re: 2024 Formula 1 season Thread

I was heavily into race sims and online racing for a few years, but I haven't done it in several years, so my knowledge of the sims themselves is very dated.

Back in the day, I favored a sim called GSCE, Game Stock Car Extreme, where stock car refers to Brazilian stock cars, which were road racing cars. It was an rF1 based sim made by a small Brazilian studio called Reiza. The name was eventually changed to Automobilista. There was a huge mod community for rF1 based games, so there were a ton of tracks and cars and skins available. Because of the mod community, every F1 track was available, never any licensing issues. Reiza basically took rFactor 1 as far is it could go. For single-player racing, they had very good AI cars. (They eventually went to a more advanced engine and called it Automobilista 2, but I stopped playing around that time.)

For quite a while rFactor 2 was the favored sim among the serious online racers. I loved the tire model, much better than the rF1 based sims, but overall I liked the simplicity of Automobilista. So I did most of my online racing with GSCE/Automobilista and had a blast. I was part of a small club that raced every weekend and we would have our own championships, and others were welcome to join any race as well.

My main point is that I learned so much about racing by playing sims and doing both single-player and online races. For F1 races, instead of doing full length races, we typically did one-hour races, which was close enough to understand the experience of multi-stint racing. We typically raced cars from eras that had refueling because that was more fun and there was more strategy involved. In the days before a race, we would practice on the track to understand tire wear and laptimes of the different compounds and fuel economy, then formulate our strategies based on that.

I used a cheesy setup with no force-feedback, and it hurt my competitiveness. There was a another guy who I matched up very well with in qualifying, we were always near each other on the grid. But I noticed that towards the end of stints, the last few laps before a pit stop, that my lap times fell off much more than his did. I eventually figured that with the lack of force feedback, I was overdriving the tires so I was suffering more tire wear than him on every stint. You learn so much from online racing, and the emotions are surprisingly strong when you have a good race, and when you're in a club that has a few "aliens" (the fast guys), it's hard to win a race, and when you do, you are surprisingly emotional. I feel like I have a small sense of the emotion that Lando experienced when he finally won a race.

I remember the funnest race I ever had. We raced a 1970s era Porsche 911 at Laguna Seca. It was a one-hour race. From practice, we all realized that tire wear was enough to need a pit stop, but also that the total pit lane time at Laguna Seca was huge (for some series, the pit lane goes through the Turn 2 hairpin and exits at the exit of Turn 2). So some people opted to not pit, and some people pitted. I pitted because I hated driving on worn out tires. I can't remember the gap to the guys who didn't pit, maybe 35 seconds, but I spent the last half of the race catching up to struggling cars and in the end I improved my position from before I pitted, and it was very satisfying. Man those were good times.

Could anyone give some advice on a turnkey rig for sub $1,000? I don't have a preference as to console or PC. I don't think I'll have time to devote to really get into iRacing, so I'm interested in Gran Turismo, F1, Forza, and Assetto Corsa.

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I don't think I'll have time to devote to really get into iRacing

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But Max is waiting there for you. This past week they talked about him winning the GP and a 24 hour race online.

just sent an email

Darn it, I looked for the TV schedule for the Monaco GP, expecting to catch some FP1 / FP2 action tomorrow. But I have now learned that the Thursday running was scrapped two years ago. Now it's a conventional Fri-Sun schedule. Oh well, gotta wait another day.

Should be dry in Monaco this weekend. Anyone care to take a flyer on an upset victory?

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Ferrari finally doen't frick up LeClerc at Monaco and he gets a home victory.

That would be an upset and honestly the guy is due. His own mistake and his teams terrible strategy errors have cost him at least twice at Monaco.

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That would be great! I'd also love to see a real, out of the blue upset, such as Yuki or a Haas. That would almost take multiple DNFs, though.

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yes, I love the gossip...seeing lots of chatter on twitter today about Sainz in serious talks with Williams...

I know it is his agent spinning the rumors, but a Sainz/Albon would be a great pairing at Williams

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#ibelieveinjamesvowles

If Williams had Sainz this year, Id bet they be in 6th or 7th. Dont know if they have the firepower to get past Toro Rosso , but I think they would have passed Haas and Alpine.

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Max likes The Wolf of Wall Street and The Hangover.

Chuck is a Harry Potter fan...