Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-38105396-20190607105116/@comment-26388545-20190619163129

Reymar C. wrote: question regarding endurance races (not necessarily for endless runs) - is there no benefit to driving slow enough near the start of an endurance race so that your timer never hits the 90s limit (by not overtaking a car when you still have more than 80s) ?

does doing so give the faster cars time to "space out" making it harder to keep your timer up later in the race (before the perpetual point) ? Yes and no... mostly no but sometimes yes... I'll explain.

For endless racing there is little benefit to that. On some tracks that will make it so you never see the perpetual point. On others it will delay it. For the most part you want to get to the perpetual point as fast as possible.

I used to use that technique at Indy Speedway in the P1 GTR and Nissan Godzilla. I would drive backwards for a bit off the start for 2 reasons:
 * 1) Waste some time to delay the absolute carnage that was coming
 * 2) Gain distance when I drive forward again

So rather than hitting the perpetual point at 25 km, I would hit it around 50 km. Just look at that for a moment... ONE slow lap doubled the distance in getting to the perpetual point there. (I'll put 2 links at the bottom so you see what I did at the begining)

The problem here is how the perpetual point is reached. You need CONSISTENTLY fast laps. So if you have 3 fast laps and 1 slightly slower one, the point just got pushed back. 1 REALLY bad lap and the point will be be out of reach on many tracks.

When I first started Porsche Short track racing, I was lucky to hit the perpetual point by 25 km (15.5 miles). By that point my timer was very low. Now I hit the point much earlier and my timer doesn't go below 65. That's just from learning the track, where the bots wil drive, where I need to drive to avoid them and keeping up momentum. In the video below I hit the point at 16 km (10 miles) with my timer at 77.

Indy Speedway is the exception as it was absolute madness at times. We are talking packs of 30+ cars entering a corner. You must get by them fast AND you can't take on any damage. Man I loved those days in the P1 GTR!!

For all other tracks the post perpetual point traffic is quite manageable. It's actually easier AFTER the perpetual point than it is right before it. Right  before that point the bots are the hardest AND the most spaced apart.  After  that point they are just as hard but they are tightly spaced. On Porsche Short I can then destroy my car and still have no worries at all in keeping my timer full.