Back on track for 2011.

Yesterday I got back on the real race track for the first time this year with a run out in the Club 100 national kart series Winter event.

Running at Bayford Meadows kart raceway in temperatures just nudging 3 degrees celcius is not some people’s idea of fun, but as I have not raced since September 2010 I felt it was time to blow away a few cobwebs and push away the stressful dark winter times with a bit of two stroke karting.

Alas, the winter series is open to all categories, leaving me trailing the back of the field behind the Premier class racers.  I wouldn’t want to take anything away from the pace and talent of these guys, but their experience is huge, these chaps leave and breathe karting and probably spend every spare moment on a kart track somewhere.  Turning up with their shiny new 2011 race suits and reliveried helmets gave no surprises as most of us in the clubman class hung around the bottom end of the grid.

It was no worry for me, on the whole I just wanted to run out on track and was not interested in placing that highly or racing hard.  I just wanted to feel the track under me and work the tyres.  It’s an odd thing to explain, but the feeling of focussing your brain on nothing else but that relationship between your tyres and the track surface is something I get very “zen” about.

The circuit was cold, very cold, and wasn’t until the third lap out that you could really push and rely on the grip coming from the tyres.  Of course, during those treacherous early laps the kart is all over the place, but only by pushing the tyres can you get the heat you need to generate some grip, it’s a catch 22, you don’t want to end up spinning or going off when it feels like you are on ice on that first lap out, but at the same time you know that unless you push you won’t get any heat into the tyres.  It was still almost five or six laps on the tyres before there enough grip to really push through the very fast turn eleven.  This right hander towards the end of the lap being “almost flat” is very difficult to judge, and getting out of shape on the entry can easily see you bouncing across the serrated exit kerb at over 60mph, or worse, having a “bucking bronco” ride over the grass.

Winter Series Bayford Meadows

Luckily, I did neither, and as the twenty minutes of the first practice session ticked away the biggest concern I seemed to have was the growing numbness in my fingers and feet.  Upon releasing one hand from the wheel on the start/finish straight I found that my fingers only moved in an icy, skeletor-like way!  All part of the fun, as a result the brief gaps between races saw us all huddled over the exhaust of our respective Birel steeds.

One positive aspect of the cooler temperatures was that the TKM BT82 motor was heaving out much more mid range torque, giving much improved pull out of turn three and a generally wider power band to play with through turns five, six and seven.  Acceleration felt much more punchy, and made the aforementioned cold tyre laps all the more exciting!

On the whole the races went okay, the sun came out which saved my fingers somewhat, by this stage my feet were just blocks of ice on the end of my legs.  In the first race I was off at turn one, a start of the year error repeated by many as I was caught out by cold tyres and a faster approach speed.

Race two had me coming up the order and racing with another Clubman driver who had left his brain at home.  I am not the biggest proponent of blocking in any racing category, but this guy was clearly a fan, and despite being up to a second a lap slower than me, and very prone to missing apexes, he defended his position as if the race director had threatened to cut one of his limbs off should he fail.  Eventually I got a very clean run up the inside into the long turn eight, and was completely alongside, wheel for wheel, as we entered the corner.  At this point his position on the outside was very difficult to deal with, as we neared the apex at fifty odd mph.  Off-line the track was much less grippy in these temperatures, really anyone being in the position of being “hung out to dry” like this should have dropped back and conceded the place so as not to potentially lose the kart on the slippery outer edges of the track.  Instead of course, old Captain brainfade just decided to launch his kart into the corner as if I wasn’t there.  Not being keen on launching into the air after wheel to wheel contact, I braked to drop back, by this time the front of his kart was pushing me into the kerbs, I spun, the resultant speed sent me to the edge of the track backwards where my motor stalled and I was left to wait for the doozer kart to come and start me up again.  Ho hum.

In the final I ran behind another Clubman driver as we both tried to pass the very same blocker, I hung back time and time again as our man missed apex after apex, then pushed the resultant overtaking attempt into a near accident.  In the end I entered my zen state and just concentrated on perfect apexes and exits, dropping back and then drawing up to the duelling pair in front.  These final laps of the 15 minute final race allowed me to concentrate on lines and work out better ways around the circuit.  It was telling that my qualifying lap of 55.620s compared with a fastest race lap in the final of 56.170s.

