You should have done that. I guess too many folks from the US did it & overloaded their servers. I was apart of the server destruction too

The weird thing is that they are going to send me the copy of the game with the T-shirt but I don't care
The game is beautiful & I ran it completely maxed out @ 1920x1200. The physics realism of the cars are out of this world. You can keep a straight line with the car but if you don't brake at exactly when that annoying orange-to-red light in the map start flashing you'll be headed for spin city. I won't give too much away but the demolition derby is a joke. All you have to do is stay toward the rear & let the other cars destroy each other - no matter what difficulty you put it on
Erm, the demolition derby is a nice and fun alternative to whatever else it offers. You get to combine muscle, with body roll, with drifting and dare-devil driving. If anything, it's one thing they got right.
The rest of the game is eye candy and little else:
You have a typical novice to rookie to pro to etc. storyline.
You can't adjust car settings.
There's no qualifying sessions.
The game is WAY too easy.
The AI is 'bleh.'
The cars stick to the ground too well. You can take corners way beyond a realistic speed and get away with it.
The Japanese cars all seem to have extremely slick tires and have a tendancy to automatically start drifting; of which is also way too easy to do.
The online mode lacks AI cars...imagine that...what's new.
It looks good, it sounds ok, it leaves a lot to be desired though.
It's somewhere between a modern Need For Speed game, and GTR2 or Race 2007. Where it plays and looks better than the former, but handles and offers less than the latter.
If you want to 'test' how absurdly weak the game is: find someone who's really good at GTR2, stick them in GRID and watch that they adapt quickly and are pretty good, but probably have a tendancy to drive more realistic than yourself, and therefore you can beat them. Then pit yourself vs. them in GTR2, and they'll wipe the floor with you.
Though, at least Funcom has offered up a decent product for once.