Had some suprisingly fun oval racing in the XF GTI earlier today.

I looked at that XFG/Oval server yesterday and thought "How in the lords name can you have fun doing THAT?" and joined some XFG/SO Classic-server.
Guess I'll have to try oval racing some day. But I'm not going to use the FO8, no I'm not!

Vain

You can!! Its much more fun than with FO8 and the racing yesterday was very clean, once you managed to not start in one of the last 5 positions.

go to an empty server to be fast. or you'll :bananadea.

I reckon there's a whole load of mileage in folks opinions and experiences of how they have managed to survive their first attempts at online racing.
Thanks to all who have contributed to making me gird up my loins and dive in.
PS I haven't as yet cos I'm still using auto gears and also the buttons on my MOMO instead of the foot pedals cos they obstinately refuse to be configured...

Quote from Rappa Z :

go to an empty server to be fast. or you'll :bananadea.

This really sums up the advice in this thread?

yes

he really seems to like the burning bannana!

When I first started playing this game. I would pick the slowest car and do laps of all the tracks on an empty server.

this helped in 2 ways

1. I got a rough idea of all the tracks quickly
2. I managed to get some PB up on the wall

then I moved up to the next car and did the same again. this meant that not only did I get to try all the cars and all the tracks I also ended up with PBs for all cars and tracks. This then gave me something to aim for the next time around.

Another goodie and I was very lucky with this was get on a server with 1 or 2 ppl on it and try and follow them. I left the pits right behind someone was far enough back to see what he did and I followed him for 5 laps. This helped me so much that if I have a new setup I join a server watch to see who is going round quickly and then sit on the start straight (out of the way) and wait for them to come round then jump in behind and follow.

Most of all enjoy..its a great game.