I’m not sure what possessed me to play this after all these years, but it may have had something to do with the double bill of Cars and Talladega Nights that I watched last night. I decided to clear some Beginner Events, as I’d not played in a long time, so ended up spending all 180,000 credits I’d built up to buy and tune three new cars – a Volvo S60, a Ford F-150 and a Lotus Esprit.

The tuned Volvo – which I bought because it’s the nearest thing to my real car, an S40 – ate up the FF championship without a problem.

The F-150 – which I bought because Ford marketing infected my brain when I was living in Houston – didn’t much like going round corners, but was still fun to drive and won every race I put it in. All three of them. I can’t find any more yet.

The Lotus – which I bought because it was the best MR car in the used car showroom – isn’t so good. It’s not as fast as some of the cars it’s competing against and I can’t afford to tune it any more. Oops.