The pit bug has a lot of discussion around it but I've not heard anyone factor in the accelerated time and the possibility of an algorithm either starting wrong, or going wrong.
If each minute is simulating 1 hour the math just wouldn't work for gameplay, so a multiplayer is at work that has the timing of the environment at 1 minute, but the actual wearing down of fuel and tires would need to use different math, perhaps 50%.
Then you need to consider that PD do most algorithms systemically, then those systems also need to scale evenly... And this might be were the problem is. The systems aren't working 1 to 1 until after a pitstop, when they should remain 1 to 2 (world sim is 1 accelerated, tires and fuel 2 at 50% slower)... One indication would/could be the constant tire squeal... So in essence this is the sound of tires being forced to degrade at 50% higher rates and that AI sometimes pits two laps in a row, so possibly another system governing them that's different than the player... Even if their tires and fuel loads don't need a pit... Something else in the system is forcing them to pit for a reason that isn't obvious...
A pitstop might be the the math calibrating, and if so the beginning of the race is the real core issue, and the pitstop is over correcting...
I think the core issue could be more to do with accelerating an endurance race and the knockdown effect that happens at the first pit recalculating some values... And PD might have tried to balance the system at the pitstop (point of adjustment) instead of at the beginning... Either way its likely much more complicated than we assume and fixing the pit stop might be more of a hack to a symptom than solving the systemic issue at the core.
But it could even be worse, if the adjustments in the system that happen after a pitstop are just wrong, then even races set for full duration could be effected too. Hence, why we have no real endurance races...
The solution to this problem might be decoupling the tires and fuel wear from the world simulation and separate the values... It just makes sense as the math would never work. It's quite possible an engineer was asked to make the whole thing a seamless system and it's just not achievable.
. I will now write out 10000 times "I must not take out my frustrations with PD on others"
no worries, i figured it was some big discussion material in these boards but i didn't figured that out yet 
