Endurance Racing. It's the sub-genre marmite of the racing world. I've never been a fan personally. Grid itself did enough to put me off the idea of such highly-focused concentration levels of racing with the "Around the Globe" trophy nonsense.
Despite the label, it's a lot lighter touch than you'd rightfully think though - to the point where you can potentially argue that it's masquerading.
The Enduring Spirit is meant to be all about the Endurance discipline, and whilst the undertones are there, the theme is left mostly wanting, and you end up with a fairly generic piece of DLC as a consequence.
Aside from the newly added Endurance discipline, the package finally adds a brand new location with track variants - The Fuji Speedway - as well as 4 new vehicles in the Bentley Speed 8, BMW V12 LMR, Bentley Continental and the Mazda Autozam AZ-1. It's about time we saw an actual new location with a load of track variants.
It's important to note that Endurance racing has featured in previous Grid titles, but it's approached much differently this time round.
Previously, physical tyre wear would determine the distance you were capable of covering in Endurance races, and the race would end at full degradation of your tyres to the point where they'd disintegrate and make your car incapable of travelling any further. It was a slightly odd mechanic, but it's how the game distinguished Endurance racing from your regular circuit race.
Enduring Spirit strips that back entirely and the field of cars is split into multiple classes where you simply cover as much distance as possible within a set time limit. You're only up against your specific car class so it effectively feels like there are multiple races ongoing simultaneously. The times for Endurance racing can range from as little as 5 minutes up to an hour and the race ends once the car in first place overall crosses the finish line once the allotted time limit has passed.
As before, there are 10 new trophies added to the total list, with a varied spread of tasks required to unlock them all.
Starting with the new Endurance story mode branch, which adds 8 new events to the ongoing story mode, where you can unlock 3 progression-based trophies for passing the requirements of all 8 events. Remember to select one of the 3 new sponsor objectives to instantly begin progressing the 3 trophies on offer for completing the sponsor events for Accuse, Avanzar and Bellezza respectively. If you choose Accuse before you start the story, you'll almost have the requirements completed to unlock this sponsor event by the time you reach the end. Handy tip.
Only 3 of the 8 events are actually Endurance races. The rest are just standard circuit races with vehicles already available within the base game lineup. It's a little bit strange to have a themed piece of DLC where you end up thrashing stadium trucks and electric cars around a circuit instead. Even stranger when you remember that Classic Car-Nage was all-in on it's story mode and dedicated every event to it's theme. I can only think that they didn't want to be too heavy on the Endurance theme knowing how time-consuming this could be, and were effectively too scared to fully commit to it.
Speaking of absent, the corny cinematics are also dropped. You see an opening trailer introducing Endurance to the room, absolutely nothing in between the first to last event, and then a very brief closing outro to wrap it all up. It's almost like they started the idea with intent and just gave up halfway through and duct-taped the rest of the package together.
Either way, the story events should take no longer than a couple of hours to beat. Despite the lack of Endurance events, the 3 they do offer are all 10 minutes a piece, and the rest will occupy the remaining time to completion. The only event you're required to win to pass is the final one.
The trophy clean up post-story does at least still lean into the Endurance theme. You'll need to complete two 15 minute Endurance races for another trophy, and you'll also need to win an Endurance race on Mount Panorama in the Bentley Continental GT3. The 3 trophies linked to the aforementioned sponsor objectives all contain requirements linked to Endurance, though these are much more reigned in for grindy-ness than they have when previously featured, so they're not too demanding. There are also opportunities to combine the requirements for multiple trophies and progress towards earning them in tandem.
The post-story is where you'll spend most of the time with this package in the end. Clocking in at around 6-8 hours, it's a fairly simple route to completion, though the naturally more long-winded nature of Endurance races does somewhat extend this time estimation.
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