Gran Turismo 4 Endurance races

This is part four of the Endurance race guide, and it covers the next 4 endurance races, starting with the Fuji 1000KM Endurance race.

Due to the enormous amount of research going into this (hundreds of laps raced, dozens of cars to test out), this is very much a work in progress.

Fuji 1000 KM

Don't like the Fuji racetrack? Well, here are 288 laps of it, again with the LMP1 cars. This race appears to have the same choice of cars as the Sarthe I race. This track is fast, and even small errors will quickly end up being valuable seconds that will be hard to catch up.

The list of cars along with fastest observed laptimes follows:

#	Car	Best Laptime	Pits every
1	Sauber Mercedes C 9 Race Car '89	01:17.439	15
2	Nissan R92CP Race Car '92	01:17.662	15
3	Nissan R89C Race Car '89	01:17.764	15
4	Mazda 787B Race Car '91	01:18.411	19
5	Jaguar XJR-9 Race Car '88	01:18.991	15
6	Audi R8 Race Car '01	01:19.104	20
7	BMW V12 LMR Race Car '99	01:19.435	21
8	Playstation Pescarolo C60 Race Car '04	01:19.691	22
9	Bentley Speed 8 Race Car '03	01:19.903	20
10	Playstation Courage C60 Race Car '03	01:19.965	22
11	Toyota GT-One Race Car '99	01:20.107	20
12	Nissan R390 GT 1 Race Car	01:22.520	18

There are other cars as well, but none of the clocks laps under 1:20, so they're rather irrelevant in the big picture.

Tire recommendation: Bring your Hard and Medium racing tires. I suspect the cars pitting every 15 laps are running on Mediums, and the ones pitting later are running on Hard tires. My car during testing (Pescarolo) did 22 laps (same as the other Pescarolos) on hard tires, so I think it's a fairly safe assumption.

Infineon World Sports

More fast cars on another fast track. More LMP cars on a track that really plays havoc on your tires. The Sauber and the Nissan R92CP are again the two fastest cars on the track, and it's really hard to keep up with anyone on this track...

The mandatory list

#	Car	Best Laptime	Pits every
1	Nissan R92CP Race Car '92	01:22.601	14
2	Sauber Mercedes C 9 Race Car '89	01:22.683	14
3	Nissan R89C Race Car '89	01:22.766	14
4	Mazda 787B Race Car '91	01:23.171	16
5	Playstation Pescarolo C60 Race Car '04	01:24.002	18
6	Audi R8 Race Car '01	01:24.100	18
7	Jaguar XJR-9 Race Car '88	01:24.214	12
8	BMW V12 LMR Race Car '99	01:24.373	17
9	Playstation Courage C60 Race Car '03	01:24.526	17
10	Toyota GT-One Race Car '99	01:24.635	16
11	Bentley Speed 8 Race Car '03	01:25.246	17
12	Nissan R390 GT 1 Race Car	01:27.102	14
13	Panoz Esperante GTR-1	01:30.273	14
14	Dodge Viper GTS-R Team Oreca '00	01:30.769	15
15	Chevrolet Corvette C5R	01:32.243	15

Tire recommendations: Consider hard tires on the rear and medium up front, or step it up one hardness level. The problem is that putting the super-hard tires on the rear take away a lot of grip, and you'll end up with too many trips in the grass.

El Capitan 200 Miles Endurance

This is a sports car race with a very nice prize car: The Minolta Toyota Race Car. The track is very unforgiving with lots of twists and turns and nice changes in elevation. Probably the most scenic of all the tracks, but who has time to look at the scenery?

With the sports tire restriction, tire wear is the biggest concern. There will be quite a few pit stops, so you can probably save some time by sort-filling on fuel and only fill up as much as you need. In addition, carrying less fuel means less weight, which is good news.

And now for the car list

#	Car	Best Laptime	Pits every
1	Lotus Motor Sport Elise '99	01:54.229	12
2	Proto Motors Spirra 4.6 V8 '04	01:56.059	11
3	Pagani Zonda C12 '00	01:56.123	19
4	Shelby Series 1 Super Charged '03	01:56.742	14
5	Lotus Espirit Sport 350 '00	01:57.054	14
6	TVR T350C '03	01:58.043	11
7	TVR Cerbera Speed Six '97	01:58.043	11
8	Chevrolet Corvette Z06 (C5) '00	01:58.684	16
9	Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport '96	01:59.047	13
10	Dodge Viper GTS '99	01:59.204	14
11	Dodge Viper SRT10 '03	01:59.484	17
12	Mercedes SL 65 AMG '04	02:00.069	11
13	Callaway C12 '03	02:00.348	16
14	Aston Martin V8 Vantage '99	02:01.546	11

Tire Recommendations: Bring hard and medium sports tires. You may need a fast stint every now and then, and having the option to pit more often but shave 1 1/2 second of you lap time might come in handy.

I would suggest avoiding the Zonda and the Elise. Even if the Zonda isn't that fast, it will only pit three times (lap 19, 38, 57), while most other cars will pit at least 4 times. This gives the Zonda at least a 20 second advantage on everyone else, in addition to its high speed.

New York 200 Miles Endurance

Only 200 more miles to go, and it's all over. And these are not just any 200 miles, these miles are in the Big Apple, Manhattan, New York City. And, no pedestrians allowed.

The cars in this race are sports cars, very much the same list as for the El Capitan endurance. However, this track is very different with all of its right-angle corners. This seems to change things around a bit. The Lotus Motor Sport that did so well on El Capitan doesn't seem to like these corners at all, but the Corvette and the Dodge Viper SRT10 seems to do better.

So, here's the list of cars and lap times.

#	Car	Best Laptime	Pits every
1	Pagani Zonda C12 '00	01:45.630	31
2	Proto Motors Spirra 4.6 V8 '04	01:46.831	19
3	TVR Cerbera Speed Six '97	01:47.254	18
4	Chevrolet Corvette Z06 (C5) '00	01:47.724	26
5	Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport '96	01:48.237	22
6	Dodge Viper SRT10 '03	01.48.522	28
7	TVR T350C '03	01:49.419	19
8	BMW M5	01:49.526	23
9	Ford Mustang SVT Cobra R '09	01:49.618	19
10	Mercedes SL 65 AMG '04	01:49.665	18
11	Callaway C12 '03	01:49.856	26
12	Lotus Motor Sport Elise '99	01:50.027	23
13	Dodge Viper GTS '99	01:50.101	23
14	Aston Martin V8 Vantage '99	01:52.163	17

Tire recommendation: You have to use Sports tires, so that puts a big damper on the selection. Bring Hard and Mediums; you might just be able to run the last stint on softer tires, giving you more speed to either build a bigger lead or to catch up a few seconds on the car(s) ahead of you.

So, there it is. The "incomplete" complete guide to all the endurance races. It is entirely possible that you may face a car that is not listed anywhere here. I've tried to make it as complete as possible, but I can only do the same race so many times before I have to give up.

This whole guide is also available as a text file.

Related links

Gran Turismo 4 Endurance races

Fuji 1000 KM

Infineon World Sports

El Capitan 200 Miles Endurance

New York 200 Miles Endurance