SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - NASCAR Racing 2003 Season: Still Going Strong in 2004

The process of creating your own 2004 season with 3rd Party cars is simple. First off, you download the files from the Internet. I like to download mine into a separate “downloads” folder I have created for specifically for NR 2003 cars. If the download comes as a winzip file, unzip and paste the new cup.car file into your Papy/NR2003/Series/Cup/Cars folder. If the download comes as a cup.car file, just copy or move the file right into the “Cars” folder mentioned above. Not to worry, all of these files are distinct entities that will not overwrite the default cars that shipped with the game. Just to make finding them easier, I like to rename my new cup.car files to make it obvious that they represent 2004 cars (e.g., "20_T_Stewart_04.cup.car").

Now it’s time to start up the game. To create a 2004 season roster, you simply enter NR 2003’s Opponent Manager section via the GUI, and create a new roster. I gave mine the imaginative name “2004 Season”. Next you pick all of your new 2004 car files out of the list of all available cars, activating them as your opponents. By saving this new opponent file, you now have a new 2004 season full of new Nextel AI opponents to race against. It really is just that simple, and doesn’t require a 3rd party application to assist you. Thank you, Papyrus!

Downloading the 2004 cars is really the single biggest effort you’ll need to make in order to bring your NR 2003 Season up to 2004 standards. But for the most detail oriented of you there’s a few other items that might be worth a look. Over at The USPits you can pick up their 2004 Nextel update for N2003 tracks in the NASCAR Racing 2003/Utilities section. This 18 MB installer will change all the Winston logos to Nextel, and also add Sonoco logos in place of the 76 balls. Over at #1 Racing you’ll find a 2004 Nextel Cup schedule for NR2003’s “campaign” (Championship Season). I saw somewhere that there’s work on the new Monte Carlo body 3DO, and less likely but always possible would be a Corvette pace car shape, but that addition isn’t really necessary. Beyond the 2004 updates there are some other must-see sites out there, including Project Wildfire (PWF) for track add-ons and entire game mods like their Busch and Craftsman Truck Racing series’, a damage graphics update, and their newly remodeled Homestead track (the real one got all new pavement and higher banking in the turns after NR 2003 shipped). There are also some great car set-ups from RacingSetups or from the SetupGuru forums to improve your lap times and make you more competitive online. In addition to the NASCAR mods and add-ons, 3rd party mod teams have already begun to exploit the Trans Am physics model with road course racing mods of several flavors. Stay tuned to SimHQ’s Motorsports news section for more info on these great additions as they develop.

Go To Page 4

Click here to go to top of this page.