FH5, Series 40, Week 4

I started the week with 50 Years of Porsche to get my hands on the 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo S. I went with the 2023 911 GT3 RS. Not the best driving in Reservorio, which is not a track I like. Marginally less irritating than Panorámica. Línea Costera went well enough, but as I’ve said before, I’ve never really gelled with these new sprint races. Sound win round Mulegé. The new car wins bonus points for having tunable third-party aero. Tuning 2/9, but if you shorten the gears overall, the top speed of the car increases. Perks are all right, but include the head-to-head one, which you have to unlock if you want the FP perk.

There were no real issues with the Ariel Atom in the weekly challenge.

I one-shotted all three PR stunts on the mainland. One one-third good SWS and the other two were rubbish.

The word on the street has been that the treasure hunt was bugged, but I managed to complete it in my S2 998 F40 Competizione.

Eventlab (1). Festival High Speed Circuit. This was a sort of circuitous version of the Horizon Festival Circuit. Not terrible, but the sort of track which requires more practice.

Eventlab (2). Another trip to Eventlab Island and the small, inoffensive Mirage Raceway. I assume that I got dumped in a stock Caterham for it, hence the going was a little ropey in places. One-third very good SWS.

I hear that lowering the ray tracing setting fixes the bug that causes the game to crash when you take a picture in a race. Mine was set to Ultra. I switched it off. As I was driving round afterwards, I couldn’t even tell the difference, although I’m now wondering whether it only becomes noticeable after restarting the game.

I went drifting for the HA, but the other option, which I spotted too late, was wreckage skills.

I one-shotted the HW PR stunt for a one-third very good SWS.

Unfortunately, the RA PR stunt stuck two fingers up to my attempt to one-shot all the PR stunts this week. The drift zone was the less annoying twisty one.

With all this done, I only needed a few more points to unlock the Backstage Pass and opted to do the other seasonal championship, Half a Mil, in the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale, which was a sound choice in all three races. However, that gave me my fourth 2012 Nissan GT-R Black Edition.

As for the Trial, I’m still debating it, but don’t think I’ll bother as I don’t need another Lexus LFA and am not fond of Fuera del Camino at the best of times. I did some practice in the Opel Manta after some awful races in the Colin McRae Ford Focus (great car stock, but the handling goes out the window faster than a randy nun’s knickers when it’s upgraded) that suggested it might be a decent choice.

I might do the Horizon Open, but probably not because the prize is a stupid phrase that I probably have already.

As for Series 41, I’ll take a guess that something will be posted on the forums tomorrow and, I think, via the in-game messages. We could end up with a repeat screening of previous Decembers, but I hope we might be spared gifting unwanted cars to each other to unlock some exclusive car.

The whole idea of sending cars to random players rapidly got annoying because with rare exceptions, such cars are likely to be rather naff. While I may send a message telling the sender that “I’ll look after it”, I really mean that I’m going to delete it, which is what, my dear sir, you ought to have done with the car in the first place. I predict at least one Lexus LFA in my future whether I do the Trial or not.