It makes difference, especially on last chickane and long straight after :-). I have little worse splits than on default settings but between last split and finish it's much better. Best for naw 1.55.99

Great contest! :) I know I don't have a chance against You guys, but it still is a lot of fun! :D My best time, after three days of practice, is 01:56.01.
Uncle Google said that it's possible, but I am nor sure if with this car exactly:
http://www.cyberscore.net/game-cmr2005.php
(I'm not sure how this site works and where that records are from)
You have better records on default than me after hours of experiments with car parts. xD

I know what you mean. I couple of days ago i wouldn't have thought it was possible to finish the stage without hiting something. I even managed to hit the tucked away blue tractor a couple of times.
But judging from your time at least entering the 01:50's seems definitely possible.
Thanks for the link.
Apparently it's possible to go even under 01:46:00 with the Peugeot 205. Too bad we are stuck with the Lancer :)
And you're right, this contest is great fun.

I don't know if i can do it but i'm having a great time trying :)

I will try my best too, few hours left. Namur and Maverick at least don't have to worry for podium with this times :-). I still trying go below 155, not much left.

I haven't tried this yet.. only because I'm at work. :) You could try turning down the damage variable and bouncing yourself off the brick walls next to the right/left corner before the first bridge. Its cheesey but you might be able to break 1:50. :)

I absolutely shamed myself trying this. I think I might be the worst driver ever. 2:46 with my car completely destroyed. Do you people race with wheels or what? Maybe I'd have a better chance winning if I bought a wheel...
I can't believe I just thought of buying an $80 wheel to win a $5 or $10 game!

I'm using an Xbox 360 controller, works fine and nowhere near as expensive.

I recently recieved a fairly nice second hand wheel as a gift from a friend. Its fun but I can't drive worth a damn with it. Not that I've got anywhere near the fastest time or anything but the best control method I've found for racing games on the PC is a 360 controller. I bought one (don't have a 360) just for trackmania awhile back.

Nooo, I'm pretty sure I'm an even worse driver: I haven't even partecipated! I just have a natural ability to hit anything in my way, so I'm fairly sure I'd have a worse time than that.
As for the wheel: if you play lots of racing games, it might be a worty investment, as then you don't buy it for a $10 game, but for a larger number of dollars (maybe even exceeding the value of the wheel). If you're not an avid virtual racer, you'd better be off with the keyboard or a gamepad/joystick, which you can use for other types of games as well.

You don't need wheel. Everybody if he's good enough can make use of what he have. I'm using gamepad, Logitech Chillstream. Anyway I Don't like offroad racing to much, prefer notmal, Grid most, off-road races in Toca 3 are my worst nightmare...

Yeah, gamepad aswell. Logithec wingman something...

The way to improve is practice. The first 10 or 15 times i tried this stage, my times were also way up there in the 3 minutes plus, and at the end of the stage my car was a freaking wreck.
What i did was i gave up on going fast and went 4 or 5 of times really slow to get a better feel of trajectories, breaking points, etc, and then i've started to go a little faster every time.
If you have a pad, try that instead of the wheel.
You can also try changing camera view. I can't really get a feel of the track unless i'm seeing the whole car, but others do best with the bumper cam or the dashboard cam.
If you stick with it for a while, i'm sure you'll start seeing improvements.