oh, hearing that you didn’t anticipate the fuel usage helps explain things a little more about where you’re at. Here’s a bit of general information you may/or may not find helpful. If you’re already familiar with much of this then just disregard.
*Quick Tips for Making Lots of Credits ASAP
1) Do as many of the circuit experiences as you can. Don’t dwell on them too long; a handful of retries is fine but there’s nothing wrong with revisiting some later with more experience (which should happen quickly).
2) In “Sport Mode”, do all the available Time Trials (usually 2). You can try them as much as you want until entry time closes and the payout is big.
3) Sargdegna, Spa & Le Mans are not only the races with the highest payouts but all of them award the +50% Clean Race Bonus even if you crash or get a shortcut penalty. Don’t pass cars if there’s a flag out for a crashed car with that instruction. I’m not 100% sure but others have said it’s the only way you can lose the bonus.
For Spa and Le Mans, set the difficulty to easy, they are
timed races at 30 & 60 minutes respectively and would suck to lose last moment because of a terrible crash or two that send you off the course. They are really for grinding, there’s no way to complete them quicker and if the goal is to earn credits faster, missing 1st place will set you back.
For grinding at Sardegna, setting the difficulty to “high” helps deal with less traffic because the other cars are faster. This is
only useful when driving the fastest cars
After you select a race you’re interested in (before selecting “enter”) at the top there’s important info about the race
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In the photo above there’s a multiplier with tire wear & fuel usage, displaying how much faster than normal you go through them. Anytime you see this, the race will have pit stops and you need to take that into consideration with the choice of car, tires, the fuel map and sometimes “short-shifting” as @DextroCat mentioned above. In addition to the gas tank indicator, when you select “fuel map” on your hud it will estimate the number of laps remaining in tank based on how you are driving. All of the highest paying races are of this type. You will get used to it really quickly. Also it lets you know that cannot equip or use NOS in these races.
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Farther down you will see info about damage that will slow down your car and change how it drives (it’s temporary and fixes itself) The penalty will cause you to be forced to slow down at the “penalty” line and wait for a specific amount of time. As mentioned above neither will affect whether you receive the bonus in those 3 races.
* You can test different cars for this race or get quick practice by selecting “time trial” option below the list of events at a track. Go into event settings and turn on tire wear to x15 and fuel to x8, this will give you the most realistic feedback.
* If you click the top link in my “signature” at the bottom of my posts there’s a compilation of info about All the Circuit Experiences (including payout), Menu Books, Cars & Events/Races in the game (including earnings per minute/hour, which races have pit stops, allow NOS etc…)
Hope that useful in some way.
If you have any other questions ask. There’s a lot of helpful people on here
