My Diaries

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

Friday, September 28, 2001

I Finally Get Another A License Gold on A-1 in Gran Turismo 1

Well, my driving ability seems to have been getting better lately, so I decided to go for all my remaining A License Gold Medals. I had previously done A-7 (Subaru circle track barely counts), A-2 (Supra RZ at Autumn Ring) and A-6 (MR-2 at Deep Forest).

It took me several days, starting on September 23, but today I finally got gold. I kept saving my best replays and analyzing them when I wanted hints as to where I might be losing time, or where I might gain more.

Here are my final standings for my A-1 license test.

Note that, to keep a fairly wide variety of results, and avoid using up too many game days, I reload my game when I have done too many tries which get "on the board" without setting a new personal record (silver) time.

Nonetheless, my top two times above were done with no other times between them.

That is 0:32.426 was the closest I got to passing without passing, and 0:32.335 was my first pass. So not only was it a clear pass, it was quite a bit faster than my previous best.

I couldn't believe how long it took to do this test. This is probably because there are so few places to actually make up time; two corners, basically.

I started with a good warmup as usual, but lifted off slightly before the start to try and reduce wheel-spin.

I did not try to ease the first corner, and so did not bother moving to the right but drove straight off the line before turning left. Based on my replays, I eventually began my first left turn when I reached a particular speed (69mph, just after my second upshift), without looking much at the road until after that.

On my successful run, I just barely clipped the inside rumble strip on my late apex of the corner, but did not touch the outside one, although my very smooth corner exit took me over almost to the right side wall.

I entered the last corner just inside the rumble strip, braked when I reached 136mph (taking a cue slightly before that), and then turned and downshifted only twice to third, reaching a minimum of about 60 as I tried to go around the corner with a minimum of speed-robbing tire squealing, without clipping the inside rumble-strip either. A smooth exit caused me to use up the entire road.

My shifting points (mph) were something like:

A key to both corners on this test, since they come before straights, (in fact all such corners on all tests) is to arrange to mash the gas just a little early for the exit, so as to maximize your speed on the straight. To achieve that, you must apex a little late, which means turning just a bit later (going in a bit deeper) for the corner than a perfectly symmetrical line would require.