For those of you who hate tinkering, here are optimal settings for the various tracks. If you find a way to opimize these further, please let me know. Keep in mind that your fuel is a variable depending on whether you're qualifying or racing, and the length of the race.
Atlanta Motor Speedway
Fuel: ???
Stagger: +1.100"
Steering Lock: 7x
WEIGHT BIAS: POUNDS | PCT | SPOILERS
Left Bias: 1900 54.2% Air Dam: 3.5"
Rear Bias: 1860 53.1% Rear Spoiler: 65x
Cross Weight: -35 49.0%
TIRE PSI: CAMBER | SHOCKS | GEARS
RF 50 -2.80x 20% First: 9.80
RR 51 -1.93x 20% Second: 5.80
LR 51 -0.84x 35% Third: 4.30
LF 48 +0.10x 70% Fourth: 3.90
Bristol International Raceway
Fuel: ???
Stagger: +1.500"
Steering Lock: 8x
WEIGHT BIAS: POUNDS | PCT | SPOILERS
Left Bias: 1855 53.0% Air Dam: 3.8"
Rear Bias: 1720 49.1% Rear Spoiler: 69x
Cross Weight: -60 48.2%
TIRE PSI: CAMBER | SHOCKS | GEARS
RF 52 -2.70x 50% First: 10.30
RR 51 -1.93x 45% Second: 7.50
LR 50 -0.84x 55% Third: 6.10
LF 49 +1.00x 80% Fourth: 5.30
The IWCCCARS Project
The IWCCCARS Project Home Page The Internet source for accurate, detailed and up-to-date car sets for racing simulators.
The IWCCCARS Project creates car sets for NASCAR Racing that you can use in your own copy of the simulation. They currently feature products for both the US and European versions of NASCAR Racing, including current NASCAR sets, an AUSCAR set, and special "promotional" paint jobs from the Winston Cup series.
Their home page also includes troubleshooting tips and simulation utilities.
Getting NASCAR Racing to run under Windows 95
Open Explorer and go to your NASCAR directory, then right click on the NASCAR.EXE file. Choose "Properties" from the cascaded menu. You'll get a property sheet with six tabs at the top. Change to the program page of the sheet. From here, you can enter any command line options (such as the -h to start in SVGA mode and/or the -f option to use FM sound only) in the Command line text box. For example, my command line reads: C:\GAMES\NASCAR\NASCAR.EXE -h. From here you have two options.
1: Running it as a DOS application in a window.
(Try this first - it is the easiest, but performance may suffer slightly.
If you are running on a faster machine with plenty of memory it should
work just fine. Slower Pentiums and 486's should go to method 2.)
Method 2: Running it in native MS-DOS mode [reboots the system].
Here is an example (I use the same for running all apps in native MS-DOS
mode - your configuration may differ.). :
CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS HIGHSCAN I=B000-B7FF
BUFFERS=15,0
FILES=50
DOS=UMB
LASTDRIVE=H
FCBS=4,0
DOS=HIGH
DEVICEHIGH /L:2,28784 =C:\UTIL\SCSI\ASPI2DOS.SYS /D /Z /X5 /Q12
DEVICEHIGH /L:2,29376 =C:\UTIL\SCSI\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD0
DEVICE=C:\UTIL\AWE32\DRV\CSP.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220
DEVICE=C:\UTIL\AWE32\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1
H:5
DEVICE=C:\UTIL\AWE32\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS STACKS=9,256
AUTOEXEC.BAT
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\UTIL\PKZ;C:\UTIL;C:\UTIL\ARJ;C:\NC;
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET SOUND=C:\UTIL\AWE32
SET MOUSE=C:\UTIL\MSMOUSE
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
LH /L:0;1,24336 /S C:\UTIL\MSMOUSE\MOUSE.EXE
LH /L:2,40800 C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /S /D:ASPICD0 /M:12 /L:E
LH C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV.EXE
C:\UTIL\STEALTH\S64DMODE MONITOR
In either case, click OK to accept the changes you made in the advanced options dialog. Then, click OK again to accept the changes to the properties. You will now notice that you've got a new ShortCut named nascar.exe - just rename it and copy the shortcut to a folder or desktop.
If you use method 2, when you click the shortcut to start NASCAR, Windows will ask you if it's OK to shut down. If you answer yes, Windows will shut down, restart your machine with the autoexec.bat & config.sys from above, then automatically boots NASCAR. When you exit the game, Windows will restart. While it's a pain to have to re-boot everytime you feel the "need for speed" that's just life with Windows 95. The alternative? You can re-install MS-DOS or wait for the Win95 version of NASCAR to show up some time in 1996.
NASCAR Racing restrictor plate
Want to get 200+mph @ Taladega? Just remove (or should I say "edit"?) the restrictor plate. In actual NASCAR races, a restricor plate is used to restrict air intake to the manifold, thereby restricting the engine's horsepower output.
You an remove this from the simulation byt editing the taladega.txt file in the \nascar\tracks\taladega directory. Just open the file in any text editor, find the line which begins with "SPDWY" and change the 1 to 0. Changing the 0 to 1 re-installs it. This will work with any of the tracks, but keep in mind this is cheating; in real NASCAR racing, Taladega requires restrictors. NOTE: you cannot make the corners @ 215mph *8^)
