FH5, The GMA T.50

The first of the Secret Santa cars, the GMA T.50, got unlocked a couple of days ago.

I gave it a spin yesterday, but got tangled up in annoying affairs of state, which delayed me posting some thoughts about the car until today.

655hp, but only 1,017kg. S2 936. Tuning 6/9, which is good, but exclude gears, aero and diff. The only engine upgrade is twin turbos (which send it to 902hp). It also has down force and V Max modes, which make a difference of about 17kmh (347 ~ 365kmh).

Car masteries are actually not bad and include a 200% race bonus. I even got an excellent wheel spin out of it.

I’ve been doing a lot of Rivals in Línea Costera recently mainly for testing purposes and mainly because it’s one of those awful races with an irritating turn one where the drivatars are maximally painful. I managed 02:27.667 in the stock T.50 in down-force mode. I tuned what could be tuned stock and managed to get the time down to 02:21.789 – eventually. Even though the car is quite grippy, it’s grippiest through broad, sweeping turns. The twistier sections can be a pain to negotiate, although most of the time, I was thumping into walls because I was turning in too late and too fast.

After that I added gears, diff and slick tyres, which got me down to 02:16.156, but I feel that aero would’ve helped for the reasons I outlined above.

I also went up to the HW Goliath where aero was wholly unnecessary and completed three laps in the upgraded config in 15:33.082. As I said in an earlier post, I managed the race in just under 15 minutes in the Czinger.

I haven’t tried it AWD, but wonder whether I might be disappointed as I’ve been disappointed with other cars when I’ve tried the same recently. RWD can be a pain on a keyboard (launch especially; more powerful cars can be a handful), sharp turns are a pain on a keyboard (twitchy, skittish, contrary handling), but I appreciate the better manoeuvrability.

Overall, the T.50 is all right, being worthy of an occasional outing.