Today brings the second half of the Arcade Time Trials. I'm looking forward to some challenging runs in some decent equipment, and ultimately to pick up that shiny new Panoz Esperante for career mode..

Trial 6 | Apricot Hill Raceway | Castrol Tom's Supra JGTC

Now THIS is the supremely addictive GT3 I remember! Being the first run of the night, I started out just feeling my way around the technical Apricot Hill, rolling in for a third placed 1'20 first time through. Pretty soon I began to feel more at home and racked up a first placed 1'18, only a couple tenths below the record. Right then I realised there was a LOT more time to be saved and I set to the task. Lap times fell repeatedly for quite a few runs before they began to bunch up in the high 1'16's. GT fever had struck and I lost count of the laps after that point, but soon eoungh I was either chasing my ghost all the way home or dropping a wheel off the kerb and failing. Time to call it quits.. for now. There's definitely another 0.5sec at least to be shaved here.

Record: 1'18.558
My Time: 1'16.313

Trial 7 | Grand Valley Speedway | Castrol Mugen NSX JGTC

First place, first lap. Sweet. But a high 1'48 just wasn't gonna satisfy me tonight. A second run stripped just over a second off my time, and the third took me down into the 1'46's with a fairly tidy run. There's still some room to move, but I'd better get cracking if I'm to get any decent sleep. Besides, I always found MR cars just a trifle, er.. dull.

Record: 1'49.453
My Time: 1'46.984

Trial 8 | Swiss Alps | Impreza Rally Car Prototype

Woot, another first place on the first lap. Gotta admit I've spent a lot of time at Swiss Alps - I used the track once to see if there was any real difference between the GT3 rally cars, and ran countless laps at Swiss Alps in the testing. As it turns out, there's near to naff all difference between any of them, save perhaps for poorer starts from the FF Xsara. Anyways, I wasn't gonna settle for a measly 0.3 sec below the record, so I ran a couple more laps and dropped another 1.5 sec. Good enough.

Record: 1'23.703
My Time: 1'21.978

Trial 9 | Tahiti Maze | Lancer Evolution VII Rally Car Prototype

Hmm, I remember this being a bit of a toughy. I guess that stems from there being a bunch of hairpins that'll fail you if you're too hot and smack the wall. Generally I quite like the Maze, but for licences and time trials, let's face it, she's a bit of a bugger. Nonetheless, I'm pressing on. First run yields a third place in the 2'02 area, quickly followed by a run just a smidge over 2'00 flat. Quite a few missed runs later I realised I need to actually slow down for the hairpins and drive through them rather than my usual balls-to-the-wall powersliding approach and notch up a first place run. Funny, I really don't feel like bettering that one right now.

Record: 1'59.964
My Time: 1'59.432

Trial 10 | Complex String | Ruf RGT

Right. The previous nine runs were simply the warmup to this, undoubtedly the most technically challenging course in the game, Individual sections alone aren't so daunting, but then you need to string them all together successfully in a run lasting up to five minutes, you're gonna get a lot of missed runs. And that, I did. When I finally did manage to cross the finish line for the first time, I'd pulled down a respectable third place somewhere in the 4'54 range. Not bad, only five seconds to find. Forty-five minutes later, and despite gaining up to 4 sec on my ghost by the straight beyond the expanding loops, I still hadn't finished a second lap, and I'm running outta time for the night. I figure it's a good time to take a break and pick it up again tomorrow. The wonder lap will surely come then.

Edit: Back for another round, I was soon back into the swing and actually finishing laps. The first of these was a 4'50, stripping 4sec from the previous night's time and less than a second off the record. A few more tries and it was done, crossing the line well ahead of my ghost, and the record. I gotta say here that there's still plenty in this track, at least another second, if not more. Can't say I'm feeling much like making another run though!

Record: 4'49.869
My Time: 4'48.164

And there she is - what a beaut! A brand new Panoz Esperante GTR-1 in my career garage, potentially ready to totally blitz the Beginner and Amateur League competition. But meh, where's the fun in that? To be honest, I'm none too sure exactly what I'm going to do with this car, perhaps sell it and give myself a nice cash boost to start the career off right. For now I think I'll just hang on to it and head to the Licence Tests.

Back to Time Trials Part 1 | On to B Licence Tests