Well, while keeping fingers crossed for TLoU on PC, I've been slaving away to get 3 more GRID 2019 events done. This time, each of these events had not one, but two highlights for me.
The first event is the Spy GT Supercup, where I used the Aston Martin Vantage GTE. The engine of this car sounds a bit mean and raspy, almost angry, but it sounds so cool when when revving down while decelerating. The races are at Barcelona Fountain Loop, Okutama GP Sprint Circuit B, Havana La Havana Vieja Sprint , and Shanhai The Bund Sprint. It was a treat for me to get my revenge and win the Barcelona Fountain Loop, after getting a miserable 10th in the truck class. So that was one highlight in this event. However I had yet another strange visual bug in the multiview replay. Even though I had no contact in the hotlap or race, in the replay my car showed as severely scratched with a huge buckle in the middle of the hood that made it look like it had been in a hard head on crash, despite zero visual damage to the front end, really weird. I swear this track tries to get me one way or the other. The other highlight was the absolutely gorgeous Shanghai The Bund Sprint at night, and it must have been Chinese New Year because the sky was lit up like an orgasm of fireworks. It's also a fairly long race and a challenging but fun track to drive.
The second event is the FA Asian Tour Part 2, which I again raced in the Aston Martin Vantage GTE, but this time with a different livery. I hope the paint job doesn't look too garish, but I felt something more colorful was appropriate for that venue. This event has just two A to B races, a downhill sprint at Mizu Mountain, and an uphill sprint at Tenshi Way, both at Okutama. The first I knew was going to be a blast right away, as the car's handling and bright clear weather made the track easy to handle. I managed to push myself hard in the race and wound up under 3:40. Little did I know the second track was going to be a real pain. That one took a couple days to finally beat, and I could only get a 4th place starting position. The problem was it was in the fog, which made the track surface far harder to handle. It also finishes on a pretty steep uphill grade with lots of switchbacks, and if you lose momentum, the AI can easily overtake you. This one was so hard I settled again like in the first truck race for whatever the track would give me as far as crossing lines, but I really only crossed a total of 3 times between the hotlap and the race. Needless to say this one was a relief to beat. So the highlights here were the sub 3:40 race time on the first round, and the sheer joy of driving that track, and the relief of beating the uphill sprint, with very light contact.
The third event is the 1960s Face Off Part 2 in the Ford GT40, at the Indianapolis Sport Circuit. Like the 1960s Face Off Part 1, it's of course pitted against 60s era Ferraris to commemorate Ford finally beating Ferrari at Le Mans. This event was by far the shortest of the 3, but it ended up taking more time than either of the others, maybe even combined. The combination of the GT40 being a bit harder to handle than the 330 P4 Ferrari in Part 1 of the 1960s Face Off, and the track being far harder to negotiate with a lot of tricky turns, made for a lot of frustration and some cussing fits. I was tempted to and actually tried it with full (lvl 5) vs the default lvl 3 assists for hard mode, and even the full (vs just corners) race line. The race line alone taught me so much though, and by then I started getting the feel of it into muscle memory, so tried it bare bones on default Hard. Once I found I was able to fairly consistently get a 5th place hotlap time, and get into first from there pretty quickly in the race, I knew it was within the realm of possibility to get in a win. Then I saw how erratically and strangely the AI drove once you passed them. There's a very tricky left/right jog just before the back straight, where the AI will often go off on the grass like Lawnmower Man, as if they suddenly acquired a gift to drive on that surface just as fast and precise. Suffice it to say, this one took many many tries. It had me up late, and throwing fits. I even left the game running minimized a few times through lunch, dinner, etc, after securing 5th place hotlaps, because the game not saving your hotlap time if you quit, and the game having crashed on me numerous times when restarting the race after 15 min to an hour or more of attempts, forced yet anther hotlap attempt. Today I celebrated the victory by thoroughly cleaning my PC. Needless to say, this one was one of the hardest I've faced yet, so despite all the agony I went through, it was such a relief to finally beat it, it felt like a true highlight.
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