My Diaries

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

Fri Apr 23, 1999

Turn it on, Wind it up, Blow it out, GTO!

Well, I had thought that my ability might combine with the Mitsubishi special GTO LM Edition's poor power-to-weight ratio to allow me to fill in another box in the Grand Valley 300km Endurance Race prize money list. Well, in that effort I was disappointed, but in return I was rewarded with a fun, pleasant, and mildly challenging race.

Before racing I dropped the final drive slightly, and that seemed to help. In addtion, I was gradually getting used to the seven speed gearbox which necessitates picking higher gears than one gets into the habit of.

Anyway, here's the results...

silver GTO LM Edition Grand Valley 300km Endurance Race

Results:

I did not lead the race until after the other GTO's first pitstop, which occurred after mine. I think I had only one minor loss of control during the race.

The race was quite exciting because nearly every time I pitted I lost the lead, but usually got it back in one or two laps because I had fresh tires whereas the "AI" GTO was by then always on very worn tires. For simplicity, the AI cars do no calculations about their pitstops, but just pit in when their tires are too worn. This gives you a big advantage, but you need the nerves to relinquish the lead (or the immediate chance at the lead), and the discipline to race fast against time on your fresh tires, so you can take the lead when the AI cars do pit.

Note that my winning margin amounts to only slightly more than a quarter second a lap.

I nearly lapped the Impreza, but let it go by on the last lap.

Of course, I won Cr300,000 plus a black/green Castrol Supra GT.

This field was back to being not so competitive. I almost certainly would have placed the special NSX-R LM GT2 fourth in this field. Maybe even third.

The next contender will be the special Nissan NISMO GT-R LM Edition, a nice racing version of the FR Skylines. It seems middling competitive, nice to drive, although giving hints of rear-end breakaway. In practice last night it won the UKvsJP series 45 to 22, and won a red del Sol. It seems sort of strange it did not win a green Cerbera, but I'm not positive that I have not raced this car in that series before. The car seemed especially good at SSR5, perhaps because of its somewhat harsh settings, and would have set a fastest lap record had the RX-7 not copped it last night.

Time trials at Grand Valley suggest this car will be controllable enough to do well in the Grand Valley 300.

This morning I tried an experiment I've been meaning to do for a while. I filled my garage with bargain basement Silvias, and then won the Sunday Cup to see what it would do about the prize car it might want to give me. Well, it simply skips that screen entirely. In other words, if you don't have room in your garage, you forfeit the prize car, with no announcement.