The Yellow Light of Death and B-Spec Grinding

Recently, I've gotten back into playing Gran Turismo 5. Previously I ended up getting bored of it due to the fact that there wasn't much to do, compared with other versions of the game and that in-game money was a pain to get by due to the lowered prize totals in many of the races. I still recall having to play through the race on the Indianapolis Oval in the "American Championship" event repeatedly when they temporarily doubled all prize funds last year. Or was it the year before last? (Can't remember...it was that boring...)

I only started playing it again due to the fact that my first Playstation 3 console self-destructed in a very anti-climatic fashion (And as a consequence made me lose what little progress I made in the game). It decided to show me the dreaded Yellow Light of Death while I was grinding in the aforementioned Indy oval. I suspect the event was so upsettingly boring that even the console had enough and probably failed in an attempt to make the agony stop. Unfortunately this resulted in it trapping the GT5 disc and taking all my save data with it. Attempts to get it repaired at a local specialist was fruitless and ultimately I ended up having to buy a new one. Luckily, a 60Gb model was available for a cheaper price than the cut down slim models.

My annoyance at losing several rare cars that were a pain to get spurred me to start playing again. Fortunately some online seasonal events that paid out more than the normal races allowed me to obtain some in-game cash fairly quickly. And I got further help in the shape of the B-Spec events. "Even better," I thought, "Don't even need to bother racing myself to grind for XP and money. Just send the created AI driver around and around and come back later."

Although this plan did work for the most part, it unfortunately had several side effects:

• Unlike the old B-Spec mode in GT4, there was no "Fast Forward" option (x3 action speed-up). All B-Spec races were done in real time. This meant I would often have to come back in 20 minutes time if I didn't want to sit around watching AI drivers make their way (often badly) around the track. This was more of a problem in some of the "ordinary" B-Spec events, which were double the length of the ones you play in as they would often take ages regardless of what car you provide your driver.
• The AI has a habit of sending in "potentially cheating cars" as opponents in the B-Spec races. This is more of a problem in the Performance Point limited events. In the event I entered my driver into, limited to 650PP, two opponent cars would technically be over this restriction. A BMW prepped McLaren F1 race car and more concerningly, a Chaparral 2J. A strange contraption that can only be described as a box on wheels with a suction fan bolted on to allow it to go very fast while sticking to the road. Both were technically above the PP limit in their stock forms.
• You own B-Spec AI driver would, if you didn't bother training him up enough in lower level races and sometimes even if you did, make appalling errors of judgement and would either be stuck behind opponent cars for ages when human drivers would've long overtaken them or conversely take risks by overtaking in an awkward corner only to go off the track or otherwise crash into a wall.
• The B-Spec events I haven't done yet are rather uninteresting ones. However for the sake of convenience I though that it would be a good idea to try to complete them all first. Turns out this was something of a bad idea...

Despite the issues, I found myself generating a large number of credits fairly quickly. If only money was this easy to come by in real life eh? This did result in me reaching one major annoyance.

The dreaded  20 million credit limit.

Not sure what the point of this was, but complaints have been mentioned about this on various forums. It's a bit of an annoyance for me but no big deal.

I'm still enjoying this game. It gives me a chance to drive in a particularly insane manner that would get me banned if I were to do this on a real public road. I just wish they didn't make the B-Spec mode so...tedious?