Safety to the wind
It's a new year, and a whole new competition on "zakstunts.cjb.net" The opening track of 2002 is to be driven in the Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1, which is a medium-speed car with awful handling. In the Car Showroom in the game, it says that this car's top speed is 172mph. However, it is possible to make it go 229 mph, and maybe even faster, so don't believe everything they tell you. Once again, it looks like the track is built carefully for the given car. Every part of the track is made so that there is a way to get through quickly by the skin of your teeth. For an example, the jumps and the banked roads are laid out carefully so that you can press your car to the limits. You started on a straightway with water to each side, and the first thing you encounter are three jumps to get you up in gears. Already at this early point, you realise that automatic transmission is no good, because if you use that, you will land on the ground in front of the banked road with a much lesser amount of revolutions per minute, and thus drive the whole banked road at a speed of about 145mph, which is very much very much lower than the 195mph you can achieve with manual transmission. So you drive through the banked road, and suddenly you see a terrifying banked corner ahead that goes to the right (the road you drive on is facing left) This is a typical scene in a fast track. You have keep your speed and survive through the corner, which is very hard. I don't think it's possible in this track to get through it without slowing down, but you can still keep a decent speed. The next part is the hardest and most important part of the track. You jump over a river, come down into a tunnel, and continue towards a loop. Keep your speed. Now when you come to the next jump, which is followed by another, you cannot continue to go straight forward, because if you do, you will have to slow down to a near standstill. So you have to fight up some courage, and (without braking) turn your car while going up towards the jump so that you fly in a slightly different direction, to the right of the jumps. Then you have to be careful to meet the road again at the right angle and the right speed. This takes a lot of replay loading. It is also the kind of place where you don't know if you've done it perfectly, because even though you come out with a good time, you could almost always get lucky in some way and do it even better. This place marks the end of the fast part of the track. When you have met with the road again, you see the first regular corner in the track, followed by two slalom roads that are not such a big challenge, but of course you have to be careful, since the Corvette's handling is worse than the average of the Stunts cars. After those, you go through a 180 grade corner that tears very much at your speed. Your car screeches and the digital speedometer (Why is the Corvette the only car that has that?) makes you too aware that your speed is dropping. Struggling to simultaneously keep your speed and stay on the track, you go up a hill and jump out on a bridge. In this part, your driving skills are more important than your stunt skills. You encounter three bridge corners in a row, which is certainly not easy in the hardly-controllable Corvette. At this point I've found that it is better to go through the corners at a high speed and a very annoying noise coming out of your speakers than to brake down and drive safely through them.
You come down from the bridge and the last problem in the track is a sharp corner in the middle of the water. You have to slow down here, or you'll drown. Then you can finally drive across the finish line, and feel very relieved. This is a track that demands precision, guts and perfectionism (and of course skills, but any track demands that) Precision because you need it to time the first part of the track exactly right and save the very important seconds that can be gained by keeping speed through the jumps and banked roads. Guts because you have to be creative and dare to do things the hard but faster way. Perfectionism because if you settle for safe and slow solutions, you will never get anywhere. You have to throw safety to the wind in this track. Remember to save your replay. As I mentioned, this is a very fast track, at least the first part of it. Your average speed lies around 115mph, which is 68,6% of the top speed (according to the game). That is very high compared to ZCT9 where the average speed was about 50% of the top speed. The Corvette was never made for fast tracks with a lot of corners like this one, because it can go fast, but it very hard to handle. I tested and compared it to some of the other cars and found that it actually has the worst handling in the game in fast tracks, together with the Ferrari GTO. But who says it should be easy? The track has a strange thing to it. There is a long road that leads from the river in the middle of the track to right before the first regular corner. There is no "legal" way to get onto it, and if you try to skip over to it from the main road, you get penalty time. Who knows what to use it for? There is one thing that leaves much room for improvement in this track. Scenery! I miss some tall buildings and some of my own (Joe's) bars, or whatever it is. I think scenery, buildings and plants, makes a good atmosphere in a track, which makes it a pleasure to drive. But apart from that, I can't complain. I suspect we get a winning time around 1.21 or 1.22, but those newbies keep surprising me :-) Here are some tips for the track. I don't guarantee for the quality of them since someone might find a better way to drive the track: Use manual transmission, throw safety to the wind, don't stick rigidly to the road, push your car to the limits, and finally:

Aim high, but DON'T settle for less :-) --Bonzai Joe