DiRT Rally - Codemasters' early access PC rally game

A decent run on the Mid-Casual (just one rollover on the Welsh night stage) has convinced me that I should commit to running the full Dirt Monthly rally this weekend.

It’s kit cars, of which I own none, but they’re practically giving them away at just a shy over $100k. February’s monthly was a total disaster after crashing out on the first stage in Monte Carlo with terminal damage despite having driven a perfectly clean race up until that point (a few corners from the line), so I’ll be on my best behaviour this time around.

All I know is that it starts off with six stages in Finland so…I might find myself with a lot of free non-Dirt Rally time by midday Saturday… :)

With about 2 hours to go, here’s the mid-casual times for the week:

Damn, there are just not enough hours in a day. Between being hooked on Grim Dawn and other lame excuses my driving time is way down.

Hopefully TundraToad Racing ™ will be back on the track soon.

You still have plenty of points in the Mid-Casual league TundraToad. And remember, this week, it’s the same tracks as last week, but instead of a 2011 Subaru WRX, you drive a 2007 Ford Focus RS instead.

Mid-Casual in the Focus 07 is a lot of fun - car feels a more nimble than the Impreza and encourages you to push just that little bit harder. As a result I lost three tyres over the eight stages, had one massive off which earned a time penalty, and endured countless spins which cost a fair amount of time cumulatively.

The first two stages in Wales were run at a good clip but it tails off on the third, and the fourth was woeful. Germany was just a mess as I over-cooked a few simple bends trying to claw back the lost time.

Should be a pretty competitive round this week. :)

And now, with eight stages of warmup under my belt, I began my assault on the monthly challenge. Let’s hope I’m not back posting here in less than 90 mins…

Four nights left to get in your times for the casual league/Group A Cup! Right now it’s just me (in second) and Octavious.

Drove into the service area following just the fourth stage of the monthly event and the crew were greeted with this:

Needless to say they were not impressed despite me pointing out that I’d made some weight-savings by using the spare tyre on two of the stages.

At this stage I’m not sure the car will even make it through the entire rally. It was making a terrible sound on stage six - a banshee-like whine accompanied me through the rolling countryside despite my efforts to silence it with repeated crunching landings. I currently sit ~300th but I think that’s only because of the limited number of entries at this early stage.

Most disappointingly you can only drive the first six stages now - I’m guessing the rest ‘unlock’ next week?

Would recommend everyone give it a go. The kit cars are like driving in slo-mo, although you still need to show some self-restraint as the Finnish hills are a killer…

I think the 2 gigantic stages might be scaring people off. I must admit that I was mighty worn out by the end. :)

I didn’t do it yet because I’m scared of Finland.

There was a finland run that I did about two weeks ago, where I wasn’t scared. It was the only time I’d done Finland without fear, and I did really well. On that run I couldn’t understand what there was to fear about Finland. Why was I such a baby about Finland? I didn’t understand. And then we had that run with the Mini Countryman in the mid-casual league through Finland, and I found out why I was such a big baby. I’m deathly afraid of Finland again, and I can’t understand how to make the fear go away again.

There’s a weekly challenge this week in Finland, in 2010 cars. There’s a monthly challenge in FWD Kit cars that LedShok described above. And there’s the Casual league in Group A cars that Octavious and Fishbreath mentioned. All 3 in Finland, so I thought I’d better get started. I started with the casual league, since it has restarts.

It was all going so well. I was still fearful, but I was getting over it. And then I went over that big jump, the one with the arch over it. I thought the jump went well, stayed in the middle and landed okay. And then my co-driver said “rear right puncture”. Oh shit. I didn’t even have time to react, because there’s a couple of more jumps straight after that. I tried to stay in the middle, but the rear left puncture was pushing me to the right, and I was mostly flying through the air so I couldn’t correct it. Boom. Into a tree, instant terminal damage.

I’m not going to get over that fear any time soon.

I decided to join LedShok in the monthly challenge. I figure if I’m going to tackle Finland, the FWD cars are the best way to ease into the task.

I only really messed up big on the third leg, where I lost my front left tire right at the start of the long leg. So for the next 8 minutes, I was fighting with the car to keep it on the road, with only one wheel to really propel me forward. Surprisingly, the car wasn’t that hard to drive. It wasn’t near as bad when you pop a rear tire in a 4WD car. Or when you lose a rear tire in a RWD, when it’s basically just game over. Here I was able to do the whole thing without too much stress.

In the end, I ended up 21 seconds ahead of LedShok. He’s currently in place 340, and I’m 311, but that will change as more people attempt the monthly during March. Next week’s section is in Sweden, which I still suck at, but I’m looking forward to doing it in the FWD car. It’s like DiRT Rally on training wheels! Wheeeeee!

Had a crack at the ‘hot-lapping’ Casual league in Finland. The results were…amusing:

That said, I managed 65th and 25th all-time on a couple of the stages, so pretty satisfying all up.

That second video is crazy. You couldn’t do that on purpose in a 100 tries if you were actually trying to hit the archway over the jump. But you hit it and you hit it hard.

I also tried the Casual League again this morning. I didn’t complete the first stage this time either. Car got destroyed again. It’s always in a different spot, this death. I need an offering at the alter of the Gods of good driving before I try it again this weekend.

It occurred to me today as I was driving this course, “hey look, these are people’s houses; they live here, and have to drive this twisty hill-filled gravel road every day to get out of this neighbourhood”.

edit: can’t embeed .webm links, and the embeddable .gif is slooooooow

Could you avoid those cows without restarts?

I saw a video of this running in an Oculus. IS that natively supported, or some hack?

Seems like it would work really well, if you had the power to drive it.

Wow, that driver pulled off an amazing move there. That calf would have been a goner.

Yep, world champion Sebastian Ogier (same guy who pulled off the awesome save at the Swedish rally a few weeks back - I posted a link upthread).

I seem to recall that the cows were still there when the next guy on the road got to that point (Ogier’s teammate). The farmer mustn’t be a VW fan… :-)

My Mid-Casual time is in. I was less than two minutes slower than ledShok, which averages to 15 seconds per stage, which is better than I expected. I might have been closer, too, except I made some dumb mistakes on two of the four German stages—one big off and time penalty, and one jumped start.

As for the car, it’s an interesting one: feels much faster than the Subaru to me, but comparatively, the brakes are horrid. I ended up sideways and stopped in a lot of hairpins after emergency handbrake pulls. My times were also much faster than they were in the Subaru, which seems to reinforce my impression that I’m a Ford man; I just wish this one stopped a little better.

Exciting times in the Qt3 Casual league as we near the end of this event. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be exploring the snowy byways of Finland, otherwise known as not my kind of courses.

Casual league, phew, I finished somehow. That was really cool. Punishing, but cool. I like how on the second last course, I had the run of my life, thinking I’ve got to have beaten everyone in the league. And LedShok beat me by a lot, and had the 25th best time in the world!!! And RobC04 was less than a second behind me, so he had a hell of a run there too.

Overall I was pretty happy with the Group A cars in Finland. A whole lot more controllable than the Mini-Countryman in Finland.

Every once in a while I can put together a good run :-)

I really messed up consistently with the mid-casual this week in Wales. The Ford may be more nimble than the 2011 R4 Impreza, but it’s also easier to mess up the run as a result. But once I was in the German stages, I did much better. The Ford is just such a pleasure to drive on the asphalt. I still messed up a little bit on each track, but I was already so far behind LedShok because of Wales that I didn’t have a hope of catching up. But I had 3 personal bests in the German section, so I was pretty happy.