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Paperback Rider
F2 racing is akin to riding a horse. Anybody can do it, but it
takes an equestrian to do it well. It doesn't take as much time,
talent, or commitment to get into F2 racing as F1 demands, and
you can start having some fun and winning some races long before
you could learn to get out of the pits without looping your F1
car. You'll be able to mix it up with the AIs at a much earlier
stage of the game, and be able to acquit yourself online without
embarrassing yourself or spending every waking moment working
on your sim-racing embouchure. Indeed, there is a thriving F2
community online, open to racers so diverse that it accomodates
everything from casual leagues where the only requirement is
that drivers be of Scotch-Irish descent (I kid you not) to deadly
serious Ayrton Sennas (or Adrian Neweys) of any denomination.
For online advice, I urge you to hook up with Alison Hine (like
me, one of GPL's beta testers), who has almost single-handedly
brought GPL to the peak of Internet-racing perfection that it
is. (Not to short-change Papy's Randy Cassidy, who made an equal
contribution.) Her VROC (Virtual Racers Online Connection; http://www.vroc.net/)
Web site is a mecca for online enthusiasts, and a burgeoning
bazaar of FAQs, tweaks, and downloads for anybody interested
in racing against other human opponents.
My specialty is advice on setups. I wrote the strategy guide,
"Four-Wheel Drift," that shipped with GPL, but I had
to finish it long before the game was released, and in the year
since then, a ton of new information has emerged from quotidian
game play and correspondence with other GPL fans, some of which
I now propose to share with you. |