Ok, maybe you’re right. Strop, 2 will fit perfectly.
EDIT: I was seeing things upside down… like: bigger the number less the madness… 
[quote=“Manche”]
To avoid the Madhouse :3
and by the way…
youtube.com/watch?v=uGHsxMqpL0c
I see many BSLL racers there after is all over[/quote]
Anthrax is awesome!!
[Ooc] I would love to write something up about the presenters reviewing my car, but I’m working something like 28 of the next 48 hours so I’m going to have to pass on this one.
Basic idea dailymotion.com/video/x1lckc_top-gear-lamborghini-diablo-test-dr_auto
[ooc]There’s been a great response to the opportunity to write the Top Gear hosts checking out your cars. In the interests of time, I will forge ahead with the next set of results, but I would still encourage people submit any material on this even afterwards, as I will actually go back to my original post and edit that, and eventually all the material will be archived. The posting of the next results is going to take me a little time, so I would say one more day and they’ll be up.
[quote=“07CobaltGirl”]
[quote=“strop”]Considering everything, your existence is actually rather refreshing. I think the breakdown of characters here is approximately as follows:
Boy scouts: 5
A little bit loose: 13
Party animals: 8
Completely bonkers: 2[/quote]
[OOC]
I am totally Scout material!!!
[BIC] Kristina watched the TG cast arrive. One of her favorite shows, despite Captain Slow and Clarkson being a part of it. Her car would not impress either of them. It was American built. In fact, it would downright soil both of their pants by Willson. Richard, on the other hand, was her car’s type, though he wouldn’t recognize it until he drove it. It was an American car which he loved. It was a supercar engine tuned beyond belief and turbocharged. And it was virtually undrivable! After the segments were completed, she approached him.
“I love you!,” she exclaimed. “I apreciate your own skill evaluation. Your infantile disregard for obvious danger until it finally presents itself. And you’re just plain beautiful.” She pulled him to her, layed a kiss on him so his wife would be jealous, and then tossed him over her shoulder in a Fireman’s Carry. Of course he screamed about her being a crazy bitch while kicking his feet and flailing his arms about wildly. She took him to the drivers seat of the E30 and dropped him into the seat. “I’m going to pay you to drive this thing like you stole it. No cameras. No commentary. Of course that is entirely your choice.”
The Hamster looked up at the dirty blonde, still clad in full leathers and combat boots. “Who in the bloody hell are you? And what do you mean, ‘Pay me’?”
“I am Kristina Swanson, the owner of Swanson Motorsports Engineering in Atlanta, Georgia. I built this beast you’re sitting in.” She smirked. His eyes actually got wider, if that were even possible. “I am offering you 100k€ to make 15 laps on this. Start slow and learn the car. Every sequential lap has to be faster or you’ll only get 1k€ and it will be over. What do you say?”
Richard looked her as if she were mad (which she was), thought a moment, and began to reply. As he started to speak, Clarkson spoke up instead. “You’ve GOT to do it, and on camera!” A classic Clarkson shit-eating grin followed. Hamster agreed, and they all laughed.
[OOC] I will finish this in a bit. Feeling a little rough and attempting this on an iPhone, which took a little over an hour. 
[/quote]
[OOC] OK, I will try to finish this. Head isn’t so much in it, but at least I’m home with a laptop again. Still have stitches and a tube in my belly for drainage, so it hurts a lot to sit up.
[BIC]
“Well let’s see what we have to work with. Classic style E30, M3. American V8? Those are certainly some small tires if it is and associated with this group.” Hamster lifted the hood and found motor at ever corner of the bay and spotting the head cover fins still saying “CORVETTE”. “Is this a Corvette LS7? With twin turbos too. Definitely a scary proposition in this tiny 3 series.”
“Rear wheel drive still, too, and rolling on 275/30-16 front and 305/30-16 rears. No driver assists, not even power brakes. Nothing but the driver, the car, and the road. The way driving was meant to be!” Kristina started spouting off the cars specs and characteristics. “M22 Muncie 4 speed transmission, ceramic slotted 10.5” rotors on all corners, and…" Captain Slow spoke with a laugh in his voice.
“1260 horsepower to those tiny wheels. You’ll never be able to drive this car.”
