The bigger they are, the harder they fall

No matter how hard you try, you cannot win them all. But, it’s still worth giving it a shot because you never know; Your luck might turn.

No-one can never get my name right... - Goodwood Festival of Speed 2012

No-one can never get my name right... - Goodwood Festival of Speed 2012

Today, E-sports is a hobby that has been massively blown up as a chance for individuals or teams of gamers to make money as well as take bragging rights. From racing against your mate in your bedroom playing Gran Turismo split screen on the PS1, you now take centre stage with a huge audience to enhance the atmosphere.

However, there are still grass roots levels that people still take advantage of to compete to be the best; Time Trials. Some time trials are used as qualifiers for a platform. Others are simply just to see who can pull off the fastest time. It’s all well and good until you try it on PC and see someone has obviously used hacks, given that they pulled off a 00:01:000 on the Nurburgring Nordschleife

People kept joking that I should be racing instead of The Hulk after I beat his time.

People kept joking that I should be racing instead of The Hulk after I beat his time.

I briefly mentioned in the first one of these entries that I did a time trial competition on a keyboard. I remember the first ever competition I entered was at the London Motor Show in 2008 (before it went on a brief hiatus). There was a chance to win a iPod if you set the fastest time on a wheel in a Renault Twingo. While I was enjoying myself playing racing games in general at the time, I didn’t consider myself to be professional at any degree, especially on a wheel. I had one as a kid but, whenever I tried to use it I was terrible. In comparison to the hardware available now, it wasn’t the best kit. Anyway, I kept trying and trying but it wasn’t good enough to win me the iPod. I wasn’t too pleased with my performance; I have a bad habit of being too hard on myself.

A few years later, we arrive at the stage after the Acer competition. I attempted to go for what was my first steering wheel: the Logitech G27. It was a tech show held at ExCeL London. This time it was the computer store, Overclockers, that had set up the stand. The aim was the same. Set the fastest lap time of the event and win the prize. The twist was that you only had a single attempt available. You had to make it count. That was the first time I felt pressure to get it right fairly quickly. I had a total of 5 minutes using the same setup as everyone else. In the end, I got the time of 40 seconds dead as my fastest lap. I didn’t know whether that was good enough to win me the wheel. I had a subsequent go afterwards to see if I could have gone any faster. 0:39:400. That made my stomach turn. I didn’t find out the result until I received an email a few weeks later. I had won by the following margin: 0.009 seconds. I couldn’t believe it. Winning the G27 opened up a pathway to get practice in with the current games I’m playing through.

Main objective - have fun!

Main objective - have fun!

A series of wins followed at various events. However, I was brought back down to earth when I went to the GRID 2 launch event. Once more, fastest lap time wins all. There was someone I kept battling with to bring the times down. Because our times were so close, it ended up in a final showdown: 1 lap each. The problem was that I couldn’t even get a lap going. I kept getting so frustrated when I couldn’t get a corner right, which resulted in the rest of the lap being screwed up. In the end, I faced my first loss amongst the series of wins. It was hard to take at first. Like I previously said, I have a habit of beating myself up if things don’t go the way I plan them to. Then I decided to ‘retire’ from entering such competitions.

Reflecting back on that decision, it was a good temporary move for me to do. That was the moment I realised I let winning get to my head, so when I lost - the fun had disappeared. That became the sole important thing following that competition. If I enter anything to compete, I need to ensure I do it for fun. If it doesn’t seem fun, it’s not worth doing it. If you don’t win, keep trying again and again. Practice does make perfect.

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