Let’s do ninety laps at Laguna Seca! The 200 mile endurance race is there just waiting for us to knock it out. I grab Edmund and get right to it.
Edmund has it all. Stability, power, good looks, and most of all, amazing brakes! The real MVP of this endurance race is Edmund’s brakes. You can easily scrub off a ton of speed even in the trickier sections of the track mid-mistake.
We seem to be pitting every eleven laps or so. The other cars are a little more difficult to shake off as we are all race cars here, but victory is had fairly easily.
I expect another legendary race car as a prize car. What I get is a new rally car! This is excellent! I can try this out in the rally events! I’ll name the Celica Rally Car with no info screen Shelley! Welcome, Shelley! I’ve seen plenty of GT-Four Celica rally cars, but I’ve never seen a rally car from this generation. It looks cool!
Shelley is a BEAST. That is all. Tonight we decide to see what Shelley can do in the rally challenges. I have no expectations, but Shelley is a proper rally car, so we might have some luck here and there.
I may have finally “gotten” what rallying is about in GT2, and I’m having more fun than I remember having with this mode. The key seems to be hard braking + downshifting + full lock + full throttle. Forget about the handbrake. And don’t even think about touching the steering if you’re going over any kind of jump.
I take way too many screenshots tonight, so I won’t post everything. I was just too excited! Shelley takes care of some legendary competition. In fact, Shelley takes care of the entire first page of the rally challenges! I’m too exhausted to narrate the whole session, so I’ll let the screenshots speak for themselves.
that stòria X4 rally car looks almost too cute to be taken serious… that cute, cuddly rally kid that wants to be a proper group C car when it is grown up, hmmmm?
srsly though, i somehow have no recollection at all of rallycars in GT2, and i start to wonder why… shared the savestate w/ brother, and maybe he did the rallying (and flipped each car instantly for $$$), aside from the 208, or it was, as you said, Escudo and never looking back. Those races are somewhat shrouded in mystery for me…
yeah @DaleNixon i actually wanted to ask but didn’t know how to phrase it (still don’t, really) but i was wondering if you could talk at all about the mental side (like, what’s going on in your head?) of doing an endurance race? i’ve done it only once, years back, and it was the closest i had come to meditation in a long time, very curious how it is for others. i’m playing through gt1 rn inspired by this thread and looking forward to diving more seriously into the enduros this time around.
Oh yeah for sure! I’m definitely down to talk about my mental state in an endurance race. I probably don’t have a whole lot of insightful stuff to say about it, but I can be an extremely patient person so that helps.
There are several mental phases and thoughts that pass through my head as I go through the race. I’ll just list them out stream of consciousness style.
Lap 1 of 90. I don’t HAVE to do this whole race. I can just get a feel for how long it’s going to take.
Lap 6 of 90. Wow this is somewhat of a commitment now. The tires are getting more in the yellow. I wonder if I can pit every 9 laps for 9 pits total? Maybe 10 for 8? Maybe 15 for 5? Do I even know where the pit lane is on this track?
Lap 25 of 90. Twenty more laps and I’m at the halfway point. Since i pitted at lap 11 and lap 22, I’ll have to decide when to take my last pit stop. Pitting on lap 88 just seems ridiculous.
Lap 48 of 90. We are past the halfway point now. Even still, there are save states. There is pausing. I can walk away from this and take a break any time I want, but it’s not so bad!
Lap 64 of 90. There’s no need to look at the tachometer at all really. I can shift by engine sound alone. Haha! I used to take this corner at the top of second gear. I can hit the apex perfectly now and come out of it at the top of third. My fastest lap is currently 1:13.624. I wonder if this lap will be faster than that? It certainly feels like my fastest. Fuck! There’s another car I’m about to lap again that I need to maneuver around. Hopefully they don’t screw up my lap time.
Lap 85 of 90. I wonder if I should be shifting into fourth before the final turn like I have been, or just hold third gear and let it bounce off the limiter once or twice before the braking zone? My fastest lap is 1:12.310. I wonder if I could get down to 1:11? I seem to be doing a very consistent 1:13.xxx on just about every lap now. I can almost always tell which sector ate that extra second or two. Five laps is basically one of the little challenge races. This endurance race is almost over. It’s odd, I’m kind of sad about that now! I want to keep on going!
Lap 90 of 90. I guess this is it. This lap won’t be a record setter, but we’ve easily won. I love Laguna Seca! I feel like I could drive this course with a blindfold on now. I don’t need to know my speed or what gear I’m in. I can tell by the feel of the car and the sound of the engine what’s going on.