“I drove it halfway across the US, and in a few other places around the world already. The car is 100% legal, passes US emissions, is legally registered in the US, as indicated by my custom Georgia license plate “LNUXGRL”, and is drivable!”
Hammond spoke up again. “So, you’re going to pay me 100k if I can drive this 15 laps and constantly go faster each time around?”
“Yes, that is the deal. The only catch is, your first lap has to beat 1:37. In other words, you can’t go slower than the Porsche 986 Boxster on your first lap, which should be a breeze since the even the M3 Evolution is faster than the 986. This car is completely capable of reaching 240 mph, as proven by me. On this track, my estimates are you should be able to reach around 140mph, despite the inevitable wheel-spin.”
Clarkson was laughing still as Hammond took off for the first lap. He looked nervous as he inched up to the line, and the constant badgering from Clarkson hadn’t helped any. A girlish scream could be imagined from the face of Richard Hammond on camera, though it was completely drowned out by the roar of the massive engine and turbo whine, accompanied by tire squealing completely through 1st and 2nd as the car headed into Wilson. Heavy braking was required to manage through the first real turn, and after rounding Chicago, Hammond rocketed the car toward Hammerhead, reaching 210km/h before braking again in a power-slide all the way around it. He managed to maintain control exiting, and powered it to Follow-Through, but had to lift as the power was absolutely more than the tires could take from there through Bentley, where the car actually got all 4 wheels off the tarmac before bouncing back on and into Second-To-Last where the brakes were once again overworked. He chopped the grass heading into Gambon, clipped the inside grass on the corner, and was off the track again at the finish.
“I’ve got this,” Hammond’s lips read on camera, as he continued into lap 2. His lap 1 time registered 1:36.59, and now he had a rolling start hitting Crooner at well over 150km/h. He spun out completely in Wilson. A nearly full 360, and exited the curve half off the track before rounding Chicago quite short, which hurt the speed. He only reached 195km/h before braking into Hammerhead the 2nd time, and managed a full power-slide through with a near perfect exit. It appeared he was getting the hang of it. He managed no-lift all the way through Follow-Through and Bentley, kept it on the track at Second-To-Last, and actually only barely clipped the inside of Gambon. Time, 1:35.23, and he launched back into lap 3.
Laps 3-12 were similar, spin-outs and all, with incremental increases. Lap13 finished in 1:31.08 and the excitement of taming the E30 beast was written all over his face. Hammond managed to finish all 15 laps, meeting the conditions, and a final time of 1:30.05, as he plotted off the track after the last rounding of Gambon, nearly hitting the sign before finally stopping. The door flew open and a thankful Hamster rolled out onto the ground grasping at the grass around him. “I did it! I bloody did it!”
Kristina walked over and dropped a duffel back next to Hammond’s limp figure. “Thanks, hon,” she said in a congratulatory tone, as she got in the car, and drove it back to the rest of the group.
[OOC] I got tired at the end, so I just hurried it along.
Wow, that was an unusual event, Hammond surely is a happy little man!
And get better soon Kristina! 
—Queue Top Gear Intro Theme—
“Tonight, on Top Gear…”
“I drive a Baltazar…” – “OH MY GOD! I THINK I LEFT MY SKULL AT THE START LINE! HOW THE HELL DO YOU GET 2000 HP IN AN ESTATE?!” —
“James drives a Centarui” – "As you can expect, I have done this properly. I have chosen the Vindicator. Its quiet, it’s comfortable, it’s refined. It’s of a different era. THIS IS TOO DAMN FAST! WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GO THIS FAST IN THIS CAR?
“Richard drivers a Normandy” – “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Boom
I’m actually thinking this is the kind of stuff they would make a DVD special out of. There’s easily enough material for over an hour of footage.
[OOC] Being an arrogant American who cares not much about how the rest of the world lives and dies (/stereotype), it is really hard for me to give words to others, especially those from other countries. So, there isn’t much talking. I tried to capture the personalities of those speaking as best I could. I don’t really dislike Clarkson or Mays, but Hammond does have a love of American cars, so of course, he would be my favorite. Besides, for a tiny little Brit, he actually is rather cute. 
