“At the last second, I was passed by the favorite to win. “I was leading most of a heat race,” she recalled of one her most memorable racing moments. She plans to specialize in branding, logos and car vinyls - always with an emphasis on her passion for racing.įor Cook, the joy of both racing and graphic design is in the journey as much as the win. Now with two years at Stumpy’s and finishing her last year of college, Cook has ambitions to start her own business, TurnOne. “It’s really all about seeing the outcome of all the work I’ve done.” Cook shared. Stumpy’s creates vinyl wraps for race cars, letting Cook combine her two passions, racing and art.Ĭook truly loves to see “her” cars take their turns at each race. “Alan really supported me coming back into the program and helped me get into the rhythm of graphic design again.”Įarlier that school year, Stumpy’s Custom Creations invited Cook to be a graphic designer on their team. She also had encouragement from Alan Orrison, the director of Union’s Art and Design Program. “She really took the time to listen and helped me realize what I really wanted to do.”Īfter talking to Smith, Cook switched back to her first love.

“Amy Smith was one of the teachers who really pushed and helped me,” said the Union senior. It was one of the top options that I was looking at.”ĭuring her two years studying social work and an internship, she continued to take elective art classes - some from Amy Smith, who teaches pottery and drawing. I guess I just like helping people and wanted to go into something like art therapy. “These two majors are just complete polar opposites. She had already immersed herself by creating and designing vinyl car wraps and delighted in the creativity.īut as she neared the end of her first semester in college, she couldn’t see the potential of a career in graphic design and decided to use her talents in a very different field. Her love of racing had pointed her in that direction. Then I moved up to dirt sport mods when I was 18.”Īs highschool was wrapping up, Cook decided to study graphic design. “I’ve been racing go-karts since I was 15. In fact, the Lincoln local grew up on the dirt track, racing with both of her parents and her younger sister. “Your mind kind of turns off when you start the car and pull it onto the track.” Cook has followed in her parents’ tire tracks - they both attended Union College and started racing at approximately her age. “Yeah, it’s almost like an adrenaline rush … you just get sucked into it.” Cook said. This is exactly what Amber Cook loves about race day as she straps herself into her 350 horsepower car. The deafening engines drown out the crowd’s low roar as anticipation and excitement builds. I really want to love this game, and it does so much so well, but it’s far from perfect and needs a lot of work - on consoles at least.Dust and exhaust rise from the ground as thousands of horsepower rumble to life.

I would guess the base problem is simply something to do with the calibration of wheels on consoles that needs work.īut it’s also the annoying little bugs like AI getting confused when there are too many cars on track, or insane stuff like this, which happened to at least one AI opponent at that corner on every lap… All of these can probably be dialled out, or at least improved, through the umpteen wheel settings you can tweak, but it’s so confusing that anyone other than a dedicated sim racer wouldn’t even know where to start. I had a similar issue in a Ruf in the wet the grid shot away from me as I pulled full lock for average turns at a quarter of the speed of my opponents.Īlso the deadzone issue is bizarre keeping the car in a straight line can be incredibly difficult. I get that it’s not supposed to be a ‘pick-up-and-play’ racer, but at times the handling feels bizarre - your wheel inputs bear almost no resemblance to the amount of turn in you see on the game, just check out the Lotus F1 in the video above.

Perhaps it’s just a console thing - though I would quietly suggest it proves how pointless gaming journalism has become - but I seemed to be the only reviewer who had any issues at all. When I reviewed Project Cars for Xbox One, I said it’s a beautiful game but it just doesn’t quite feel finished.

Project cars go karts suck