The 5 minute 'endurance' is of course 24 hour cycle in 5 minutes.
It's even worse. In Le Mans, a 24 hours race with 1 and a half laps? From the afternoon to the middle of the night in just a section of Mulsanne?
With 24 minutes, the race will end with 8 laps. With an adeventurous style, the 908 would do 9 laps with full tank on GT5...
I'd like to do the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2 hours. I know there are other ways to finish the events, but I don't like those
Doing 2 hours at a time of a 24 hour race is a completely different thing and is very very boring to me and needlessly time consuming (as is driving the full 24 hours in one go). The only exception would be to do it with a couple of friends…. but I am roughly 10 years past doing stuff like that (and I fear my friends agree).
I've done Le Mans on GT5 five times. I always used the save option and never found it boring. There are the details on the environment, the time passing, the guessing game about how many laps I'd do, the overlaping everyone game, the strategy about pit stops when you choose a weaker car, and so on. Of course It's time consuming, but hey, It's a 24 hour race.
If you wanna win events in 10 minutes, they are all there in other series. Endurances, by definition, can't be this short.
I wouldn't mind if PD give the option to people make it shorter. I just want 24 hours racing there. Specially Le Mans.
I always wonder why people value the true 24 hour races in GT so much as they are nothing like they are in real life anyway. Without any mechanical wear, engine failure and true crashes, it doesn't really matter if you drive 2 hours or 24. Sure if you have a competitive car you might need to plan pitstops a bit, but that is really the only thing.
In this case, I think that nothing on GT should be praised, since a very small portion of the game have something to do with real life. The stars procedure, lack of proper race rules, flags, lifeless tracks and so on, are examples of this. Even the points that you made aren't on the shorter races, so, again, races on GT have close to nothing to do with real world.
And the plan pitstops thing isn't as blant as you think. Imagine that you are 18 hours racing and, suddenly, you miscalculate your pit strategy. Without gas, you lose the race. And, believe, it is pretty easy to make such error.
There is some human drama right there.