Where did that speed come from?

[Erki]

Lately I have been playing CMR2 a little again. Not much, just a bit of San Remo rally which I like very much. Two days ago, somehow, I started pushing and bettered some stage records by over 10 seconds!

But what's really amazing...

Yesterday I started the championship again and Rally of 1000 lakes is the first rally as you know. First stage, record! 02:12.something. OK, this isn't my most favourite stage anyway so I think I could get it down to 2:11's if I got a really ideal run.

And then came the second stage... It's one of my favourite stages, only track that I have driven more is Sweden arcade stage(59.59 record btw ). My previous record in Finland SS2 was 02:02.02 which I thought was very very good time. So I drove the SS2 again yesterday and had nearly ideal run, at one place I cut a bit too much I think so I guess I could go even a bit faster. Time: 02:00.76 that's 1.26 sec faster than my old record.

And I use no cheats, the car is Citroen Xsaraed Seat Cordoba.

What has happened to me? Am I a freak?

[janneppi]

The stages were propably hiding in your brain for all these years, if you have been playing other driving games, your driving skill has increased and once you familiarised yourself to CMR2 again, you simply had more speed in you.

A similar thing happened to me with Rally Trophy, i played it quite a lot when it came out, but then didn't touch it for long periods of time. I played it again for a month before christmas and was surprised how fast i was with little practise.

[306 Cosworth]

It's amazing how much you can actually improve Erki, for example I hadn't played RBR for months on end and then one day started playing it again, started getting used to the handling again, and was so much quicker than the last time I played it

[Marcel Haenen]

Also the Seat is the fastest car in CMR2 (of the regular WRC cars). In the right hands it is easily 2-3s faster per stage, in particular in stages like Finland SS2 with its long straights. Perhaps you're old records were with a different car?
It's possible to do a low 1m58s on that particular stage by the way.

But just as janneppi and 306 said, you also increase your skills. I have played CMR2 for a very long time now and each time I start to play it intensively again those records keep going down (not as much as they used to ofcourse ).

[Erki]

My old record was also made with Cordoba but it was probably more than year and a half ago. Only two games that I have played besides CMR2 are Grand Prix 3(sticky tyres, no sliding) and NASCAR Racing 2 (from 1996...a bit sliding if you get it right )

[jso1985]

skills increase even if you don't practice, or like my case the more I practice the less my skills improve..., in 2003 when I started to play again CMR2 after 2 years my records improved from 5 to 10 secs, 3 years later and with a lot of practice and my records have only improved 2-3 secs from the ones of 2003(except for the UK stages)

[Ramore]

I have slightly different experience with the improving times. My times improved suddently by 4-5 sec. per stage. That was a long time ago, when I played the game for the first time intensively. So the sutuation was the following. I am form bulgaria by the way, so I went to one event from the bulgarian rally championships. After I got home from the rally, I was really happy and in some way inspired from this particular rally. Then, in my inspiration, I decided to play a bit CMR2, and surprisingly for me, I gave some really good times (for me). Actually from that moment I really improved my overall times. Basically that is my experience for rapidly improving times. Thank you for your time( for reading my stupid post).

[Erki]

New record: 02:00.05 but splits showed that I can push it even to the low 1:59's hock: hock: