[theMonster]

I thought the game was too easy, I'm glad I only rented it. You can turn off the AI catch-up, but just beware that you won't be able to catch-up either if you make a big goof. As far as hop-ups go, they're worthless, you just keep adding the most expensive parts to the car and it goes faster. There was an old game called Hot Rod and Hot Rod 2 and even a newer game from EA, that was an online game (I'm not at home so I can't remember it) but you had hundreds of parts to choose from for the cars, engines, exhaust manifolds, turbos, nitros, gearboxes, diffs etc.....and you had to be damn good at experimenting with all of these parts in order to get it to work well. Just because you bought the 461ci Ford Big block and added the biggest manifold and blower you could get and then added nitro, didn't mean that you had the fastest car. You could get beat by somebody that was running a 350 or a 327 in a car that was perfuctly tuned. Those games were the bomb, a true gearhead's dream come true.