I believe that if I may not be able to take anything more from this event it is that I have a better understanding of Bayford Meadows.  Of course, I also have the lovely stress relief afforded by a nice run out on a cold but sunny day.  My personal best here, set in scorching weather last summer is a 55.127, which could not be beaten in such icy temperatures, but getting within half a second gave me the feeling that I have found a bit more speed around here on the whole.

All a bit of fun anyway, the season starts properly at the end of next month, I will only be doing a handful of races through the year, it’s a worthwhile diversion.

iRacing hits Daytona

This weekend heralds the first major motorsport event of the year kicking off with the Daytona 24 hours.  As ever, lots of big names have turned up to the event, including the track return of BBC commentator Martin Brundle, the 51 year old qualifying his Riley Ford within the top ten with a more than credible performance.

As ever, iRacing are in on the act, and are currently running an MPR free series known as “The Daytona 2.4 hours”, where pilots can take to the track in the Riley prototype or Mustang GT car and wrestle them around in a field of up to 40 cars.

It’s a lot of fun, and the latest update has brought some welcome changes to the vehicle dynamics model that have made the Riley much more communicative under brakes and in traction zones, and given that the infield section of the Daytona international Speedway is pretty much all that, it makes for a welcome change.

Check out this video I took of a single flying lap run in the middle of a practice session packed with cars:

The Riley bottoms and skips about on the bumpy, banked, oval section, drivers not paying attention can easily be thrown off line.  No resurfacing here (yet)!

Multi-class racing also adds a great deal, with the Mustangs being quite a lot slower than the Riley one has to judge apprach speed very carefully, and the Mustang drivers have to keep a very close eye on their mirrors.  This makes for some entertaining time amongst traffic, and iRacing’s outstanding netcode gives us all a chance to enjoy some close racing in 40 car fields.

All this is making me very wistful for some sportscar racing, and so I am considering looking into some multi-class racing in iRacing’s latest season.  The heavier Riley is a change from my usual addiction to single seaters, but the more I drive it the more I seem to get from itm which is pleasing because when it was released over two years ago I was not so enamoured by the beast.

Still, for now, let’s see how Daytona works out, Ganassi for the win!

GT5 Diary Part 4

It’s been a while since I posted, the Christmas break got a bit longer for me and time ran away.  Regardless, the time off did give me some chance to get behind the virtual wheel a few times, and GT5 got some online action.

Having run through Gran Turismo’s 1, 2 and 3 I found the whole grind aspect of GT5 a little too much to bear.  After recognising the inherent flaws in the physics modelling that were largely brought across from previous titles in the series, I opted to take the whole thing a little less seriously.

The physics modelling in this sim is carefully designed for the casual simmer.  In many ways it is genius, it is close enough to being accurate to keep 90% of players happy and the remaining 10% won’t even buy it!  What the vehicle dynamics model does, very effectively, is to make the driver feel like a hero.  This is what Gran Turismo should be about, I suppose.  It’s not about finding the optimum damper setup or perfectly crisping every apex, it’s about feeling good and having fun.  Compared to more serious sims this means a bit of a brain reset is necessary, I tend to find a couple of pints of lager helps!

However, when it comes down to it, I have no interest in racing a Mazda MX5 against mediocre AI for 4 hours (Yes, this time around the AI is mediocre and not awful!) so why bother?  The concept of seeing this game through to completion strikes me as madness, but where it does offer the chance for some good fun is racing online.

Having got together with some of the guys at work recently for a couple of sessions I can happily report that the online experience is very good indeed.  Over a good few hours I saw no real instances of lag and generally superb prediction code.  It is made quite easy to setup a private room via the “My Lounge” functionality (Though the poor interface and lack of documentation makes finding this out rather tricky), and setting up a car and track combination is done in a trice.  From the potentially huge list of cars available in the game online players are given a selection to race with, and restrictions can be placed on horsepower, drivetrain, weight, country and year of manufacture.  Players can bring in “favourite” cars from their own garages too, though as I have made little progress in single player this option is rather pointless for me!

