I've only found a couple of very old threads on this, but both our GTE cars got affected by this during the VEC 24hr race. I'll relate only my case as I have full info on that one : First of all, car was BMW M8 GTE from S397 Endurance Pack / VEC Workshop mod. Took over car from team-mate, was told of "minor aero damage" by CrewChief, but couldn't see any damage on HUD. Had a spin and tapped wall during first stint...had light blue damage to front bumper on HUD. Car felt slightly twitchy through lower speed corners, so decided to fix body damage during next pit stop. Took pit stop (full details : full fuel, no tyres, fix body damage) After pit stop, no damage appeared on HUD any more, but my lap times increased by approx. 3 - 4 seconds. It soon became apparent that corner speeds were same, initial acceleration was more or less the same, but that I was lacking in the region of 20 - 30km/h of top speed on all the straights. This lack of top speed persisted through the next 2 pit stops, which were for fuel only, and then fuel and tyres. On the next driver swap (3 hours later), the issue was immediately gone, and new driver was back up to full top speed on straights. To me, this appears to be a bug, rather than intended simulation or feature, such as the effects of quick repairs with Duct-tape or something along those lines. I base that on the following : 1. I spent 40 seconds additional in pit to fix the damage, and the result was worsened performance of the car, rather than improved performance of the car. If this was a feature, I'd expect an improvement to car behaviour, even if not back to A1 condition. This is the exact reverse. 2. The issue miraculously vanished only after a driver-swap. Again if some sort of simulation of quick pit repairs, the repairs could have been "better repaired" during any of my own additional 2 scheduled stops. The net result was a rather infuriating 3 hours of driving, which ultimately cost us in the region of at least 1:30 minutes in lost time caused by this bug + the 40 second repair stop in the pit which in hindsight I'd have been best not doing at all. That would have resulted in a position improvement on our overall result. Is this a known bug? I presume so since some threads date back even to 2017, and can any further info be provided to help in tracing it down, and rectifying it?
This is a known bug that dates back from rFactor 1. ISI didn't care to fix it, and it's certainly not S397 that's going to fix that. Other than not wrecking the car, the solution when this happens is to swap drivers ASAP and hope that the other driver avoids any small contact.
