Daytona 2.4 hour endurance guide

Hopefully this is the right place to post.

Data and pit tips for the 2.4 hours at Daytona (Using the BMW):
Keep in mind your results can vary wildly depending on how you drive. Most of the calculations are done with very aggressive driving, to be safe with math. You should be safe for the entire race even if you mindlessly follow the pit schedule and car setup I lay out.

Hybrid system:
I believe that I have fixed this section to be accurate, but I would recommend you read some of the comments below by Nico because there he mentions some important things to keep in mind that I won't cover here, and watch the video I link below and pay attention to it, because this hybrid bit is just so complicated I can barely gloss over it here.
Somewhat contradictorily, buckle up, because this is the biggest section.

Your MGU/Battery (Electric Motor) can last ~4/5 laps at 100% discharge.
You have regenerating braking, and gain about 5% of battery in each braking zone.
Your battery isn't the main issue, however, because that is going to be your
VE (Energy Budget) The Hypercars here have a lot of fuel capacity, but you can't use it all because race organizers. You have a thing called Virtual Energy that is a make-believe balance of the electric battery power and the engine power that you use while racing, and it determines how long you are able to go out on a single stint- even if you have enough fuel or battery to go longer. Basically, you cant use more vehicle power than you're allowed to unless you want a very large penalty. You can do so if needed, however. So treat it like a fuel tank.

Your battery is still an issue however. This hybrid hypercar class is starting to feel like 5 Nights at Freddy's meets endurance racing. Your car has regenerative braking as previously mentioned, but only when you are below 100% battery capacity. Once you reach 100% capacity, you no longer need regenerative braking, therefore your car doesnt use it, so you end up needing to brake a lot longer. So, always use your battery. For a set-and-forget method, usually go for 100% usage the first 2 laps out of a pit, and then set it to 50% for the rest of the ride. Occasionally you may have to go to 0% for a lap or two to recharge.
You can maximize battery usage for the least amount of fuel usage. The way I have this guide set up however, gives you generous fuel, so you should focus on burning it as much as you can, while using your battery for regenerative braking. Even if you fully deplete your battery, it doesnt matter. Better that, than fully.. plete your battery.
So yeah, I have mapped my TCS, ABS, Brake Bias, and MGU/Battery rates to my steering wheel on different encoders. make sure to do that. I have 3 setups, 0%, 50%, and 100%. You can set up any number in between, though.
Your battery doesn't recharge when refueling in the pits, however VE will recharge in the pits.
Yep, basically three different fuel tanks that behave independently from one another. It's fun.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE ALTHOUGH THIS ENTIRE SECTION IS IMPORTANT:
Your hypercar starts with electric power ONLY! in the pits, you only need to turn your ignition on. Then press the gas pedal, and you'll start going. This does mean if you pit at 0% battery, you are done. You're retiring from the race. No more go fast. Don't pit at 0% battery, but I also really want to see someone pit at 0% battery and laugh at them. But don't do it!!
The video below also mentions that if you lose battery, you may lose an AWD system. All of the cars in R3E are entirely RWD in the Hypercar class, so this is not a worry.

VE loses a smidge under 50% capacity every 10 laps with aggressive driving (It seems VE capacity varies for different cars, but once again I'm using the BMW). if you use 50% battery discharge an entire lap, you will get the same lap times as swapping between discharge rates the entire lap and you wont use any more VE. This is because your hybrid system isnt a supplement- its a replacement. It's purely to help engine effeciency so it burns less fuel, so try to maximize your battery usage. You're only hurting yourself by not using it. However, later on I cover pit schedules and car setups, and I've done calculations to ensure that you can do a full stint without any battery usage. If you choose to adapt the schedule, you must do your own testing and research because I have no idea how it works and cant tell you with an iota of confidence that any of what I say will scale up or down. I just saw the numbers and wrote them down.

Here would be a section on how different battery usages influence VE depletion, but it turns out that doesn't actually happen. I tested it, and can confirm this! 100% battery usage uses the same VE as 0% usage.

VE recharges while you fill up gas at pit stops. Filling up with 60L gives you 100% VE recharge IF you set your car setup to start with 60L of fuel. More on that later.
You can easily overtake 2-3 cars on the straights if youre in a draft.
There is a strategy to prolong VE, and I'll link a video explaining that and VE overall below. He talks about hypermiling at 7:40 into the video.
It isn't really neccesary to hypermile to make it your full stint out of the pits if you follow my pit and car setup guide, but only just. You'll have about 5% VE left, although it is 5% consistently- it's not a guess. It's a calculated risk, but a sound one.

And we're done! With the one section, that is.

