and been holding it afterwards. The first 8 laps were spent doing a lot of spins, because of the jittery acceleration of the 787b and the constant height differences coming out of the corners, thus only managed to build a 22 seconds lead over the A.I 787b.

After lap 9, I managed to stabilize my driving, albeit at a slower pace, and I've been keeping it constant for the last couple of laps, managing to build a sizable 45 seconds lead over the competition until lap 12.

In lap 12 the A.I does their first pit stop, while I'm still able to do an extra lap, pitting only at the end of lap 13. Managed to build a 57 seconds lead with this current strategy. 

At the beginning of lap 15, I hit the 1st hour mark. I'm really hoping that this rain stops, especially before it hits dark. 


2nd hour - Did a very bad mistake on the last pit stop. Instead of keeping the tyres in Intermediate, I switched them to Rain. Not only did I suffer from the previous stated condition, the tyres also were becoming hot and the grip was lowering at an alarming rate. 

By the end of lap 17 (3 laps after pit stop), the back tyres had only half the grip level, while Intermediate tyres , had 3/4 of the grip still available after 13 laps. Since I was spinning out a lot with Rain tyres, I decided to do a pit-stop at the end of that lap, refueling all the way to full and changing back to Intermediates. 

With all these mistakes, the A.I 787b managed to come as close as 4 seconds to me, after exiting the pits in lap 18. Thankfully with the new set of tyres and a string of amazing 3:55 laps, I managed to build a sizable lead of 1:25 at the start of lap 24.

At the end of lap 24, the A.I pitted and I managed to keep a steady pace that allowed me to overtake the 787b at the end of lap 29, thus I now have a -1 lap advantage over the rest of the field, but since I still have to pit at the end of lap 30, that lead will be reduced to, hopefully, 1:40 - 1:50. 

The rain still keeps on coming >_<


3rd Hour - During the last pit stop, I decided to improvise a Front - Rain, Back - Intermediate, tyres setup. It has worked like a charm, since this allows the 787b to fully accelerate through corners with only a minimal chance of slipping, even during heavy rain conditions such as the ones i'm racing now.

Other than that, it has been a pretty uneventful hour, I'm now back at -1 lap advantage over the 2nd to 6th car and -2 laps over the rest. 

Did 43 laps in 3 hours. If this rain keeps up and since the track length of the Circuit La Sarthe 2009 (chicanes) is 13.629 km, i'm looking at a total of more or less 345 laps and 4700 km total. 

Time for a lunch break since it's already 13:19 P.M here and I'm starving >_<.

6th hour - After two completely uneventful hours, the past 45 minutes have been pretty intense.

Starting from the 4:45 hour mark, the sun began to sat. After the 5:20 mark, the track was completely dark, while still raining heavily. It strikes me as odd, the fact that the rain is continuously dropping for 6 hours. Granted, the intensity has been pretty varied, but I would love to be able to race with Softs and on a dry track >_<.

Managed to do my best lap, so far, at lap 85, at the 5:50 hour mark. 3:49.206 was the time, pretty darn amazing given the fact that it's completely pitch dark in most parts of the track (driving through the Mulsanne or the straight before Indianapolis, while completely dark and your windshield totally covered with water drops, is the ultimate racing experience). So far, my current lead is -4 laps.


9th hour - Again, an uneventful 7th hour, were I managed to gain another lap advantage over the 2nd place, making it -5 laps advantage. 

The turn point in the race, so far, came at the 7:15 mark. The rain started to die down and, after 10 minutes, it dissipated completely. Since I got caught with Front - Rain, Back - Intermediate tyres from the start of the first dry lap, needless to say that I was spinning out in almost every corner that I took over 100 km/h.

Since the A.I 787b managed to enter the pits before the lap started, he managed to come out with dry tyres, and managed to gain a lap over me. 

After pitting and changing my tyres to racing soft, an entire new race began. Even pulling amazing laps in the range of 3:23 - 3:27 only gives me 2 to 3 seconds over the A.I 787b. I managed to reclaim the -5 laps advantage, I'm trying to sustain it, as it is a good leverage over the rest of the pack.

My current fast lap is 3:22.817, a whooping 26 seconds faster than when it was raining. If this keeps up, I may have to recalculate my total laps and km estimative. 


12th hour - After a couple of more uneventful hours, where the only relevant thing I did was to improve the lead to -6 laps and get a new best lap 3:19.627, I finally hit the halfway point of the race. 

