My Diaries

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

Tue Feb 16, 1999

Won an orange Supra in the Normal Car series.

I guess those IA license tests sure do prepare you for the Normal Car series. Although I did lose (come 5th) at DFRW II, I won all the other races and a couple of poles, winning that mass of prize money and an orange Supra RZ, which looks sort of gold to me. The most amazing thing was at GVE II, when I went slightly off the track during my first negotiation of the final hairpin. I caught it and stopped it from becoming a total disaster, but all four wheels were in the gravel, and I was surprised that not one car passed me. An examination of the replay revealed that the 2nd place car had done the not unusual AI car trick of going off onto the grass at the kink in the previous straight.

At Autumn Mini II, I qualified 3rd, and won by a slim margin in spite of engaging in plenty of "off-road" action.

At Clubman R5 II I got the pole and won easily (by such a large margin that not one car revealed how far back it was before the screen progressed to the next one). GVE I won easily, even with the aforementioned drama.

DFRW II, as I mentioned, was a disaster. I qualified a distant sizth and could not keep control of the car, finishing 5th.

On SSR 11, after a fourth place qualifying, I led from start to finish, not even able to tell that the other contender (a TRD 3000GT) in the series was running third most of the time (it dropped to fourth at the end). But the map showed me I had a long lead over the 2nd place car (who turned out not to be a contender anyway), and so I took it real easy (70mph versus ~100) through the deadly chicane for the last few laps, to prevent a disaster.

I still haven't tried any of the IA races yet. My wife objects to 5 lap races because I can't talk for a long time (i.e. during them). I'm not sure what she'll think of a 60 lap race. Or even 30 laps of hell. Actually, SSR11 sort of grows on you after all those license attempts. Hmm. I have it memorized to the extent that I can sit here and navigate it in my head.

I don't know when the other contender dropped to fourth; I saved the replay, but when I watched it, it was cut off some time during the fourth lap. I would imagine that if I had watched it immediately (ie. before saving) it would have been similarly cut off. There's only so much memory available, after all. The replay claims to be 71 blocks; I'm not sure if that is the cut-off size, or not. I could not find anything in the manual mentioning a limit on replay data size.

Oh yes, this was all driving a Viper GTS, of course. Red, of course.

Occasionally I get hours alone. Many of my license tests were passed in the wee hours one day when my wife had gone to visit her sister, for instance. So I might be able to try the long IA races at a similar time.

But she likes having me play Gran Turismo beside her (we have two screens in our living room ) so I can only half-watch the TV shows which she is choosing. I have my own universal remote and she doesn't like it when I change the channel on her, as I'm wont to do during commercials when I'm not playing. But she likes to be able to talk to me at least once every 6 minutes, so 10 minute races are too long.

One thing I'm going to have to do is construct a race-prepared stock Viper, as opposed to the GTS-R prize. Specs suggest it should be slightly better, and I find the GTS-R prize difficult to get performance out of. Little strange things like a tendency to get snagged on the inside of corners, and such. Then I'll have to see if I can do any better in the USvs series with a prepared Viper than I did with the prize car. Of course, I didn't mind winning the USvsUK series in a race-prepared Cerbera (not LM edition).

I find it interesting that the game parameters suggest it is legitimate for someone to buy ("trade" for) an LM car from someone else for a measly Cr35000. Sort of like someone lost a zero somewhere, or something.

145 more HP, 360 more pounds; not a lot to choose between maxed Cerbera and the LM edition, one way or the other.