Tires:
You have the choice of Soft, Medium, or Hard tires for once! The data recorded will be with softs here, which i believe are the best choice.
At first your tires wont wear much as they are cold, but they do heat up and therefore wear faster if you drive hard. if you drive kindly, the fronts wear 1.5% every 2 laps, and the rears wear 2% every 5 laps. when you drive hard enough to heat them up (which should almost always be the case, also for once), they equally lose 10% every 10 laps. I know this because i use a plugin called ReHud that monitors tire wear.
They seem very manageable throughout their life, and wear isn't a concern if you follow the pit schedule i'll talk about before too long.
Your rears heat faster and cool slower than your fronts, something to keep in mind.

Fuel:
You use 2.40L every lap almost exactly overall, +/- .05L each lap.
60L will get you 20 laps comfortably, a 4 lap margin.
The entire race demands about 216-218L of fuel, or ~91 laps.
It's pointless to fill up more than 60L, as you'll mandatorily pit 5 times in the race, but more fuel info about that in the pit strategy section.

Damage:
Everything apart from suspension and engine damage seems very manageable. With maximum aero damage, I only lose 1 second each lap, and the cars are very strong. You can bump fairly roughly and have no damage, but because you go so fast in the track it is pretty necessary to be durable as collisions happen at higher speeds. Don't think the race is over because you hit a tire wall at 80kmh- its not even a scratch to the car.

Pit Strategy:
Binding buttons to navigate the pit menu while you're still racing here is a must, so if you dont have any prior experience texting while driving, get used to it.
You must pit 5 times during the race due to VE limitations, but the last pit will be for the final stint to gain positions and therefore be different from the rest of the stops- you'll only race 11 or so laps after the last pit.

I would start with 60L of fuel (very important, do set up your car prior to racing and set 60L fuel), and turn in to pit on every 20th lap. This gives you a 4 lap margin if you miss your pit.
The first 4 pit stops should be to fill up TO 60L of fuel (not WITH 60L, i'll explain in a minute) (this also should always give you 100% VE but only if you set your car up to start with 60L of fuel. If you don't, it gives 72% VE. dunno why, thats just the way it is. 54L is the lowest you can go and still get 100% VE, i think it might be tied to how much fuel you burn a lap and how much is in your tank, some magic bit like that) and get new tires at every other pit. Keep in mind your battery doesn't recharge in pits, only your VE does. So, 2 of the first 4 stops should be for tires. The final pit might be for 40L of fuel and new tires. This should plan for ~10L of safety to the finish.
YMMV, this is just a pit schedule catering to my personal preferences, adjust as needed, etc etc. The math mostly transfers but does depend on how hard you in particular push the car. I tried to push as hard as I could so you'll always be safe with this math.
My tip is to set a button to bring up your pit menu in game, and create 3 presets. One for fuel + tires, one for fuel, and one for less fuel + tires.

Back to the filling up TO 60L bit, when you pit, you'll have some excess fuel. If you leave the 60L fill-up as what you want, you'll end up with 70L of fuel, because R3E can only add a number of fuel to what you have. So while you race, on your pit-in lap, see how much fuel you have. You should have around 10L, +/- 2L. Depending on what amount you have remaining, you will have to edit your pit request for fuel in your pit menu. This can also be done inside the pit lane as well as on the track. Some options may be green, this means they are selected and will happen. If they are white, they are not selected, and will not happen. When they are green, you can't edit the selection, but when they are white, you are able to. I have my pit menu navigation bound to arrow keys, my selection key bound to enter, and my pit menu up/down key bound to G. To change your fuel requested amount, simply press your pit menu key, go down to your fuel/VE tab, and press enter. this will turn it from green to white. then you can use the left/right arrow keys to increase or decrease the fuel you want. With some quick math, try to aim for 60L. Keep an eye on the VE that your fuel amount will add too. Usually you'll pit with close to 10% VE and 10L of fuel, so 54L will get you filled up most of the time. Then press enter again to turn it green and lock in the selection.
Your pit schedule will look like this:

Run 20 laps, pit for 60L fuel
Run 20 laps, pit for 60L fuel + tires
Run 20 laps, pit for 60L fuel
Run 20 laps, pit for 40L fuel + tires.
Run 11 laps.
Finish!

On the last pit, if you dont replace your tires, they should hit ~45% wear by the end of the race. On tires that worn, I find my lap times slip 7-10 seconds, and a pit usually takes 80 seconds to slow down, do pit maintenance, and exit. So you should be saving more time swapping tires than that which you save driving on worn tires, as well as giving you better confidence and stability while racing. So, for me, its worth the tire swap. Maybe you can make it work without it. Your tires should wear to 60% every time you replace them, which will be during balanced driving, so the excessive wear shouldnt matter too much.

Also install ReHud, it gives you a fuel tracker, tire temp and pressure and brake monitor, and a completed lap counter which will be pretty valuable here. Also, Crew Chief will make things easier with voice commands and voice-provided car info like driver reputations, etc.

