The NASCAR Heat 1.5a patch is the solution to several small problems, including but not limited to the following:
DAMAGE: This was one of the biggest changes since the release. You will find that the cars will damage more realistically, especially in Expert mode. It is now possible to damage the sides, roof, and rear of the car, as well as the front end and the hood. The damage will also affect the car's performance in a more realistic manner. Another change is that repairing damage will have a greater effect on your pit stop times if you elect to repair your damage. Collisions will also be more noticeable with Force Feedback, and produce more sound.
GAMEPLAY: The "Victory with 43 Cars at Daytona" bug has been fixed. The player will now get the proper two laps to qualify for Martinsville and Bristol. In addition, there is an additional "speedup" lap at Talladega so that both qualifying laps will be at racing speed. The second event at Talladega now has the correct number of laps. Yellow flags will be more likely to come out during accidents. Disabled cars will pull to the apron and not disrupt traffic. The bug where pits were closed incorrectly has been fixed; also the pace car will not get stuck in the pits, run out of gas, or lose tires. The driver list is now stored in a text file, allowing some changes for advanced users.
MULTIPLAYER: A number of multiplayer bugs have been fixed. The rolling starts and resets have been improved. Disconnected cars are sent to their pit stalls. The ping restrictor has been fixed. The dedicated server has been improved, and the issues involving setting race parameters have been fixed. For modem / Internet play, a new technique using somewhat less bandwidth is used; this should reduce the server overload problems. It is now possible to connect to a race in progress as a spectator. Races in progress will now show up in the server list, as well as indicating ping time and how many players are connected. See advanced.txt for more information. WARNING: because of the changes to multiplayer, it will not be possible to race with players using the original version and vice versa.
GRAPHICS: More video cards will be able to select 1024x768 mode. When "derezzing" textures to conserve texture space, the dashboard textures will have extra priority.
