My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Fri Feb 5, 1999

Passed IA-2

Well, last night I finally passed test IA-2. I thought I would just practise the license test as something relatively easy to stop. Once again, a key to getting better performance seemed to be changing my shifting pattern to shift up sooner. Previously I had been shifting the Viper at almost the red line. (nearly 7000rpm) But I decided to try shifting sooner, at about 5500rpm. I wait a little longer in first gear because there is a big jump to second, but 2nd,3rd and 4th are all close together so right at 5500 seemed appropriate.

Anyway, whereas before I had rarely cracked 1:33, almost immediately after adopting this new shift pattern I put in a

1:30.220

I breathed a sigh of relief since now the objective seemed achievable. But first, I reset the machine so as to lose all those days wasted with failed attempts.

Now, I put in some slower times with the new strategy too, but the standard deviation definitely seemed to be about a lower mean. A few slowish laps resulted from trying to go into 4th in the first corner (through the tunnel). I finally abandoned that idea. Every now-and-then, of course, I would loop it at the hairpin just past Big Ben. I also gradually learned that one should brake a little after the first zebra crossing you see on the straight before the chicane, not immediately at it. Using the new shifting points, I got into 3rd gear before the corner onto that straight, and sometimes, though not always, reached 4th along it.

Anyway, in between my other attempts, I got a:

1:30.9xx

And a little while later, a:

1:30.149

So I reset the game again! And, a few tries after that I got.

1:29.555

It was strange, the run didn't seem particularly good. I seemed to graze about every wall possible, except for the ones in the tunnel, and the replay verifies this. I came out of Big Ben hairpin very wide and was right up over the rumble strip on my exit. In fact, I wasn't watching the clock on the finishing straight because, having verified that I was lined up to cross the finishing line without corrections, I had my eyes firmly planted on the tach, waiting to shift if necessary. I saw the finish, it flashed to the "Pass" screen, and I was assuming it said "Fail" until I reread it.

It was such a relief that I decided to start a whole new card with all 15 blocks Replays on which to store it.

It's interesting that once again I gain speed by moderating my shifting algorithm. In my defence, if you look at the IA-2 Demo, you will see that it usually seems to go up to the red line before shifting. I wonder if perhaps rather than improving engine efficiency, my new shift pattern improved acceleration by moderating the torque and thereby reducing wheelspin. The Demo dropped to first gear twice; in the sharp left hander after the straight after the tunnel, and in Big Ben hairpin. I only hit first gear in the latter place, in spite of my vastly different line through that corner. If first gear would have helped in the other corner, I only realized about it too late. But, although first gear improves acceleration, it is easy to lose it all to wheel spins and slides.

The other day when I was playing Gran Turismo late into the night, my wife came out while I had wandered into the kitchen to get a snack.

After she found me, she said that playing Gran Tursimo generally puts me into a very pleasant mood and added that one day she expects to come out to the living room, and not see me there playing, but expects instead, as she looks closely at the cars on the screen, to see my face smiling back through one of the windshields.

She also says I must get rid of all those ugly bronze cups which are cluttering up the living room. She says the couple of gold ones are nice, and the silver ones are also okay, but there are too many of them too.