That’s about it. I kinda break it up into pieces. I think about pit strategy, I think about corner entry points, speeds, and exits. I push a little harder in some corners and back off in others. I observe other cars’ behavior and try to mimic some of it if it seems like it would be advantageous. By the end it does feel like it went by really fast! I did have to save state the Laguna Seca 200 miles at lap 42 because I went to a friend’s house for dinner. I told them I was doing an endurance race in a racing game from 1999. They looked at me like I was insane.
3rd person interested in hearing what you have to report, esp. since you are used to doing short extreme driving in rallying, whereas endurance racing is a totally different beast (comparable to 100m sprint vs half marathon, both require specific techniques to succeed etc.pp)
let us know about your experience in the Twilight zone!
This thread made me want to race a shitbox around and I had forza horizon 4 installed so I started that up but all the races wanted me to use good cars and it just wasn’t as fun
Today and into tonight I do the Rome Circuit 2 Hours endurance race. The lap counter shows 99, but this race goes on until you hit two hours. This will take Edmund 93 laps. Rome is a tough circuit that is narrow and surrounded by walls. For a lot of turns on this course, you have to brake and turn before you even see the apex. All rumble strips must be utilized to keep as much speed as possible. There is a Toyota GT-One opponent here. That car makes me sweat. We really have to work early on to take and keep the lead. We win the race. This is the toughest endurance race yet.
no 93 lap race but it still feels like i defragmented my brain. wouldn’t have done it without you posting so positively about your experiences! this thread has consistently been such a treat to check in on and i appreciate you making it!
There’s probably no better vibe than 32-bit night racing through lighted tunnels! @Sakurina
Tonight we take care of the “All Night” Special Stage Route 5 endurance race. This is a gorgeous night course that is a joy to navigate quickly! Edmund is well-suited to handle the more challenging corners here. We almost never touch 6th gear (maybe I should have raised the final drive ratio), but Edmund’s power delivery is so smooth that I’d hate to mess with it.
This race doesn’t actually take all night. It’s fifty laps long and takes just over an hour to complete. Pitting every ten laps with hard tires seems like a good strategy. We only have to pit four times! We are able to take enough of a lead early on that I don’t worry too much about time lost in the pits. I’m somewhat relieved to see that there is not a single Toyota GT-One on the course tonight!
I’ve struggled here with very heavy AWD oversteer-prone Skylines. I appreciate that Edmund has the FR layout. We learn the intricate dance needed to navigate large and small hairpins and lovely sets of chicanes. By the end, we are ballet dancing around corners in the lovely glow of street lights. This is a videogame thing I will think about a lot.
The very long straight split in the middle by the starting line has a very abrupt left hairpin that will catch unstable vehicles off guard. Edmund has the aero to cope. A tap of the brakes and a downshift from 5th to 4th starts the very slight right hand entry, then more braking and a downshift to 3rd starts the left hand hairpin. Pulling this off successfully is satisfying every single time. We don’t do it perfectly on every lap, but it’s fun to try!
We finish first well ahead of the pack. That Opel Calibra has a really nice engine note every time we pass it
Our prize car is a Lancer Evo VI Rally Car. This is the third Evo rally car we’ve acquired. We call it Caroline. I may give Caroline a shot at some of the rally events later, but I think Shelley can handle the rest.
Tonight we’ll do the Trial Mountain 30 Laps endurance race. This is the only endurance race with a horsepower limit. It’s 295hp. I actually wish more endurance races had interesting limits. Going through the roster in the garage, I briefly consider taking Richard out, but Roxanne has 293hp. And I love RX-7s!
We first have to get Roxanne some racing shoes. We go for the usual hard compound racing tires. I know these 30 laps will be longer than what I’ve been doing, so I don’t want to get caught with suddenly worn softer tires halfway through a lap or something.
Going back to a street car is an interesting experience after all these laps in a race car. Everything moves in a sort of slow-motion. The car is more ponderous when changing direction or accelerating/braking. Not to say an RX-7 is slow, but a 295hp street car feels much different than a 600-700hp purpose built race car. In some ways the street car requires more skill.
There are FF cars on the track. This includes a four-door Focus wagon! Gotta love what you end up racing here sometimes! Roxanne dominates, but the other cars put in a pretty good show as nobody gets completely destroyed here. There are plenty of spots on this track to really screw up and lose a lead. Thankfully, we don’t do that! We take first! Pitting happens on laps 8, 16, and 23.
Our prize car for this race is a Denso Sard Supra. I never realized this car has the four cylinder engine from the WRC Celica! And a repositioned driver’s seat. They really put a lot of thought into every inch of this car! We name it Theo.