He’s also the most squeamish acting member of the group when it comes to crazy power (unlike Clarkson who charges in like a bull and then screams like a little baby when it arrives), but seems to handle it the best. Mays is just…well…an old man car lover. He wants luxury and refinement, two things you rarely find in an American automobile. We love power on the cheap! (read: Muscle Cars!) And, my E30 is a good example of such, at under $50k ($25k car + $25k motor), is a (unreasonably done) drift spec car (which isn’t my thing really), and takes big fat balls to drive. Not to mention, I’m not the only person who built such a car in this game. wink wink, nudge nudge hahaha If anyone has better suggestions for commentary from the Brits, please let me know and I can add to it. I can RP me, but RP for others is much harder.
So, in the interests of time, we shall be moving on, and so here are the results! I have taken the various comments on board for the presentation, which is very lengthy. I’ll go back and edit in some bits in the other part of the story later.
[size=200]S[/size]unset approached and the day wrapped up. All the cars were being cooled down and everybody moved inside into the studio to record the final segment, the results.
“Two dozen cars, most carrying, and I do not say this lightly,” A slightly frazzled looking Jezza, spoke into the camera, “Too much power.” Behind him, Captain Slow and the Hamster nodded somberly in agreement. “All on an international Gumball Rally of madness. We have seen the cars, and we have seen the drivers. They have given us, today, a glimpse into the furthest extremes of the underground, a world into which no sane mortal would ever step into, and few would leave alive or even, for that matter, in one piece. I doubt we will ever truly know what happens in the Barely Street Legal League, but I imagine that it would be something like if everybody turned up to the OK Corral carrying a nuclear warhead.”
“And now,” he turned to the empty Power Board, which was empty and had been named the Barely Street Legal Power Board, because most of the cars in the BSLL were not production models, “You’ve seen the footage, we’ve run the laps, who’d like to see the results?”
There was a big cheer and the crowd of participants and crew eagerly leaned forward, as Jezza brought out the clipboard, and Captain Slow produced a bunch of labels. “How shall we do this? Maybe we should go from last to first, since this is apparently part of the tournament.”
“Right,” Jezza announced in his most suspenseful dramatic voice. “In that case, the wooden spoon, the last place, goes to… the E30 LS7 M, at one minute and thirty seconds! Gee, that’s kind of… surprisingly slow.”
There was a smattering of applause, and then some awkward laughter as the group realised what it was they were applauding. Kristina ruefully smiled.
“Now see,” Hamster interjected, doing that pointing finger thing he always did when he had an interjecting thought: “It seemed like a match made in heaven. A legendary chassis, a legendary engine, but what resulted was hands down the scariest experience of my entire life.”
“Oh?” Both Jezza and Captain Slow raised an eyebrow and an exchanged look. “But what about that thing we… can’t talk about…” Jezza trailed off as Hamster fixed him with a stare. “That’s right, you keep right on not talking about that. But seriously, I tried driving this car fast, because it really is stupid fast. But the moment you push it just that little bit too hard, it goes every which way except the one you want it to go. Also, just putting it out there, but you, lady,” He pointed at Kristina with a shaking finger, “Are crazy.”
“Right, next up on the list then… is Ruby, at one minute and twenty eight seconds!” More applause, and this time Captain Slow had a spiel. “The Stig’s comment was that it was a considerable achievement of considerable stupidity to run fifteen hundred horsepower through the front wheels on an open diff and no driving aids, and he would like his forearms back thank you very much.”
“The next two cars were separated by a mere hundredth of a second,” Jezza continued. “The HFF, clocking in at one minute, twenty seven point three four seconds, and the… the… oh god, I can’t say that on TV, I’m already in enough trouble as it is.”
“Man jewel,” Hamster offered, helpfully. “Gonad,” Captain Slow contributed. “Er, yeah, that.” Jezza muttered. “At one minute, twenty seven point three THREE seconds.” And on went the labels onto the board. “Like the Ruby, the HFF was front wheel drive, which was a horrible surprise considering the chassis, but somehow, having less power probably made the difference. And the… the…”
“All things considered, it’s quite quick for something that is completely impossible to drive,” Captain Slow smoothly cut in. “I’ve never seen a bubble car with two gears move so fast, nor have I ever seen a hobo move so fast, but that might be something to do with the fact that apparently the driver of this car is a hobo with horrible naming sense who drinks so much gin I’m surprised he hasn’t pickled through.”