Car Setup:
This really depends on you, but going over kerbs really upsets these hypercars. I soften the suspension and swaybars all around, particularly on the fast bump, to run smoother and risk spinning out less. Be very aware for other people spinning out at the Bus Stop and Turn 1, they are very slippery areas. Aero stays the same, but I do modify the fuel to start with 60L. I shift my braking bias forward to 52.5%, turn migration up to 5%, and turn my brake pressure down to 90%. the wheels lock up at 40% pressure stock which doesnt allow much in the way of precision. Keep in mind in the BMW 3rd to 2nd is a very risky shift for whatever reason, and you should be under 20% braking with the aforementioned settings when doing so, as well as not turning whatsoever.

Condition after 10 laps:
Expect front tires to be at 90% health, rears to be at 91%. Tires might be ~15 degrees C warmer, with your rears 10 degrees warmer than the fronts. If you used a lot of hybrid, expect VE to be at 50% and your battery to be around 30-40%. If you used less of it, it might be closer to 55% VE and 70-80% battery.
Fuel should be 25.00L lighter.

Keep an eye out for:
Wreckers zooming at 300+ kmh into Turn 6 from the start line (this is an instant DQ as well, so be careful not to do it if you brake too late)
Spins and loss of control in Turn 1 and at the Bus Stop
As a reminder, absolutely never spin, not even once. One spin loses 10 seconds if you can merge immediately back onto the track, and that right there can easily determine whether you will win or lose. This also applies to everyone, not just you.

Resources:

IRL Daytona video:

VE Explanation video:

R3E Daytona Video:

 

Nice idea to put together a guide like this but im afraid for anybody looking to optmise their race i wouldnt really recommend following it. If youre just looking to get through the race it might be fine but otherwise i think there are some curious choices as well as some wrong information and assumptions. The biggest one being that being low on VE will actually not slow you down, the other one im not sure im reading right but just to be clear if you take both fuel and tires at the same pitstop those actions will not be performed in parallel. Instead you will sit there e.g. 20s for the fuel and another 30s for the tires. Hence if your tire wear numbers are accurate i definitely wouldnt change tires at every stop.

Other than that i cant really comment on the details regarding strategy since i havent done any testing but i might add some thoughts mid week if i find myself feeling like playing around a bit

Edit: the guide looks a lot better now

 

I see, I'm on it to edit the post about VE.

I have edited the post on VE, it should now be entirely truthful. I also modified the pit schedule, since VE limitations forced a 5th pit towards the end.

 

Still gonna answer your question that you now edited out

Id explain virtual energy as the total energy (total energy being the energy used by the internal combustion engine plus the energy used by the electric engine) you are allowed to use before having to come in for a pitstop and putting in new fuel/energy. How much actual energy you have available for 100%VE is part of the BoP mechanism (at daytona for example the cadillac only gets 896MJ while the aston gets 913MJ). Whether the hypercar BoP in raceroom also uses different amounts of energy for different cars i dont know.

For some raceroom specific experiments (mostly by me ) you could also read through this thread https://forum.kw-studios.com/index.php?threads/about-virtual-energy.20749/ . That was for a 45 minute race at road america back when the hypercars came out in raceroom but perhaps some of it is still useful for you

 

That's really interesting and I did not know about different cars having different VE capacities. I'll recommend this comment in the post.

 

i mildly rewrote the entire post's math and hybrid system to be.. more concise, at least, and cleaner to read, while adding some info. i figured out some errors and tested more extensively over about an hour of racing. i did some laps varying how hard i drove and testing the hybrid system and it all checks out. i now believe with a high degree of confidence (but not completely certain) that this is now very accurate and it has been repeatable so far. I will still test pretty much every day until the 30th and continue to update with any new things i discover.

 

Overall definitely sounds a lot better now

The only thing id still change solely based on what you wrote would be that taking tires at the final stop isnt necessary. If you lose 0.7-1.0s per lap on the old tires but the last stint is only 11 laps then thats roughly a 10s loss while changing tires is closer to 30s.

(And afaik the note about awd doesnt apply to any of the cars in raceroom since theyre all lmdh and thus are rwd only per regulation)

 

This is looking good and its held up so far. Only 4 days left, today ill do a full 2.4 hour practice race and see how it works.

 

Well thats what i call dedication

I wont take part in the race but inspired by your post am in the middle of my own testing right now and im enjoying playing around with the options more than expected so thanks for the inspiration i guess
Regarding fuel/VE im mostly done now, next ill have a short look at tires and then report my personal findings (for the lambo hypercar) later today

Edit: later today is looking unlikely, tires are a more difficult choice than expected

 

Everything works as it should! Calculations are accurate throughout the race and it went well. I discovered that if you get a moderate amount of vehicle damage, it disables your battery, though it keeps the battery charge at 99%, not 100%, so you retain regenerative braking. but, if you made a pit schedule that really cuts it close and depends on the hybrid system, that could be a problem.

