Hints for the Green Hell?

Just looking for any advice or tidbits of information when driving the Nurburgring.
I'm currently playing a GT3 championship, driving the Porsche. AI is set to 100/100. All races are 100% length, no assists, all realism on.
I have been generally competitive throughout the season (won a race and placed in the top 10 in a few races); I am over half way done with the season.. so now I come to the Green Hell. A 3 hour endurance race.

I love the track. It's gorgeous, fun to drive.. but BOY is it brutal. One mistake and your lap is shot lol.
So .. for sure I am practicing.. with AI, without AI.. lap after lap..I feel pretty good that I can now complete a few laps without crashing.. but my times are 9:07 to 9:10... (slowest) AI is lapping in the 8:30's.

I guess I'm just wondering how this track should be approached. Conservative and hope the opponents wreck? Aggressive and go for it with the high risk? Tire compound? Fuel load for a full hour or less? Pit strategy?
Set up advice is also appreciated, but I don't know if I am good enough to benefit from a good setup. I've driven the entire season so far with the default settings plus a few minor tweaks to the downforce and brake ducts. I don't notice much difference when I tweak things... (yet)..

I'm just wondering, or.. looking for advice, from anyone that has driven this track a lot.

Thanks!

 

IM not goos in giving advices since I Know only my style to do the ring. Times below 8 are common fpr GT3 class on the 24h layout. Here is the livestream from the 1st of May 2021 NLS 4h multiclass endurance race: LIVE: Rennen 3 Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie 2021 (NLS) - YouTube this might give you an idea of what they do there. Also notice the high clearance and rather soft setups of the cars, to better deal with the bumpy track over 4 hours.

 

I always share Driver61's in-depth guide.

Or if you don't have 3 hours.

 

Learn the track. I'm reasonably new to sim racing - only a couple of years, but I've spent a fair bit of that on the Nordschleife so i know it well, I know what corners are coming up so no surprises.

You might want to try team trial and load ghosts - not of the quickest times but of those 5 or 10 seconds quicker than you - follow these cars then when you can match those times consistently load quicker cars.

I learn from doing so have never bothered watching you tube videos, that wouldn't help me learn the track. I'm not sure what my GT3 times are but I was driving the Caterham Academy on the ring last night and lap time was around 8:20 I think and I'm very average!

 

My best tip for driving the green hell is to drop the AI level considerably, lol.

 

Thanks for all of the tips! I will definitely practice more. For sure. And I will find the time to watch those videos. I started with the short one, lol, and I really think just a good walk through (or drive through) will help me. I'm not going to touch the AI strength because I want to finish the season with the same AI ratings. I'm actually ok coming in last place if that is truly the best I can do. I just want to make sure I am making consistent laps, and I want to reduce my mistakes, learning from others.

 

Kudos. The Nordschleife is a track that takes months to learn and even then you will never be done finding more time.

If you want to keep learning the track, feel free to join my Touristenfahrten AMS or KOW servers to keep improving with other drivers

 

Nurburgring.pdf (bimmerfile.com)

 

IMO - it's all about the corners.
#1 - you need to learn the whole track properly, to drive it well.
#2 - you have 3 really fast sections, but a whole lot of corners in between. You need to find a balance between the two. If you can't drive the corners aggressively - your lap time will be impaired. if you're too slow on the fast sections - your lap time will be impaired.
#3 - practise, practise and practise some more. it takes a while to get the gist of it. break it down into the 3 main sections, focus on one, then get that to a point where you're quick and taking a good line through all of it. then focus on the next section. The 3rd sector seems to get a lot of people (IMO) - I've got a fair few laps on the track with at least 4 or 5 different racing sim's (I've lost count) and it's easily my favourite track - by a good margin. There's a real satisfaction to getting the whole thing done well. You'll find each time you do a better lap, you can find things to improve. It's a never ending cycle.

I think the best tip would be to watch either in game replays, Youtube videos (either of real cars or racing sims) of people driving the same cars that you're trying to focus on - you will learn a lot.

I would disagree with @McClutch - times below 8 mins on the 24H layout are not common in AMS 2 with GT3's.
Have a look at the class records here: Touristenfahrten AMS & KOW
Some of those drivers are very, very good (I don't really drive that class at all, but look at the times - it's self evident).
You need to know the track really well, know the lines, know the car you are driving and get a really good, smooth lap. When you start connecting the dots - your lap times will increase in jumps.
When you hit a point where you're struggling - take a mental step back. Think about your driving style. Can you change it? Can you adjust the car setup to give you an advantage? Where are you losing time against better drivers ?
I've learnt a huge amount on this track over the years on different racing sim's and I'm still learning.

 

First off, one shouldn't be intimidated by the track's reputation. I don't mean to be arrogant by claiming it's fairly easy to learn but very difficult to master. I learnt the basics and did a lot of hotlapping back in PC2 and AC. There's a lot of it, but if you break it down into sections, it's not that tricky.

I didn't memorise the layout at first but adapted to it by watching the curbs, and I still do that even though I know the track fairly well. If I should try to come up with a clever advice, I'd say try to memorise the optimal gear for the corners as you learn them. That way you can sort of categorise the corners.

 

Just to clarify between @McClutch and @muz_j ’s statements.
McClutch is linking a VLN layout video where indeed times can go below 8 minutes since the layout on the GP circuit is the Sprint layout which is shorter than the 24h layout.
When you mention the 24h layout, that is the one in AMS2. It skips the Mercedes arena and goes all the way down to the hairpin.

The length is different enough to make sub 8min laps nearly impossible.

 

I will definitely look for that! My times are around 8:45-8:55 using the Porsche GT3. AI is running 8:30's I think.

 

I'm wondering now if I actually go down to 8:45 lol... I did get to 8:50 if I remember correctly. I think it was my AI co-driver that was getting into the 8:40s ...But by the end of 3 hours we were behind the leader by about 5 minutes until I wrecked, had to pit for repairs, and went a lap down.

 

Thanks!

 

For those who don't know or keep forgetting what corner comes up, I made these Nordshleife rally pace notes a few weeks ago. They are written to avoid going off track and to get basic knowledge of the track, not to drive fast. Street cars (especially in real life!) need different instructions and caution points than this, so only use these notes for sim racing, or else I might get somebody killed. The notes are public domain and derivatives are encouraged.

Turn strengths are based on corner radius (instead of angle which is the norm in rally), roughly as follows:
1: 30m, 2: 40m, 3: 60m, 4: 100m, 5: 150m, 6: 250m

 

I've not memorised it - I couldn't sit here and talk you through every corner of the track without seeing it in front of me, but I have a general memory of the flow, know the danger points and where you can make time - and most importantly when I'm driving it I know exactly what the next few corners are. I've started doing time trial in the lower power cars around Nords - enjoying it, I'm more competitive than I thought.

 

Let me tell you this, all the memorization in sims did not help me very much when I was there for real. Real people drive more erratic then AMS2 AI at Touristenfahren, and the traffic was dense last August.

 

I only got halfway good at it playing GT5 back in the day. They had a challenge where you had to get a clean lap around the Ring under a certain time to win a exclusive car. I stopped counting my retries at 642 attempts over 3 days.

 

I've seen too many YT Nurburgring crash videos to ever try to drive their IRL anywhere near the limit. Sims have no jeopardy - which is good - because despite what I say about knowing the track, I still crash - often. I'd be dead many times over if I drove their IRL like I do in sims.