“Moving on.” Jezza looked at the clipboard. "Still well in the ‘cars with less than a quarter of the power could have gone faster’ realm, we have the… well, I’m not going to say all the numbers and letters, that’s too inconvenient, so it’s the Felicia Combi, at one minute, twenty five point five seconds! Now let me say here, I love Škodas. I still think the Yeti is one of the best cars ever made, but by and large, most Škodas have quite modest outputs. Even the Felicia used in rallies was more handling over power. I’m not sure how Jack managed to cram a thousand horses into a Felicia, but I think what we can conclude from this is that you, Jack, are a weird weird man. But I like it. The hammer is a nice touch.
“Now, the next two cars are also separated by less than a tenth of a second. They are the RB-02, at one minute twenty three point one five, and the Kodiak, at one minute twenty three point zero nine.”
“You know, I thought the RB-02 would do better than that.” Hamster commented. “It has a short wheelbase, and the power to weight ratio is actually one to one.”
“Ah,” Captain slow thumbed through his notes. “There were two issues the Stig raised. One was the lack of traction as it had comparatively small tires, and the other was that it was still front wheel drive and has no driving aids. If two hundred and seventy horses is enough to cause troublesome torque steer in something like an MPS, then even as ‘little’ as six hundred and seventy here…”
“Point taken,” Hamster nodded sagely.
“The Kodiak, everything about it, the company that built it, the guy driving it, the car itself, terrifies me,” Jezza said. “Everything about it just wants to murder you horribly and send your dismembered body to your mother.” To this comment, Vos smiled malevolently, and Jezza glanced sideways at the camera for a significant look. “Also, Hamster had a go at it and it tried to kill him too, who would like to see the footage?”
There was a raucous cheer from the crowd, so he motioned to the overhead screen. On it appeared Hamster, barely peeking over the steering wheel, wide mouth open as the scenery blurred by, screaming: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” at which point, the camera cut away from the cabin view to the Kodiak spearing off the track at the follow through and well into the grass.
There was laughter, then a pause, then Captian Slow jibbed: “So was that scary too?” causing everybody to laugh again.
“Now,” Jezza continued, “There’s a little bit of a gap and we’re starting to move towards the supercars of the early noughties, which seems like an odd concept, but as we’ve demonstrated time and time again, on the Top Gear test track, power isn’t everything. So the next car, with a time of one minute, twenty one point three seconds, is the Centauri Vindicator!”
After a smattering of applause, Captain Slow cleared his throat. “This was my personal favourite, because-”
“Because it’s a relic?” Jezza coughed, prompting laughter. “No,” Captain Slow scowled. “It has grace, it has poise, it’s been entirely restored as originally built back in the sixties, except with a hell of a lot more donk. It’s a remarkable achievement, to be pushing times like that with a car this old, though I have to say, if not for the unique qualifying specs for this tournament, which state that each car needs at least one horsepower to the kilogram or a thousand horsepower, it probably would have done even better with less engine and less power, or more downforce, seeing as somebody decided to go full blown on the car anyway.”
“Just a quarter of a second faster, was definitely the most powerful car in the tournament by an entire one thousand horsepower.” Jezza flung his hands wide open. "I can’t even believe I’m talking about these figures like this, it’s like oh, there’s a thousand horsepower here, a thousand horsepower there, oh this car has one thousand horsepower more than the next most powerful car. Ludicrous! As is this rebuilt Cadillac Series '62 called The Hulk, built by the hosts of this tournament, nuthouse tuners from Australia, Gryphon Gear, who add zeros on the end of your engine specs for fun and probably wrestle pythons for breakfast. So not surprisingly the driver of this monstrosity is a croc, one who ‘preferred’ that we didn’t drive his car, and as much as we were tempted, it was probably for the best. We’re surprised the car can be driven at all.
“Next up, by six tenths of a second, was the Elegance,” Clarkson scribbled something with his texta on the label, “Though I refuse to call it the Elegance, because it was uncomfortable as all hell, had air scoops in all the wrong places, and is still missing its bonnet.” He whacked the label on the board, and in front of the letters reading Elegance, he had added “IN”.
“Think about it this way, though,” Captain Slow hastened to add. “This is the car with the lowest power to weight ratio in the competition, at just under six hundred brake horse power per tonne. And it weights nearly two tonnes to boot. But it’s as fast around the track as a Koenigsegg CCX. And that’s pretty remarkable in itself.”
