Road america in the Porsche 962C. Qualified in 1:56, so took the P6 inline with the rest of the pack. P1 was 1:54. Got to P1 after 2 laps. I was running Softs so pitted for M at lap 7ish. Returned about 20s behind. But it was me doing th erubberbanding at this point ant caught back upto them about 2 or 3 laps later. The stayed 2s on my tail. They pitted lap 12ish and then i stayed 40s ahead of them. I then pitted for M on lap 14 and got out about 15s ahead of them, by they quickly caught me up to within 2s. But by lap 18 they had fallen to about 6s behind. I was fairly consistantly lapping 1:51 laps. Back markers werent to bad - they would nudge me i wold nuged them. (although i did rewind the odd 0.5s penalty they i thought was egregious).
Tried playing the Silverstone race today. Sound from the game completely went during lap 5 and then the game closed itself on lap 21 of 24…
Playing on the Series X, I don’t know if the game has gotten worse with newer updates or the endurance races are making the flaws more apparent.
I don’t have any motivation in playing any more until there’s an update that addresses those issues.
This is the worst state I’ve seen the game in since launch.
I’m on series X and haven’t had an issue with sound at all (and I’ve done the endurance races quite a few times). Game crashes regularly after finishing events though (since update 8.1 I think), so they do keep managing to add bugs.
I play Series S. No crashes ever. And so far in these endurance races, my car audio is present (audible), unlike in the Update 8 Tours.
With regard to the Road America race… I drove the RX-7. Since there was no way to know how long the locked default tires would last (without testing, which I didn’t want to do), I went with a safe EDIT: 10/10 lap setup.
Tires lasted 13 laps on the first stint, and most of the racing action happened in that stint. I managed to reach 1st just around lap 12, and held 1st easily after the stop. In the final 2 laps, the 2nd place AI car was making serious time gains on me. The AI closed down a 10 second lead I had to about 1 second (which I admittedly helped with, going wide on turn 9).
Overall, the race worked. I still missed sorely not having a “race engineer” who could give me tire life estimate for strategy planning. The AI didn’t have any off-course behavior that I saw. Only racing incident type contact.
I seriously do think that “endurance” type racing in FM would do better to be adjustable by the player. Let me choose the race length scaling (10, 20, 30, 40 laps) and then the game can show me tire wear estimates, same as with fuel.
That way, if I’ve only got time for a 10 lap play, I can enjoy the event that way.
Over 6 Hours of Clean Racing Needed to Return from Safety Rating A to S?
During a Le Mans endurance race, a ghosted car rejoined from the right side into the braking zone of the first chicane and unghosted. The car in front of me hit it, and since I was heavily braking, I couldn’t avoid contact and hit the car in front of me. As a result, I received a 4-second penalty for “Avoidable Contact” and my safety rating dropped from S to A.
Over the next few days, I spent 6 more hours in endurance races without receiving any penalties, but my safety rating remains at A. It seems the safety rating system is based on the number of races rather than the time spent racing. I believe this approach is flawed. While it’s not a major issue for me, as I prioritize clean racing over maintaining an S rating, it’s still worth noting.
They have said before it’s averaged over 20 races I think so, yes, I suspect it is correct that it doesn’t take into account the length of race.
Xbox Series X is incapable of running Endurance races as the RAM is too crap. 5 laps max before cars out of control and have to REFRESH same as the rest of FM 23 Xbox is junk like PS5 for GT7 same problems same junk. Lack of RAM/VRAM
That’s generally what people have been asking for. No one asked for random temporary events which will be removed after a month. The ideal would be to just have a range of permanent events (championships) with the ability to have the races as short, medium, long or extra long.
Are you talking about multiplayer issues? I assume you are, because I have zero issues with career endurance racing on my Xbox Series X.
If you are talking about career races, then it might be some other issue for you.
No issues with endurance races here either, AI aside, apart from the odd crash back to the dashboard all seems ok on my XSX.
Did the proto race at Road America with the Toyota, 997 PI. I pressed “skip practice” by mistake, so I just used the first lap as a test, restarting a few times before I got the amount of aero I was okay with.
On the grid, I started 12th, for no reason 6th just braked in the straight, making a nice 3-car pile up literally less than 10 seconds after start. I had to push against the car next to me to avoid the collision. And since I restarted a few time, I can tell you that happened more three times.
I was 3rd by turn 3, then took a couple of laps to get to first, but I did. It was a Porsche 962 in 2nd, and it pushed hard behind me, until we started to hit traffic. I managed to map a 15s gap just from traffic.
Pitted at the end of lap 10. Second pitted right behind, exited 2nd, but the guy in front pitted on the next turn. Easy victory from there. I slowed a smidge to manage my tires, and then on the last few laps, I managed to keep 2nd 5s behind, to bring my best lap from a 1:50 to a 1:48.
I did all 4 races so far on AI level 8, and the difference from race to race is bonkers. If they can’t cheat and grab a car 40 PI above yours, they really aren’t that formidable. It was the first race though that I had to really weave through traffic, and that was kinda fun, but clear it worked in my favour the AI really isn’t smart enough to overtake a much slower car.
Naturally though, after the end, trying to go back to the main menu, the game crashed.
Fun race. Was losing quite a lot of time on the straights using my spec tune and that, together with the fact I took an extra pit stop than the AI, wasn’t quite balanced by my superior speed cutting through the traffic.
