It was a frustrating day to start on the GTP account. At the refreshed Tsukuba Sunday Cup Classic, which kicked off this week's Weekly Challenges, the Honda Beat doesn't quite have the speed at Tsukuba to beat either of the Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint Veloces or the lead Volkswagen Golf I GTI, especially if they start near the front. I tried my go-to Giulia Sprint and the Golf I GTI, only to have Gallo's Veloce start from 3rd each time and have enough speed. I finally resorted to the Toyota Sprinter Trueno, with multiple resets to try to get a competitive race, and the closest I got was the other Giulia Veloce starting in 3rd, and running notably slower than Gallo did in earlier races. Speaking of Gallo, he only climbed 1 position that race, while I got a 4.5 second win in 3:50.6. At least there wasn't a DST bug affecting the Weekly Challenge prices
Running the Nismo 400R at the Mount Panorama Japanese 4WD Challenge is overkill, at least on normal difficulty. It took only 5:08 to get a 6.5-second win.
The game agreed with that assessment, dumping a 3-star Wheel of Despair in my lap. At least the prize wasn't totally worthless; it was a Tundra, which was dumped for 16,820 Cr.
As I had missed the news the 2014 Audi TTS Coupe was an engine-swap candidate, and I had a few R8 engines sitting around, I bought one and put the R8 engine in it in case I needed the boost at the Nurburgring special event. It was a good thing as none of the TTs/TTS's had quite enough juice stock. Even though the 2014 is an evil-handling car, the engine swap just did the trick, getting a clean 0.5-second win in 5:08.5.
I was getting a bit tired by the time the first repeated Weekly Challenge event, Trial Mountain American Clubman Cup (seen last month) came up. It took a few restarts, but a stock Chevrolet Corvette C8 got the clean 5.6-second win in 10:54.2.
I timed my pit stops just right in the Chevrolet Corvette Gr.3 at the High Speed Ring WTC 800. I just beat the rain in on lap 7, putting on intermediate tires and filling it up, then came back down for fuel and RH tires on lap 15. I still had to pass Jones and her 2018 Nissan GT-R on lap 19, but she messed up her 2nd stop, keeping intermediates on and not taking enough fuel. The 25:38 finish was good for a 19-second win over Miyazono in the Subaru BRZ and Jones.
Nearly 51 minutes and required tuning for a measly 817,500 Cr. plus the 2nd-lowest-showing/lowest-possible 100,000 Cr. from the 5-star challenge Wheel of Despair isn't ideal. The back of the worksheet math says that is the 3rd-worst guaranteed Cr./hour payoff of the 19 challenges so far.
I decided to, as usual, overpower the Weekly Challenges on the Plus account as follows:
- Tsukuba Sunday Cup Classic in 3:29 with a Lamborghini Countach LP400
- Mount Panorama Japanese 4WD Challenge in 4:47 with a Nissan Concept 2020 VGT
- Nurburgring Special Event in 5:06 with a @praiano63-tuned 2009 Audi TTS
- Trial Mountain American Clubman Cup in 9:07 with a Dodge Tomahawk S
- High Speed Ring WTC 800 in 22:34 with a 2008 Nissan GT-R GT500 on a more-or-less dry run
As the racing spilled over to Saturday, I ended up with two workout tickets in addition to the weekly challenge ticket. The all-cash Weekly Challenge 5-star Wheel of Despair gave the middle-showing/lowest-possible 100,000 Cr., the all-cash Friday workout 5-star Wheel of Despair did the same, and the Saturday 4-star ticket gave a second Peugeot RCZ Gr.3 Road Car (hung onto for tuning purposes).