“Though that was the time with the Koenigseggiseggisegg without the wing, the one the last Stig crashed wasn’t it,” Hammond clarified. “Though this car doesn’t have any aerodynamic fittings either.”
“Now that we’re breaking the one minute twenty, we’re entering modern supercar territory, and the next few cars were very closely bunched together. These cars match the likes of the 458 Italia, the Nissan GT-R, and further up the scale, the Zonda F, and Veyron, which, if you think about it, consider what some of these cars we’ve already mentioned are, does make the Veyron even more remarkable in itself. At one minute nineteen point five, comes the aptly named Lunatic, from a tuning house called Leeroy, which tunes cars from a company called Boqliq, which is based in a country called Moldova, which may or may not be European or Russian, we’re still not sure. As far as we know, most of the cars that come out of this general area tend to win the ugliest car awards at SEMA, and this car doubtlessly doesn’t break that trend.”
“It’s obnoxiousness incarnate,” Hamster agreed. “And the amount of sideways I was getting in it was hilarious. You could set a new drifting record in it.”
“At one nineteen point two is the AMW Brimstone. According to the AMW CEO, Tom, who is the driver of the Brimstone, AMW stands for Austrian Motoring Wonderland and they’re a major local manufacturer who cover most of the major markets from city hatches for all demographics to performance and luxury saloons. After hearing what kind of cars they made, and then seeing what Tom had done to this hatch, we wondered why we hadn’t heard of them sooner. Cramming thirteen hundred horses into a city hatchback is at least three times as mad as cramming a GT-R drivetrain into a Juke R, and what’s even scarier, is that Tom tells me with absolute confidence that he can make the car much, much faster.”
"At one eighteen point seven, is the Decker Annihilator, whose main point of distinction is that it’s an American supercar with all wheel drive from an era when frankly America was entering into an era of performance car wasteland. The only thing of note to come out around then, in my opinion, was the Dodge Viper, and that was the RT-10, considering just how far they’ve come now. So guaranteed this thing is at least twice as fast as anything that came out in the same region at the same time.
“Then there’s the Necronia Emperion, nearly a second faster at one seventeen point seven.”
Captain Slow piped up: “That’s another car with an odd naming sense. I’m sorry Jason, but… why on Earth would you name your car company after death?”
“That’s just my surname,” Jason Necronia replied sourly, as if it was a question he had answered too many times.
“Oh, that was awkward,” Hamster whispered loudly.
“Can I just mention that I think this car is one of the best styled cars in the tournament?” Captain Slow made a weak attempt at damage control, and was saved by instant controversy. “Are you kidding?” Jezza exclaimed. “SsangYong would struggle to butcher the front worse than this!” Whereas the Hamster was not so vehement: “Actually I think it really does have a commanding presence. It suits the Emperion name.”
“Now the next car, let’s see…” Jezza glanced at his notes and hesitated.
“Jezza isn’t allowed to talk about the next car because he offended the maker and owner of this car,” Captain Slow offered. “So I’ll talk about it instead. It’s the ULTRA X from Ybarra Coach Builders, a venerated Uruguayan manufacturer that have made a surprisingly long list of things over the decades, but the ULTRA X would be one of their first MR supercars. This prototype is still in development and Mister Sebastien here is in the process of testing it. It’s built more for top speed and has an estimated top speed of an astounding two hundred and seventy miles per hour. But-”
“Can we just have the time please?” Hamster begged him.
“Calm down, I’m getting there!” Captain Slow was clearly relishing his time in the spotlight (that Jezza was specifically excluded from). “But this doesn’t stop the ULTRA X from being really composed on the track, so the Stig said. Returning a time of one minute and seventeen point three seconds, this is properly quick territory, approaching Gumpert Apollo levels with far less downforce and a ludicrous amount of extra speed.”
“Back to regular programming,” Jezza took back the microphone slightly huffily. “Just one tenth of a second faster than that car, is the Dalora Infernalis, comes from the same era as Decker Annihilator, but is rear wheel drive. What was the difference between the two on the track then?”
“Downforce,” Hamster said trumphantly. “Loads of it. And as a result, a fuel consumption to put a Hummer to shame. But it sticks to corners like glue.”
“You’d think that!” Captain Slow said, “But consider that we are only barely past halfway up the order, there’s a scary amount of scary fast left to be covered!”
