Did another training stint this afternoon. I’ve discovered that you can get ACC to do proper stints if you choose proper endurance modes.
The custom race option seems to come out with a weird mandatory stint length if you just choose an hour long race. However if you choose the proper endurance modes it’s fine.
It’s very confusing at first though because even though you choose eg the 3 hour mode, you can set it to be one hour long or whatever time you choose from the list. So it compresses the rules to fit within an actual hour of racing for example.
What this means is that you get 3 driver stints in an hour and can start to understand how they work. I got one in every 20 minutes during the race. What I didn’t realise to begin with is that you don’t swap in an AI driver at the pit stop. You have to choose the next name in the driver list but it’s still you in control.
It’s quite good though because you get to practice pit stops and driver swaps and you still get the hour of driving and you get to feel what the car feels like at every stage of the race with various fuel loads and various stages of the tires’ life.
I’m down in the low 1:44s now with my predicted lap dropping into 43s sometimes. So I’m making progress and starting to feel back in my stride with sim racing. 4 months away or whatever it was, was too long. =\