Victory!

I've been enjoying the racing game Gran Turismo 5 a lot in recent months. I've even splurged on a racing wheel controller. In the process I've become a bit of a petrolhead, learning a fair amount about automotive engineering and racing.

Today Sarah and I took part in an endurance race, the Grand Valley 300km, about two hours. (Don't worry, we didn't spend all day inside; we'd already taken a walk around Deer Lake.) We took turns every 5-10 laps; there were 60 laps total. Sarah named us Team Spanking Head.

The race pitted us against high-performance Japanese production cars like the Nissan Silvia, Mazda RX-7 and the Nissan Skyline. However, we wanted to win, so I used the Tommykaira ZZII, a favourite of mine - very nimble, and with substantially more power than the competition.

I took the first ten laps in medium racing tires. Sarah made us a drink in a sports bottle. Then I pitted in and she took over, after I switched us to soft racing tires. Sarah started out pretty nervously; it was quite intense for her. But after a few turns she relaxed and her enjoyment grew.

At first, Sarah's turns were eating at our lead, but ultimately she was adding to it, bringing us two laps ahead of the second place racer. Her lap times grew shorter, down to 2:23. My shortest was 1:54.

We'd planned for me to take the last laps but Sarah was so into it that she ended up taking the last ten by herself. Here she is crossing the finish line.