“Indeed, next comes… of all things, a 2013 Honda Civic.” Jezza scribbled on the label. “Except this one was rebuilt by, you guessed it, Gryphon Gear. Legend has it that it was reported stolen to the police by its owner for two weeks before it showed up in its converted state. And that its owner is actually the chief designer of the company, who, apparently, is also a doctor. Look, Doctor McHorseguy, I know we covered this already, but really?”
“Absolutely,” Strop pulled a face. “It’s a long story.”
“And why on earth did you call it Peapod?”
Strop grinned abashedly. “My girlfriend likes cute names. She named our MX-5 NA ‘Putt Putt’.” Everybody laughed.
Jezza wiped his forehead. “Anyway, I don’t know what in God’s name you guys did to this car, but the Stig wanted me to mention that he hasn’t felt a road car of any spec ever pull as many Gs in the corner as this one. Somehow after learning what Gryphon Gear does, I’m not surprised that after The Hulk it has the highest power to weight ratio, in a front wheel drive. What kind of block did you turbo to cram in there to get over nine hundred horses?”
Strop shrugged. “Gryphon Gear really likes restored Formula One blocks. We have our sources. Truth be told it could have been a lot quicker around the track if I stuck to the original R18A2 but eh, the temptation to break the megacar threshold was too strong.”
Jezza gesticulated with his hands, temporarily lost for words. “Are all Australians this mental? This… Peapod blew around the track in one minute sixteen point two seconds. That’s the same pace as an MP4 dash 12C. Actually I know what it is, it’s that you guys are so casual about everything!” He pulled a face and started mimicking an Australian accent: “Mate, we could make this sheila sorta possible to drive but bugger that, I love burnouts.”
In the background Hannah and Tesla cracked up laughing. “Nah yeah it’s kinda like that.”
“Okay. Right. Now we are well within the top ten, with ninth place going to the most chavved out vehicle in the competition, the Raggari Mutant, at a shade under one minute sixteen!”
Hammond had a comment: “It’s odd, this one, because while it looks like a monkey went overboard with the decals…”
“That’s actually what happened,” Raggari engineer, Rubik, muttered.
“…this car went for a relatively, and I emphasise, relatively, balanced and technical approach, the standout feature being a trick eight speed that kept the car right in the powerband throughout all the corners, and it’s all wheel drive and actually very stable, one of the easier cars to drive, as long as you’re the least bit sensible.”
“Interestingly enough, the next car, at one minute fifteen point eight, is the same kind of platform, but larger, more powerful and heavier. The AED Griffin! Where it loses out in longer wheelbase, it makes up for in downforce. Through sheer brute force, this car would easily keep pace with a hypercar in a drag race, for maybe about a hundred yards, after which it would completely destroy it. All the cars at this end do the zero to sixty two miles per hour in just a little over two seconds and the quarter mile in just a little over eight, and two hundred miles an hour within ten seconds. Most of them, this one included, would have already finished a zero to three hundred to zero run while an Agera R would have barely reached the three hundred!”
“I think we all agree, though,” Hamster interrupted, “That the front looks like a stunned mullet?”
“Rubbish,” Jezza scoffed. “It clearly looks like a dead carp.”
“That’s where you’re both wrong gentlemen,” Captain Slow jumped to have the final say. “It looks like Pac-Man after eating one too many pills.”
"In the same bracket, just a few tenths faster still, is the, uh, AR dot MA dot SD dash oh one R. My god, why? That aside, this car was made in the same year as the Lamborghini Murcielago, and shares a very similar platform, but somehow manages to get three times as much power with the same fuel consumption. This makes for a car that is, well, quite a bit faster. The Murcielago does the track in about one twenty, this one is getting into the one fifteens. And the Stig reckoned that it would be even faster if he didn’t have to stick shift, and gear two wasn’t so long.
“In sixth place, we move up another tier into the one minute fourteens. Another MR supercar, this one tuned more for the corners than for the drag, the Gemina XIII GTX.”
Captain Slow stepped forward. “I arranged a little three way comparison between the MR supercars. The first one obviously was the ULTRA X, which is a pure speed machine which happens to be good at corners. This one, the driver, Yuri, tells me this is an uncompromising track machine, and given the way it is tuned, I’m inclined to agree. Short gearing, big wing, fantastic cornering at both low and high speeds. And no, of course I didn’t attempt to drive it.”