This has been quite an experience, though not as challenging as I hoped. Had the race started without rain, and given how difficult is to gain advantage over the A.I 787b, it would have been more challenging and had less boring hours. 

At the 12 hour mark I had 182,5 laps completed, for a grand total of 2480 km raced. If the dry conditions are maintained for the rest of the race, I will probably get 370 laps and over 5000 km. 

Here's all my progress so far: 

Since it's already 2 P.M here, i'm going to bed and I'll continue tomorrow. 


15th hour - These last hours have been quite eventful. 

First, starting from the 12:40 hour mark to the 13:20 hour mark, the sun began to rise. I've got to say, it's one of the best transitions I've ever seen in any video game. Seeing the sun appear over the hills of the Dunlop Corner is a sight I won't soon forget. The transition is pretty smooth, just like you would expect in a real life situation, kudos to PD for making such an amazing lighting engine experience. 

After the day began, I started pulling faster and faster laps. No longer had I to take caution over the Indianapolis, Arnage and Porsche corners, since most of them were blind corners during the night. 

Managed to do a fast lap of 3:12.878, which is almost 10 seconds faster than my first fast lap over dry conditions. With this fast lap, and a string of 3:15 - 3:22 laps over the past 30 laps, I managed to increase the lead over the 2nd place car to -9 laps advantage. 

Even though things are looking up, the car has shown some signs of degradation. It's no longer stable during the Mulsanne chicanes and the suspension seems to be all over the place, instead of the nice, smooth one from before. I may have to do a Body Rigidity overhaul once this race is over. 


18th hour - With a lunch break in the middle and a very annoying GF chattering non-stop over at MSN, making me pause the race constantly, I finally reached the 18th hour mark >_<.

These were some pretty uneventful hours as well, except for the fact that now, even the engine is starting to suffer some degradation. I can barely reach 340 km/h on the Mulsanne, and it tops at 345 when i'm drafting behind anyone. When the race started, I could easily reach 360 km/h and draft to 375 km/h. Also, the acceleration has suffered a lot. 

This race is causing some serious damage to my car. I will have to spend 1M Cr to get it back to shape. The 831K Cr reward will do me no good >_<.


21st hour - Now, not only is my car suffering from the race, my wrist is killing me too. Thankfully, it's just more three hours to go. 

The A.I seems to have given up. In the last hours, I've increased the lead to -13 laps, thanks to 26 consecutive 3:20 - 3:23 laps (excluding pit entering and pit exiting laps). Also, it seems that the sides of my 787b are gaining a new colour from all the bumps in the race. I have half the car painted in a black tone xD.

335 laps completed in 21 hours. Time for a break and then back to it in half an hour.


23rd hour - At last, I've entered the last hour of the race. The sound of the final 60 minutes countdown sounded like music to my ears xD.



Forgot to add in the last update, my current best lap is 3:11.160. It was done on lap 238 and I haven't managed to come close to that lap again. Current lead is -15 laps.

Well, here it goes, the last stretch!.

Finish!!!!!

I had written quite a nice summary of my experience, but of course I had forgotten that frigging edit sucks if you click outside the box >_>.

After 24 hours, 386 laps and 5260 Km raced in the span of two days, I finally reached the end of the fabled Le Mans 24 Hours endurance. 

I'm physically exhausted, my wrist hurts like hell and my arms feel like they're going to collapse at any time. But screw it all, it was totally worth it.

Even though it wasn't as challenging as I thought it would be, mainly due to my own fault of using the 787b, it was still a pretty amazing, fun and unique race, that tested all my driving skills while driving in very different conditions during the  race. 

Here are some pics of the final moments of the race


The state in which my car was left at the end XD. Notice the new "paint" it has on the sides and how it's totally fucked up xD.


The Cr reward isn't all that great. I'm going to have a -234K Cr  deficit because of the 1M needed for the total overhaul of the 787b  >_>


4.593.700 exp FTW!!!! xD. Now I just need 18M more exp to get to level 40..... Why PD, why??? 


At least the car reward is pretty amazing. One of the best LMPs of the game A shame that it's a standard though.


At least it doesn't look so bad, now does it?

Well that's it folks. I really want to thank all of you that supported me in this endurance and I hope I have done a good enough job to provide you with accurate descriptions of what was my experience in one of the most extenuating races that exists

I will probably be doing a similar report when I finally hit level 40 and race the Nurburgring 24H. I hope to see you all then