One of the problems, however, is no solid designation of an “admin” in the private room.  This opens up the options to any player in the room, so if you want to restrict driver aids or other settings you are reliant on people “behaving themselves”.  It can also be troublesome to find people of equivalent skill levels, looking at the levels people reach in single player can be a misnomer as it seems that being able to drive properly in traffic or know your way around the circuits is not a requirement of reaching high levels in the main game.

This, for the serious simmer, involves another round of “Don’t take it too seriously” as all too often I was finding the first corner of every race featured a couple of cannonball cars flying past the braking zone and taking out most of the field.  Of course, once one susses this out it’s just a matter of braking early and hanging back to find oneself last into the first corner and first coming out of it.

However, if you do find people capable of the simple process of remembering where the corners go you can have some very fun racing in this game, as the netcode allows close racing across a wide variety of cars.

Quite frankly, I think the single player game is over for me now, even though it barely started.  The “work” the game makes you put in for relatively little return is of no interest to me when compared to more serious sims.  Online, however, is different as, unlike more serious sims I can merrily keep pace in GT5 after a few beers and the ease of setup along with full voice comms makes for some gut busting laughter moments.  Which is quite some contrast to the over excitable hissy fits you can sometimes see in iRacing.

Ferrari times

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the driver situation at Ferrari.  After a season in which Fernando Alonso dominated team-mate Felipe Massa the natural questions of the journalistic world are towards Felipe, and whether the Ferrari management are really happy with his performances this year.

The season looked promising for the Brazilian in Bahrain qualifying, when he put his Ferrari on the front row alongside Vettel.  However, this turned sour when he was promply passed at the first corner by Alonso, who went on to win.  At Melbourne things didn’t look much better for Felipe, when Fernando, having started third, was knocked into a spin by Button at turn one.  His resultant charge through the field, back from last place at the end of lap one, saw him right behind Massa at the flag, and pushing his team mate hard.

A series of lacklustre races followed, with Malaysia, China and Spain all being performances to forget.  Alonso’s crash on Saturday in Monte Carlo allowed Massa to once again outqualify him (Alonso did not take part in qualifying at all as his F10 chassis had been wrecked on Saturday morning) and take home fourth place.  Anyone that saw Alonso’s speed in the principality on Thursday could not be in any doubt as to which of the Ferrari drivers would have beaten the other in a “normal” race, but Alonso bringing it home only two places behind Massa after starting dead last should be answer enough for Domenicali.

When the two Ferrari’s arrived at Turkey, possibly the worst race of the year, on performance, for the red cars, neither driver had had the greatest of sessions.  As it was, it was Turkey expert Massa that out-performed Alonso, as he had done Michael Schumacher in 2006.  Alas, instead of a superb win, Massa brought the car home 7th.

Updates to the F10 brought an upturn in performance for the Scuderia, and Alonso’s combative podium at Montreal was a stark contrast to Massa’s beleagered 15th place.  When both cars were subject to a difficult safety car situation in Valencia, it was Fernando that scrabbled some points, Massa ended up coming in 11th.  In Silverstone another awful weekend for Ferrari saw Massa once again outside of the points.  Things were not looking good.

Then came Hockenheim.  It’s been noted around and about the internet in various columns that this was the point that Massa’s mood inside the team changed.  Debatably, reading back his words after the previous three zero score races, it seemed like he was in quite a funk already.  As it was Hockenheim looked like the only race of the year that Massa might have won, albeit fortuitously.  Alonso had outqualified Massa by half a second, and when Vettel spent all his time off the line defending from the Spaniard, it was Massa that snuck through into the lead.  As we all know, throughout the race distance Alonso was much faster, and Ferrari as it is, he was not allowed to pass his team mate without permission, so in the event, Massa was asked to move over.  Looking back over their respective seasons so far at that point, it did not take a great leap to understand which of the two Ferrari drivers would be the most likely to take a shot at the championship.  Ironically, taking second place in Hockenheim would match Bahrain as Massa’s best result of the year.

