With a Movement Control Order in effect where I live, the whole country's been forced to work from home, which has some unexpected side benefits. In between answering emails, dialling in conference calls and doing actual work, I decided to sneak in some practice laps at in preparation for Race C this week. And since I can't leave the house or drive for a couple more weeks, I'll let myself go in VR.
My eagerness to jump back into Daily Races while under partial lockdown could have something to do with binging Drive To Survive Season 2 on Netflix. The first job I ever wanted when I was a kid was a racing driver, and this show lets me live out my race driver fantasies vicariously. With the help of GT Sport and PSVR, of course.
I usually try to get the hang of a track/car combo in VR first, where hot-lapping alone is sublime. VR obviously allows a greater sense of depth, and sighting corners feels really natural. This is especially useful in Fuji, where the sequence of the last 2 corners in the Herman Tilke redesign have weirdly-placed apexes that aren't where you think they should be. This closely resembles that of Turn 13 and 14 of my home track, Sepang, which Tilke also designed.
After a conference call, I fired up the PS4 and strapped myself in, opting for the 2016 GT-R and the burnt orange skies of morning sunrise at Fuji. For the first couple of shakedown laps, I only managed ~1:34 with BB at +1. I fiddled with the BB dial on my wheel, but the problem with VR is that a lot of the HUD is gone, along with the BB indicator. You're only left with the gear indicator, shift lights and best lap in the reduced HUD. I pitted, dialled in BB +3, and headed back out. Spun the car under trailbraking into Turn 1. Dialled it back to +2...much better. There's enough bite and rotation on turn in, with some tyre screech as the rear comes around if you go in too hot into Turns 1 and 8. And it does make me a bit worried about tyre wear in actual race conditions. But the late braking and rotation it allows might well be worth it.
Real life got in the way, so I had to jack myself out of VR and attend to things that allow me to pay for food and this hobby (T-LCM pedals, here I come!!). After a couple more hours of emails, calls, making dinner with the wifey and doing the dishes, I jacked in for another go. With another half hour of VR hot-lapping I managed 1:32.882. It's 3 seconds off the top Asian region time, which is an improvement for me. I'm usually off by about 4 seconds, and currently ranked B/B.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to dip into 1:31s with a couple more days of practice. I'm pretty time-poor, and I need lots of practice and repetition to build up muscle memory and consistency to screw up less in actual races. I'll jump into the races on Thursday or Friday and see if I can break 20,000 DR points this week. Satisfied with my first shakedown, I made livery tweaks to the decals of my imaginary sponsors and took some photos. Man, I love this game...
. (Remember some of the other races in the past , like the RE Amemyia?)
). I think there's been ~380 Daily Race races since it switched back to being weekly again, so we're talking about somewhere in the region of 99.5% of DR having no permitted tuning.
. I had a couple great ones, but this one guy couldn’t hold a line to save his life 
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