Chris2K

I was driving a Euro Championship race of some description in a Mercedes, led for 7 of the 8 laps, put one wheel off the track and spun into last place. Justifiably in my mind, I rage quit. I'm now playing The Crew again.

It was about 30 hours since the event started when you mentioned the max Pro Neville, it's 5 games every 1.5 hours plus five to start with and the minimum number of games with +5 for everything is 276. If you use title matches that would be halved to 138, that would be roughly 26 hours but at the cost of 138 title matches (say 120 for obtaining title matches from the board) which would be £100 based on £10 for 12 title matches. Add on 4 hours for training and max proing. Of course the real answer is likely £0 because I'm almost certain it was a hack job.

You'd be amazed how many people there are out there who would look at this sentence and immediately declare he's not qualified to lead the England team.

I really think they need to find a new format to completely replace PCC. It alienates such a huge number of their players from getting a decent reward.

Just for the record, I at no point said that Rosberg was "to blame" for Hamilton not winning, also my post was whilst Rosberg was driving back to the podium, screaming with joy on the radio and waving his hands around before he had given any interviews. Since then Rosberg has been far more logical about the whole thing which is to his credit.

And done. Highest number of runs in a test match where all 40 wickets have fallen. It will be interesting to see how New Zealand respond, likely they'll be a bit stronger now their best players are more settled into test matches after selling out their preparation time to play in the IPL.

1 wicket now. Very impressive bowling performance today after very good batting yesterday. It's almost like a completely different team played the first three days.

I've given up on every game mode except RTG. Say what you want about the 3MB tactic but it at least gave a chance to people who have jobs that prevent them from playing the game for 8-10 hours every day. PCCs are now completely pointless as without being able to use 3MBs I can't score +5s and therefore have no shot at any card that's useful to my team. I'm getting mauled in KOTRs because I don't have the chance to use energy cards or switch my team out, nor do I have the chance to play Exhibition games to obtain those energy cards in the first place. Even exhibition games see me winning about 2 out of 5 games so I can't use them to build my team. Thankfully RTG allows me to score points based on the skill of my own team, not the skill of my opponents. When that no doubt changes I guess I'll have no reason to keep playing.

I feel bad saying anything after reading the Bianchi news... but... Nico celebrating wildly after winning today is possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. If he thinks he deserved to win the race then he is beyond deluded.

There's a huge gulf between minor counties and the first class counties which has opened up further and further since the minor county matches were removed from cup competitions and pre-season games between the two were abandoned and replaced with games against University sides. Most minor county sides are made up of players who are 23+ with no county links, either due to location (for example, Wiltshire is right between Somerset and Gloucestershire and neither county consider it part of their catchment area), or because they've been released or ignored for reasons that don't relate to their talent. Some of those reasons include "attitude problems" or the fact that they can score 100s and take wickets but don't have the fitness to run a half marathon so obviously can't play first class cricket. It all comes down to money really. County cricket clubs are run in a far more businessy way than before and matches against minor county sides are not worth the time and effort for the small amount of revenue that would be generated. If anything the Second XI matches are the only real opportunities for the academy players, but as has been mentioned before the people picked to play in those games tend to be people who are in favour or already chosen to be fast-tracked, in addition to fringe 1st team squad players, many of whom are far more interested in their own situation than helping to develop a young player who might end up taking their spot in the first team squad. The counties are happy to keep that going because it benefits them in terms of looking at their academy players whilst having full control of them, whilst also not losing money as they farm the matches out to local grounds with far less expenditure than at their home ground and play them when the 1st XI matches are on.

The county scene, particularly at youth level, is really depressing. Best example I have is Gloucestershire's academy for under 17 players which has over 100 players on its books. Once they're on the books the parents are expected to pay for the kit that's needed, pay for coaching sessions, pay for matches and countless other things, but only a small handful of those players will ever be offered a proper contract with Gloucestershire themselves whilst the county pockets the money of parents who have been led to believe that their child is destined to be a star. I used to work for Somerset part-time but didn't really get involved in anything outside the first team squad so I don't know the ins and outs of how their academy works. I know a lot of their current and former Second XI players though and once they reach a certain age they're faced with a choice. They can either continue plugging away into their late teens in the hope they'll get a call-up to the main squad and a chance to make a name for themselves (best example being Jos Buttler who was always on the fringes of the squad behind Craig Kieswetter until he got an opportunity) or they can give up on their dreams and either get a job or go back to university to get the degree they didn't think they needed when they were expecting to be a professional cricketer. If they choose that then it means no more Second XI cricket because they're not free on week days. Also teams change their policies so often that it can be difficult to know the best route to go, Somerset used to be very much about bringing through youth players and not signing players from outside, this year Matthew Maynard has come in and all of a sudden the team is full of veteran Kolpak players whilst the younger players who played last season are either ignored, loaned out, or even released completely. There are occasional feel-good stories, Wes Durston was released by Somerset because he wasn't part of their plans (despite being their leading T20 run scorer the previous season) but got a second chance with Derbyshire after playing for the club I score for, Wiltshire and the Unicorns Minor County side, he got offered a contract by Derbyshire and hasn't looked back since. Not really sure what the point of this ramble was, other than I've spent the day watching a game that involved at least four people who tried so hard to get a county contract but in the end had to give up after being promised things that never materialised.

I just drove a car instead of a kart for the first time. Here is a linguistic interpretation of my first few laps. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The only little thing that annoys me is how easily a lap time gets ignored because you go off track. I can understand it for corner cutting but if I run slightly wide and go off for less than a second I don't see why my time shouldn't be recorded.

I don't mind the karting but then I'm playing on Amateur. From what I've played so far it's a very fun game.

Spa continues its record of being in every major racing game made in the last ten years . It sounds like fun, I'll be a much more "Zero to Hero" career person though. I still have Grid Autosport to play because I'm currently busy playing the first Grid which in my mind is the best console simulation racing game in a long time.

Not sure myself but I'm pretty much referring to one review I've seen:

If only. Still strange that they don't have a title sponsor.

I've had it on pre-order for what feels like eternity and I'm really looking forward to it. Reviews are similar to what you're after with a lot of credit being given to the depth of the career mode (which is essentially all I want from a racing game), hopefully it lives up to what they're saying.

I got 300 for some reason too. Wondered if it was for a year of play time. There's an update by the way: [Official] May 4 Update So I have no idea how to win any more.

Looks like Bingham is about to take it. Having followed his career of winning nothing important for 10-15 years the concept of Stuart Bingham being a world champion is a bit jarring, but also pretty great.

All the rewards for both guys I already had, plus I couldn't play Thursday or Friday. Ended up doing +1s for guaranteed victories to get energy cards for winning a KOTR and training food for my RTG cards.

With regards to card selection I usually go with my favourites, I'm lucky in the sense that my teams have corresponded with my favourites being strong like Rock, Rollins, Lesnar and Bryan. Put it this way, I'm no RVD fan, and when I get my RVD SV in about two minutes it's going into a Fusion even though it would go into my RTG team.

Just watching Johnson vs. Horiguchi and I'm really struggling to stay interes-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I remember when I got birthday presents. I really don't know why you'd spend $50 on this game though, Google play cash or not. I'm not intending to judge or mock your decision as it's your money to do what you want with, but I come from an angle of having to make financial decisions based on their value to every day life. I had to spend 30 minutes weighing up my decision to spend £1.57 to buy some title matches last week. I'm winning +5s and moving about 30 places each time in PCC. I need another 2000 places to get a Legendary Rey. That's not going to happen. As traffic in this game increases it's going to become even more of a slog for non-spenders.