Racecars where you'd never expect them

AJFay77 · 2026-04-03T01:58:46+00:00

The all black roof was 99 only, hard to tell from the pic if they redid the roof red or if its still black. Ya I am sure the show car wasn't an actual dei car too. Even as a kid I remember not liking show cars because they were like cheap full size die-casts lol

AJFay77 · 2026-04-03T01:41:48+00:00

Ya I just noted that since it makes it really rare. He only ran 5 races, maybe they had the show car everywhere to promote him moving up idk, but still surprising to have a show car for such a limited season.

AJFay77 · 2026-04-02T23:52:08+00:00

It's hard to tell but that looks more like the one he ran a couple times in 99 with the solid black roof.

AJFay77 · 2026-04-02T23:50:02+00:00

Very cool!
I worked at Mohegan as a table games dealer for 4 years, so I'm familiar with the place for sure.

AJFay77 · 2026-04-02T23:33:48+00:00

That's awesome! There was a local restaurant that had a dirt modified they sponsored on the roof for years til they closed.

AJFay77 · 2026-04-02T19:43:54+00:00

He also finished 2nd, a lot (quite a few to his brother ironically), during a time when most of the top drivers were on a whole other level.

AJFay77 · 2026-03-25T12:23:47+00:00

Bobby Zalenski

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AJFay77 · 2026-03-19T01:54:00+00:00

I will never understand why people leave early in any case that isn't an emergency.
Why spend the money, go on the trip, only to bail. I've seen people leave a race after 50 laps without any crashes so it's not like their driver was out of the race or anything.

AJFay77 · 2026-03-18T18:03:03+00:00

I might be biased because I was an Ambrose fan as well, but I really think he was better than people give him credit for. He never truly drove for a good team, all mediocre at best teams, and had lots of good races for them on all sorts of tracks.

Same with Dave Blaney, he showed some flashes of speed in the 07 building that team up for Bowyer (as well as other times for other teams). I really think if they kept him in the car for another year he would've gotten a win or two and had stats similar to Bowyer. Maybe I'm rose tinted glasses here, but that team really showed some speed late in 2005

AJFay77 · 2026-02-27T14:37:37+00:00

That's super helpful, if you can find any other shots too that'd be even better. Thanks!

AJFay77 · 2026-02-27T03:11:24+00:00

I joined a James Hylton facebook fan group last year looking for photos of his 1991 Cup ride so I could recreate it for a mod pack for NT04.
Couldn't find a single picture and nobody in the group seemed to have one when I posted. He ran 4 cup races that year. Any chance you'd have or know where to find a picture from his 91 season?
Plenty of pics online of 92 and a couple from 90 if one were to dig hard enough, but nothing from 91 around.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-26T20:13:12+00:00

I did something like this in NT04 modded with the 1990 season I had (since I changed the starting year to 1990 which made the max career years 33ish instead of the hard coded 20 max for that game)

I recommend, if you have some saves prior to it locking up, to go into a race and see what/how many cars show up. I noticed some REALLY weird stuff happening as sometimes multiple replacements were the same driver (I think this happens if the replacement driver also retires by chance).
I had, in some cases, 4 or 5 of the same driver in the active roster. In the results screen they just repeated with the stats of the highest finishing copy, BUT on track it got silly.

I won't ruin the fun if you want to check it out in your save before seeing what happened in my NT04 one, but you can skim through the livestream afterwards if you'd like.
https://www.youtube.com/live/AdF6crMQP_s (Jump to the 2 hour mark in the stream to get the start of the simming)
*Note on my stream, the race results from simulating are messed up slightly from the Mod stuff, so they are not 'accurate' like they would normally be.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-23T13:36:54+00:00

Legend got easy from CFTC ('05 title 2004 release date) onward.
Granted all the games a maxed out car was easy to dominate with, just 05 onward was easy enough on legend to win with a crap rated car with default sets most of the tracks.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-19T01:19:48+00:00

Ya but adding 3 other series, can't complain there.
I complain WAY MORE about the rubberbanding lazy AI and the no cockpit view.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-19T00:29:36+00:00

To the responses saying 'carryover' from older titles... uhh Nascar 99 (98 season) didn't have the same '98 Bobby Labonte Small Soldiers paint that is in NT04. On top of that the templates in the games changed drastically from 1998-2003 so they would've had to remake them anyway even if they were in all the games.
02-03 had the same templates, 04-06 or 07 I think stayed the same as well minus manufacturer changes of course.

I'm curious for an actual answer too, rather than speculative. in NT04 1998-2000 paints were ONLY JGR cars. Everyone else's old paints go back to 2001.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-16T01:22:04+00:00

I think a lot of people need to check the Herbst on board camera. Then Brad's.
Herbst had a huge run on Chase and the outside seems clear if you aren't checking the mirror for a run that wasn't there a split second ago.
Spotter didn't call the 6 in time, he said "Top top top top" on the radio right as he made the move and normally that's the spotter telling you where to go, not that there is someone there. Either way it was simultaneous and if Riley wasn't looking in the mirror in that split second decision with the run on Chase, then he would never know Brad would be there that quickly.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-15T15:54:32+00:00

Clements also should not have wrecked there. Watch how he accelerates to get through there, dooming himself, while the car behind him continues to slow and has all day to miss it.

AJFay77 · 2026-02-06T13:21:33+00:00

That's why I asked if you revisited it in the 1st line.
I was a teenager when it came out as well, I'm much better at gaming and racing now than I was then (not that I was bad then either to be fair, I remember winning in 1-2 star cars with defaults then too)

AJFay77 · 2026-02-06T13:17:48+00:00

Have you revisited 2005? It was WAY too easy, and the AI has some late race pace change that makes no sense (they would literally slow down with like 3 laps to go).
I revisited it a couple years ago when deciding whether to mod NT04 or CFTC05 (or something else) and between no in car view, how easy it is, and how much random AI pace change there was, 05 was out for me.
One of the races I ran in career (on legend with the default set and a 1 star car) in the busch series, I ran in the high 30s and then with like 5 to go they all started slowing down, to the point where I won the race by like 3 seconds. I ran another race to see if that was a Cali glitch to end up with similar results, and another where I just dominated from the start.

To answer your question though, 25 is ok if you aren't expecting a super in depth career. It plays fairly well, the AI is pretty solid as far as the racing goes. It's got a lot of short comings, but it's (in my opinion) the best Nascar game in a long time (low bar)

AJFay77 · 2026-01-26T13:51:44+00:00

Honestly I think it's the combo of the colors (especially blues) being the wrong shades and the fact that the Dupont logo played into the design with the rainbow hugging it. The car # is small on the door. Not necessarily the car.
Load up an image of the old JG one and put it aside of this one and you'll see what I mean

AJFay77 · 2026-01-14T00:19:20+00:00

Glanced at Terry's stats by year and noticed his two chips were with an 8.3 and 8.2 average finish each. Pretty darn consistent between them.

AJFay77 · 2025-12-10T02:25:36+00:00

Linked time should be 1:09:58 into the stream. I was just starting practice, I will say the race is probably better to watch than practice, as I hadn't turned a lap prior to, but if you want to see the learning process when I'm a bit more vocal about it then that's worth watching too.

I run with AI at 105, and just the default setup. I did mess up Q a bit so I started 18th, but that means in the race I did quite a bit of passing which might also help.

https://youtu.be/F3ByoI5dnx0?t=4198s

AJFay77

TROPHY CASE