As a pitstop seems to cost 35 seconds here, I don’t think M-S-S is optimal. Sounds like M-M is the best option.
Ok, so I broke from my boycott of the long boring endurance races to test a rubberband theory.
First run on Watkins Glen. Lvl 1 rules 1, I started out in position 3 and was quickly relegated back to position 5 but quickly recovered to position 2. Totally unable to catch the 1st place car as expected until just before the third to the last corner when the 1st place cars virtually put on the brakes. I was just going to run a 5 lap test to see how far ahead I would get from 2nd place. Pulled out a sizable lead so I decided to let my second driver have a turn at the wheel. That’s Eddie Afk by the way. He did a good job maintaining and even widening the lead somewhat. When he got into traffic I had to help him with passes but we did good. I took over at lap 15 and finished the race by a large margin.
So I decided to give Road America a try.
Road America, lvl 3 rules 2. Started out on the stock tires at the back of the pack. Started slow so as to let the pack stretch out for ease in passing. But the last car kept going slower and slower to catch “down” with me. And I had to pass it in the second turn. Each successive slower car kept dropping back until I reached about 12th position then the cars started getting more aggressive on track. But never too hard to pass. It didn’t take long to get to the lead and open up a big lead over the 2nd place car. I was about two turns ahead of 2nd when I pitted for tires and fuel. Exited the pits in 12th and started the climb through the pack. I got back the 1st by lap 14 passing the 2nd place car still in the pits. I had a good several seconds lead on 2nd place no one came out of the pits as I came out of turn one. I had a clear track going into turn three with two cars ahead of me.
The following scenario is no kidding the crazy truth!
Rounding turn one and turn two with a clear track on lap 14. No other dots around my car. Two little dots up ahead. I started to pass the first car ahead of me and I get “pitted” by a car behind me. I let the pit play out to see which car did this and it was that rubberband number 2 beast. I did a rewind back to just before the corner to watch behind. And as I approached the corner the 2nd place car was coming down the short straight at about warp factor 10. This time I was able to use the other car as a blocker and avoid the pit. Got around the two slower cars. But keeping the 2nd place car behind, even at lvl 3 was a major fight. I could get a second or two lead but it would be right back on my tail in no time.
My conclusion: at lvl 1 rules 1 there is no rubberbanding. At lvl 3 rules 2, at the least, (possibly lower but that will be up to someone else to figure out) rubberbanding is most definitely in effect.
Thank you T10 for the ride through nostalgia and taking us back to the dark ages of video games. Just to end on a positive note! 
So rubber-banding then. The screenshot in my last post was me using a PI958 car and finishing 3rd to the AI. Here’s a screenshot of me using a 998 car. The AI conveniently has used cars with exactly the same PI in both races:
I remember they said that, but I’m not convinced they actually did that.
I’ve repeatedly had my safety rating knocked down from S to A after completing many penalty-free races but then finally incurring something like an off-track penalty or a wrongfully-assigned collision penalty.
If safety rating is averaged over 20 races like they claim it is, then getting just 1 penalty in just 1 race should not instantly knock me down a peg after I’ve completed many consecutive penalty-free races prior.
I have read everything, it is very instructive. Many thanks to Jezza14 and the other good contributors.
I feel a bit ashamed. The first time in FH4 when I came across Jezza14 I thought damamn cheater.
I now know he is one of the world’s best drivers like Barca.
I kneel down and apologize profusely.
Best regards from Germany.
Your insights are worth their weight in gold.
Same happened to me the other day when 9.0 dropped, crash to dashboard after every race. In the almost 40 years ive been playing games ive never experienced as many crashes on a console as i have with this game.
Hasn’t crashed on me after races (yet anyway).
It’s a bit strange that we both have Series Xs and are getting different crashes.
I’m getting regular crashes back to the dashboard after races… Even crashing immediately after starting the game up. This is on Xbox too.
Just did the Glen and RA enduros last night, didn’t see anywhere near as much rubber-banding as the Porsches at Silverstone but it was still present to some degree, the AI would definitely find a couple of seconds in lap speed once you caught up to them and even more once you passed them.
Both races I started from 24th, Difficulty 6, running the Whistler Mustang at the 'Glen and the Sauber C9 at Road America. In both cases I was caught up to first by about lap 5, then stayed in the lead by a second or two until the first pit stop (I ran M-M in both with equal length stints), where since I pitted first I gained a good 10 seconds in rubber-banding until they pitted 4-5 laps later and promptly regained that time. One thing I did notice in the Sauber was that I was on ~35% engine damage by the end of the race, enough that I could feel a loss of power on the straights (and the revs would occasionally blip) and would be down a second or two in lap time, but the AI was doing laps 3-4 seconds faster than when it was leading the race near the beginning (first lap or two notwithstanding to allow the pack to thin out and get rid of any drafting etc). Still won both races though, and without having to resort to the Hulkenberg tactics I used at Silverstone.
The AI at Road America had a hell of a time passing the GTX cars though, they would routinely lose 4-5 seconds (or get stung with a big penalty) but then warp-speed themselves back in to contention. Part of me wonders whether this really is rubber-banding or just that the AI runs a simpler physics/performance model when not in the player’s vicinity, or that what seems like the warp-speed performance is their “actual” capability and they just sandbag when leading (hence why it can be possible to “break” free of the banding)