“For a complete change of pace, in what we’re going to refer to as disconcertingly quick territory approaching the holy land of the Pagani Huarya, which, we note, has active suspension and active aero, where none of these cars have… we have the EGT Achernar X90, from Japanese manufacture Seishido.” Jezza pointed to a picture of the tiny hatchback on the screen.
“It’s tiny!” Hamster exclaimed.
“It looks like a Daihatsu Charade.” Captain Slow pointed out.
“That it does!” Jezza agreed, “Do any of you know why this thing is so fast around the track?”
“Short wheelbase, all wheel drive, high downforce.” Hamster nodded sagely.
“Did you know this car has by far the best fuel economy of the group? It gets over thirty miles to the gallon,” Captain Slow quipped. Jezza looked horrified. “That’s not possible!” He turned back to the board. “Well, just four more heart attacks to go then. Fourth place goes to the Banks Debrauna Gumball Edition, clearly somebody built the car knowing what he was getting into.”
“It’s part Z4, part Z350, and part Swiss Cheese,” Hamster commented, to some giggles.
“It’s bloody fast is what it is,” Jezza clarified. “One minute, fourteen, point two. Again, tons of downforce and oodles of grip at speed. It actually corners harder than a Huayra, which would explain why it’s almost as fast as one around the track despite being an FR coupe. I bet this car does very well all on the more technical tracks.”
“Now, the podium places. All of these cars… could potentially qualify for the real power board, if they were produced in sufficient numbers. And the next three cars, all completely destroy the regular Power Board records. They’re all high downforce cars with massive tyres purpose built to redefine grip. And number three, happens to be a bloody estate wagon, the Baltazar Thanatos Estate!” Applause went up for the estate wagon that was dominating the leaderboards.
“I don’t see anything about this car that would ever imply you would die from natural causes,” Captain Slow commented. “It looks like Mad Max had to upsize for a wife and three kids.”
“This car did a one eleven point nine, and broke my back,” Jezza remarked. “Anywhere from zero to three hundred, there is nothing in the world, guaranteed, that accelerates like this. The power, the traction! The brakes, it goes from sixty two to zero in twenty six meters! Just consider that a P1 takes twenty nine, though all these cars are running semi-slicks and the P1 does run on sports tyres.”
“I think this, this is the kind of car that epitomises the racing end of the league,” Hamster concluded. “It has speed beyond imagination, handling beyond imagination, and it comes in a form you least expect. If we had more cars like this in racing, racing would be really exciting, but perhaps the point was that so many people died in massive fireballs driving cars not even a third as unhinged as this. Leo Baltazar is a god among madmen.”
“But what of second and first place!” Jezza raised an eyebrow. “Once again, it’s the hosts who prevail with their benchmark cars, the Ascension Mephisto, and Sleipnir!” Kai and Sam exchanged significant looks, sparks flying as their gaze met. “Both these cars were driven, for the hot laps, by their respective drivers throughout the tournament. Both veteran touring car drivers, Kai Kristensen in Mephisto, and Sam Neil in Sleipnir.”
Jezza consulted the clipboard for a suspenseful moment, before announcing. “The winner is Sleipnir, with a time of one minute, ten point three seconds. Mephisto did it in one eleven, point eight.” He slapped the labels on the board and everybody applauded.
Sam punched the air, whooping, before yelling, “IN YOUR FACE KAI!” Kai pouted, and was consoled by Bianca, who gave Sam the stink-eye.
“What’s remarkable here is that both cars are actually very different, the only thing they have in common is that they’re both made by Gryphon Gear. We’ve heard about the Mephisto, it was teased to the public several times during its development at a time when Gryphon Gear was making headlines with some racing success, and unlike most of the other models here, this is actually Gryphon Gear’s signature production car model.” Jezza held his hands up in wonder, “Yes, this is a production car, with twenty nine units being produced a year at their factory, though I’m told that it costs about a million pounds and the waiting list for one now stands at two years. This one here, is actually Kai’s own model as gifted to him by the company after his National Sports Cars series win last year. Two thousand brake horsepower, all wheel drive, and a tricky dry/wet dual clutch sequential shifter, with the wings defaulted to a top speed of two hundred and fifty.”
