NAGT Promo

Qualifying went quite well. I didn't expect to be that far up the grid. I suspect some people must have had traffic issues or otherwise. Got a good launch and found myself in seconds behind Tristan at T1. The first 15 minutes were going exceedingly well as I created a 3-4 second lead on Dennis and kept it steady.

Suddenly, coming off the last turn into the front-straight to the S/F, my whole screen went black and my audio froze like it was crashed. In the past, I've seen it come back to life, and since I had a long straight stretch, I just kept the wheel straight and got off the gas. Luck would have it that it returned (partially) by the end of the straight, though unfortunately, Dennis was well past me by the time my vision had returned. What's more is my vision, while returned, had been turned into ACID VISION! Must have been a video card issue with heat or something because the last 30 minutes or so of the race my whole track was covered with screwy polygons. The sky and surrounding textures had been replaced with towers of ice shooting into the sky. The cars around me, if they weren't gigantic messes of polygons, had spears coming out of the headlights and huge flat panels jutting out of the quarterpanels. The track surface was replaced with random textures like Mobil 1 logos and stuff. Since I knew the track pretty well and had Dennis as a guide, I decided to stay in it since it was a fun run. I held it together pretty good but whenever cars were close to me, the shadow of the car was about the diameter of 5 or 6 cars and so the whole region would be a massive black hole I was seemingly driving on. I made a few mistakes along the way, as a result, and allowed Les to reel me in close enough that his shadow started to swallow me up from behind. With one lap to go, coming out of the hairpin complex, I took too much grass (or what looked to me like ice cream) and spun into the wall resigning me to a 4th place finish.

Unfortunate break, but I had some fun along the way nontheless. It was good practice to finally get a solid stint out of the heat cycle tyres. They were not great at the end, but if I was careful, I could manage it.

Amazing run Tristan. It must be boring being that fast without anyone on the track to challenge you, though.

That was a lot of fun. The Volvo practically drives itself. I wasn't fast, but I was rattling off consistent laps even on crap tires. Speaking of which, my fronts were red with 13 minutes to go, which caused me to panic slightly and drive into the grass, losing probably 3 seconds.

I tried as much as I could to hold off Erickson & Watson at the end, especially there in the last turn, but holy cow the Viper just closes in so fast. I tried to fight back with a real low line in 17 but couldn't hold the exit and he went back by.

I wasn't sure if I loved the NAGT at first, and I'm still not sure if I do, but they do make for a heck of a fun run- and they look great! It'll be fun to run with 'em in Grand Am.

Weird. I just noticed this was an independent event and not an exhibition. Was that intended?