I thought I was reasonably hot stuff playing through the early stages of GT6. Even with ABS and traction control turned down to very low levels, I still made it through without much problem. But Super is just ruining me, even at relatively high levels of ABS and traction control, because I just can't get the hang of tire wear management at all. It seems like my only choice is which way to lose: either I concentrate on tire wear management (use hard tires, brake and turn tentatively to avoid heating the tires) and lose the race by being too slow, or I concentrate more on speed (using a more aggressive braking and turning strategy, maybe use a softer tire compound) and lose the race by having to pit too often (or worse, trying to stretch a set of tires too far and winding up with an uncontrollable car).

Any advice? Are there specific ways of driving that help with tire wear while still maintaining speed through the turns? Any way of tuning the car to reduce tire wear? Any particular types of cars that wear down the tires less than others?

You have to find the right balance where you don't want to be as aggressive on the gas and breaks, but still push the car enough that you are beating the other drivers. So long as you have the basics of how to take a corner down its just learning where the tires are breaking loose and adjusting your gas and breaking habits accordingly, and for tuning and cars maybe try a front wheel drive or reduce or shift some weight depending on the problems you are having. If your having problems with cornering in general then you might just need some practice at that then come back to these races. Just make sure you do most of your breaking before the turn and hopefully in a straight line, aim for the apex, coast through the turn till you feel you can put more stress on the tires, then gas out of it near the end.

The way i normally think of tires when driving is as a %, you can only push it too 100% then you lose traction and start wearing them down. Im just making these numbers up but if hitting the gas uses 75% and slamming the breaks uses 75% and turning a corner at high speeds uses 75%, then that means if you slam the breaks during a fast turn you are using 150% of your tires which is obviously not going to end well. So when you corner just keep that in mind and try not to break or gas as aggressively as you would in a straightaway, ideally you would do most or all of your breaking before the turn, and add gas near the end of a turn when you have lost some speed.

I don't have GT6 yet, but GT5 had some very good tips in the license tests and tutorial videos on how to really get the most out of a car, so check those out if they still have them.

@lego_my_eggo: Thanks a lot for the advice! Sadly, GT6 apparently doesn't have nearly the tutorial content that GT5 did (at least not yet).

There was another factor that turned out to be hosing me pretty badly. I was typically aiming for a one-pit-stop, "half and half" strategy -- in other words, in a ten-lap race, I'd choose a tire compound and driving strategy that would get me to the end of the fifth lap just as the tires were starting to get dodgy, then pit, then use the same tire compound and driving strategy for the back half of the race. But for whatever reason -- bug, hyperrealistic simulation of some factor I'm not aware of, whatever -- replacement tires apparently wear faster than the set you'd start the race with. So by the tenth lap my tires would be coming apart and I'd be in the wall. Once I realized that was happening and started planning for it -- pitting at the end of the sixth lap rather than the fifth, or using medium tires for the front half of the race and hard tires for the back half -- things suddenly started clicking. I've still only won one race on Super (without turning ABS and traction control up to silly levels), but I'm now getting seconds and thirds, so now it's just a matter of tweaking rather than "OMG what the hell".

I haven't messed much with the super races. But I do know that the tire wear and fuel consumption is accelerated. I'm still looking for good cars to run in those races.

I'm thinking that I need to start using a wheel again for the high level stuff. (getting gold on all the really hard stuff like the super license and I haven't messed with the mission races much either.)

i noticed the same thing about the second half tires wearing faster. maybe it's a bug/feature but i also wondered if it's because i was more used to the track and pushing harder. in those cases, i'd race as long as i could on mediums in the first run (when you are slowed down by traffic anyway) and go hard on soft tires in the second run (when you are warmed up and basically racing the clock).

turning up traction control really high is going to hurt your lap times. i typically like to race without TC but it's really helpful for tire wear efficiency. i think a setting of 3 is fine for a really high powered car and 1 or 2 for anything less. ABS on 1 is always enough for me.

the races where it rains i just stuck with race soft the whole time. i feel like the visual rain is different from the track wetness value. also the two rain tires are terrible. at high speeds your race soft should stick just fine from the downforce, then just be careful on low-speed corners. those races it's easy to win on pit strategy because the field is changing in and out of rain tires so often.

the only super race i had serious trouble with were Apricot Hill and Silverstone--when up against the McLaren F1 GTR Race Car '97. so far the only car i could beat that car with is with that car. the PP number says nothing about its near perfect balance, low tire wear, and efficient-yet-powerful fuel consumption. if you reload the race a few times it will eventually give you a field with an easier pole position opponent.

Oh so apparently there is a bug with tire wear causing these issues.

http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/weird-bug-after-pit-stops-in-online-mode.294753/

2nd set of tyres tend to last not even two thirds that of the first set.

Soneone on GTP.