Hamster stepped forward: “My favourite thing about this car, is that the cabin is completely barren but the driver’s side is set up like a jet fighter cockpit. The HUD, the Manettino dials on the bespoke wheel, but the best part is the traction control dial is locked under a transparent case with massive warning stickers on it, like the missile launch switch! In any other car, it would be trying too hard, but in this car, that is precisely the level of caution you need if you should ever thing to turn the traction control off. It’s screaming at you ‘If you flick this switch you will turn this car into a ballistic missile,’ and it’s completely correct!”
Then it was Captain Slow’s turn. “The Sleipnir was obviously the last of the MR supercar trio comparison, and it takes everything to the opposite extreme. It has more grooves in its body work than the Mazda Furai did. In fact Doctor McHorseguy informs me that the Furai played a fairly significant role in inspiring the design approach to Sleipnir. And while not yet completely developed, I’m told that the double-shelled rear wing array generates over three hundred kilograms of downforce at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. The power to weight ratio was kept strictly one horsepower to the kilogram, and as the car is a completely carbon fibre body, as is Gryphon Gear’s standard practice, the big seven and a half liter v8 develops one thousand, one hundred and eleven horsepower. All of this leads to a slightly modest top speed of just over two hundred miles an hour, but its cornering ability is unprecedented among supercars. And what’s more, Gryphon Gear say that given their initial testing, they figure the balance hasn’t been quite sorted and they can extract at least another half second out of the time around this track. This was just a test.”
“Phew, well, there you have it everybody,” Jezza exhaled, the long spiel finally finished with some relief. “The cars of the Barely Street Legal League, ranging from utterly bonkers, to faster than anything else we’ve ever sat in. This is the dream of people who miss the days of thousand horsepower turbo Formula 1 cars, of Group B rally, Group C, and the like, mainly most of the codes that were regulated because too many people died in a blazing ball of fire. Yet now it’s back, in private form, for those who are crazy or obsessed enough to take a dance with death doing two hundred, and maybe even three hundred miles an hour. Everybody here is smashing records but isn’t interested in contacting the Guinness Book of Records, rather, they’re just here for the purest, maddest form of car racing this world has ever, and will ever know. And on that bombshell, it’s time to end. Goodnight!”
More story, plus the official results shall follow, but for now, I must go to bed!
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Perfect! And this whole segment was written brilliantly, especially when you read it in their respective voices 
OOC} I got to scare the shit out of Hampster. “squeeee!”
[OOC] I kidnapped him, kissed him, and forced him to drive mine (with compensation of course!) AND scared the shit out of him. 
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(OOC) I am pleased! This tour of basketcases machines and people thaught me how to make cars that handle!
0.01 second difference 
Crushing expectations and lap times despite my self imposed penalties!
According to the FIA, the Ascension Mephisto is a production car as 25 is the production threshold for sports cars, meaning that the Mephisto would top the production board.
Eeyup, I think there’s also a stipulation somewhere (but I can’t nail it down), that in order to be counted as an automotive OEM you need to produce 29 examples a year? GG wants to remain listed an OEM in their own right so that’s what they aim for. But no more than that. Seriously, the world probably doesn’t need too many Mephistos. On that note, I finally gave the engine tune a burl with my Logitech G27 in Beam.NG, and all I can say is oh my god, never turn the traction control off in a GG car. Once those turbos spool up, it’s so hard to get the right throttle control! Also, none of the cars in Beam.NG have any downforce. The amount of undesirable air I got…
Anyway, I tweaked a couple of bits in the previous segment to make the TG host dynamic a little more lively, and presently will post the next little bit. It’s off to France we go!
The FInal classification for Round 5 is as follows:
Once again, due to the Gryphon Gear levels of downforce, grip and power, the Baltazar Thanatos Estate is a step ahead of the rest. Maybe I should have made the qualifying prerequisites for entry 2000hp! (then again that would have made some of the historical mobiles and most of the chassis impossible to use).
This time, I’m going to add the points from the driving aids. Remember, you get a point for each available driving aid you don’t use (except launch control, that thing doesn’t do anything in this build). This will give you a loose idea of who’s running aids, and who isn’t.
Don’t forget to check the updated standings on the first page! The competition is fierce at every level!
(IC) “ROADTRIP TIME!” he exclaimed as the show was over and the cameras, and the hosts went away, he was overstimulated by drinking too much coffee from the studio.
(ooc) Nice! another podium! 