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Limited GT4 success

Somehow I managed to play a lot of GT4 on Saturday, though I didn't do all that well. I still had quite a few European races to complete, so I thought I'd finish up some of those. Started with the euro championship which required sports tires, so I took the M3 GTR. Won the first couple races, lost the third thanks to a spin, won the next one, and had a 4 point lead going into the last race at Nurburgring. That's not good, as I don't have a good history with fast cars there. Every time I'd get one wheel off the car would go spinning, and of course it would never spin in such a way that I'd end up facing forward, no, I'd always be nose-in to a wall, or backwards, or something else that takes a long time to recover from. Bah. I ran the series a second time, won the first four races, and that gave me enough of a lead that I could still lose at the Ring and win the series (which I did).

Next up, the UK series. I had a well-built Motorsport Elise that would work well here, or at least I thought it would. I had zero problems winning the first two races at Grand Valley and Fuji Speedway, but El Capitan always killed me. I could NOT get over one of the hills without the back end coming around, resulting in me facing the wrong direction once again. I lost the series twice due to spinning before I decided to put more parts on the car. I found out I didn't have an LSD at all, so putting that in immediately helped. I also added the next stage N/A upgrade to help me catch up after my spins. ;-) I still lost the next series from spinning the car too much. Finally on the 4th try I beat it, but I was pretty dejected at that point.

I needed an ego booster, so I did the Italian series. I had some early 90s 500+ supercar to go up against a bunch of Alfas for three races, so that was cake. Then I ran the French series in a Renault Clio V6 which was fun. Then I made the mistake of trying it in the Clio race...I thought it would be a mix of all sorts of Clios, right? No, it was nothing but Clio race cars. So I need to add some parts before I can go back and do that one.

Next, I thought I'd try the euro classics series. Of all my old cars it was down to the Ginetta G4 or Mercedes 300SL, but the Ginetta had the best power-to-weight by far (not hard at only 435kg), so that was my choice. Unfortunately some of the classic races have a ringer car, the A/C 427. I just quit and re-entered until the car wasn't in the series anymore. :-D

All that's left in the European race section is the 1000 Miles! series, but that one might get b-spec'd. It's only 4 races, but they're all really long. I'm not positive, but I want to say it's 15 laps at Nurburgring, 99 at Opera Paris, 99 at Cote D'Azure, and 35 at Sarthe. That's a long time, especially in "classic" cars.

Finally, I reached day 695 so I bought a couple of the all-black used race cars. I could only afford a couple, so I bought the Toyota GT-One and the 787B. I tried using the GT-One with a turbo upgrade in the Sarthe I endurance race, but I think my b-spec driver spun at some point...I checked on him after 15 hours and he was 2 laps down, but running times comparable to the leader. I watched him for a couple laps, and having him run at level 4 was apparently too much. He'd go off track on pretty much every lap, and he'd actually turn better lap times running at level 3! The car was easily fastest in a straight line of any car in the race as well, probably 20mph faster down the straight than the Sauber that was winning. So now I have to try that one again, bah.