 

Turns out i messed up some number somewhere yesterday which led me to consider strategies that actually arent relevant . Given i now know that id have a very clear favorite if i were to drive.

I would drive my normal pace without any attempts to save fuel (other than the occasional lift and coast when i cant pass a gt3 before a corner anyways) which results in a 3 stop strategy (stopping on laps 22, 45 and 68).
Id run soft tires the whole race and change them only once during the second stop.
Id start with 57 litres of fuel and at the first and second stop refuel at least 58 litres and enough to get to 100VE (which could be more than the 58l, that seems to be dynamic in some way). On the final stop id refuel at least 53 litres and enough to get to 92VE.

As said this was tested with the lamborghini and it assumes fuel use of 2.5 litres per lap and VE use of 4.3VE per lap. With those numbers it works out fine but there is no safety margin for VE on the 23 lap stints so dont miss your pitstop and dont use any more energy than those 4.3VE per lap, otherwise youre in for a rather unpleasant experience . If you find you normally use more fuel just add a bit more at the start and the stops, if you normally use 4.4-4.5VE per lap id use lift and coast to get that down to 4.3 and stick with the 3 stop, going for a fourth stop should be slower.

But to @D Stew or anyone reading, if youre more comfortable with the 4 stop strategy with more tire changes described in the guide thats fine as well, its certainly the more relaxing version. Also while on paper it should be slower that can quickly change if you spin a couple times on old tires or miss a pitstop and run out of VE

 

Do keep in mind, if you dont yet know, the BoPs have been decided and the lamborghini gets the worst BoP. It gets 7kg of weight, while the BMW remains the same. The porsche gets 5kg. Your plan seems solid, but if you didnt factor in BoP, you could try running a custom race with BoPs and see if your fuel usage is meaningfully different. Oh, but then again I think you weren't going to race? But to any future readers, at least.

You're right about VE being dynamic, i think its tied to how much fuel you use every lap, or how much fuel you start with, or both.

 

Yeah BoP isnt factored in yet but id be surprised if a couple kg have a big enough impact to necessitate major adjustments or even changing strategy

 

i tried your lamborghini strategy, and it is impossible in the BMW. the lamborghini is able to go two laps longer, and ill have to stick with 4 stops. 3 stops is possible, but its a huge ask of the bmw, as it can only do 21 laps maximum at a time.

 

Didnt really expect that but good to know. If youre not in top split i wouldnt really expect the race to be longer than 88 laps so youd theoretically only need four 22 lap stints in which case lift and coast (if practiced beforehand) could still be faster than an extra stop but not by a lot so you might as well push and go for the 4 stop strategy (also to be prepared in case you have a really fast guy in your split who just hasnt done enough races yet to have an accurate rating)

 

Out of curiosity i now also did a few laps in the bmw and actually did not notice any difference in VE use compared to the lambo over a 10 lap stint. Fuel usage is actually even 0.1 liter less per lap than in the lambo. I suppose its gotta be down to car setup then

 

youve gotta be right then. i left everything stock lol, just started doing setups today. im trying low drag.

 

leaving this game because its a disgrace. insult to the people who spent $60+ on this game, practiced for weeks, all with the promise of this race. we didnt get it. they banned multiple people in the youtube chat and discord channels because they cant take criticism when their servers light on fire. put almost 700 hours into this game, and i practiced over 5 hours every day for over a week for this race. i had surgery the day before yesterday. i was excited to race this today, but instead of the 700 people who signed up, only 36 were able to. and in a community server. and first come, first serve. and nobody who put effort in got recognized in a broadcast. instead we got fucking Orgun Donor and Monty Verstappen. huge disgrace. left an according review on steam, and im moving on. i hope the devs here get jobs they enjoy at other places and better communities there, because the peak of players was years ago, and its dwindling still now. even if you spend money and practice, you get no guarantee of racing, and lots and lots of people are fucking pissed. good job guys. fucking pissed.

 

"banned multiple people in the youtube chat and discord channels because they cant take criticism"
Well, criticism is fine, but wehat people on the internet do isn't criticizing but going bonkers and rightfully so they got timeouted or banned.
"but instead of the 700 people who signed up, only 36 were able to"
Also not true, every server had a few people (in split 2 only 7), so definitly not just 36, but it was aweful, yes.
"the peak of players was years ago" also not true. the peak of players was just reached last month, before that it was during corona free to play. see steam charts, open visable.

Anyway, yes, you are frustrated and rightfully so, and many others as well, and i do also believe many will leave the game again, but at least try to stick to some facts.

 

It always depends on the way the criticism is delivered.
And hey, it's your own fault for investing so much time in a game. Enjoy your life and time in real life more.

Kind regards

And yes, the servers need to be improved, I agree with you.