I have tried the turn-key (sports soft) trick on LeMans with no success whatsoever. But the walk-thru method I listed works every time...
Sports softs seems to work turn-key at Spa however...
Also also, being a Mazda man, I used an under-powered Furai for the new "dream car" seasonal. The Jag gave me a bit of grief in the last two races. Of the two, Suzi was easiest, I caught the leader in 4 laps but we traded back and forth until the last two corners of lap 5. The last race was harder, it took three tries to get the rhythm down. I was running between 1:34 and 1:37 but you needed all 1:34.5s to win. However once I got the rhythm - I was easily in the lead by lap 3 and doing 1:27 to 1:29 laps...