The rest of the season was not always so unsuccessful, but often it was difficult to remember that Felipe was even in the race.  Spa aside, he would not finish ahead of Alonso again.  Going backwards in Interlagos to an eventual 15th place finish came as quite a surprise to me, and many others, on a track where Massa is usually so magnificent.  By the last lap of Abu Dhabi Alonso had outscored Massa 252 points to 144, and outqualified the Brazilian 15 times to 4.  Massa had not faired so poorly against a team-mate since his time alongside Schumacher in 2006.

It is not unusual, in the fickle world of Formula one, that a driver’s position in a top team would be challenged after such a season.  The press have linked various names to the second Ferrari seat, including Robert Kubica and Mark Webber, but is this really going to happen?  From Alonso’s point of view Massa is not so bad as a team mate, having a team mate that is, on average, half a second a lap slower, is perfect for being able to sculpt a team to your liking, just ask Old Mike Schuey.  However, Ferrari must be unimpressed with third place in the constructors championship, losing out to McLaren.  Fundamentally, McLaren ran two very fast drivers alongside eachother, in their case, both would regularly score points.  All too often Felipe’s bad races were very bad, and the points were not coming through.  As such, you have to think that the Ferrari management are thinking about replacements.

To my knowledge, Felipe’s contract is in place till the end of 2011, and as his manager, Nicolas Todt is not known for making weak contracts.  So, personally, I think the chances of him being replaced for next season, at this late stage, to be extremely small, meaning he very probably has another season to try to turn around his recent fortunes.  If he cannot pull this off, however, the signs suggest he will be looking for a seat in 2012.

It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that Ferrari announced a new test and reserve driver for 2011, in the form of 2009 Formula 3 Euroseries champion Jules Bianchi.  Also managed by Nicolas Todt, this young Frenchman has shown impressive speed across only four seasons of single seater racing, finishing third only to Formula One migrants Pastor Maldonado and and Sergio Perez in the GP2 series this year, he has proved a solid performer who rarely makes the same mistake twice.  Whilst Bianchi did not win any races in GP2 this season, he ran at the front in most of the races, started from pole three times (Including the season opener) and stood on four podiums.  Smart money would be on Bianchi for next year’s GP2 title,  and with enough mileage in pre-season testing there could be a strong argument from Mr N. Todt that he deserves a Ferrari seat in 2012 alongside Alonso.

The same could be said of Sergio Perez, he too has become a part of the Ferrari Driver Academy since being granted a race seat at the Sauber-Ferrari team for next year.  His performances this year in GP2 were erratic and he needs to calm his driving down to reduce errors, but his speed is in no doubt.  Meaning Ferrari could be spoilt for young talent in 2012.  It’s very rare that Ferrari hire a rookie driver, so Perez’s performance in 2011 against the highly rated Kobayashi could make a very big difference to the Mexican’s career.  At the same time, you have to wonder which of the established drivers that you feel, on pace, could hold a candle to Fernando Alonso, would want to join Ferrari after he has spent two solid seasons becoming more and more ensconced in the fabric of the team.

With that in mind, perhaps Felipe will be looking for alternatives anyway.  After all, no one ever wants to be “the other guy” in a team, and 2008 aside, this is what Felipe has always been at Ferrari.  It’s an odd part of the man’s psyche that he never seems to be taken too seriously, despite often showing world beating pace.  In 2005, alongside 1997 champion Jacques Villeneuve at Sauber, the press would explain Massa’s pace merely as a reflection of how poor they had perceived that Jacques had become, rather than recognising the diminutive Brazilian’s talent.

Perhaps it is time that Felipe moved to a team that appreciate his ability, nurture his needs and support his apparent emotional requirements.  On his day, in a car that is working for him, Massa can be as fast as anyone out there.  In the right place this talent could truly flourish.

The future of netKar Pro

Following a recent forum post requesting questions for Stefano Casillo of Kunos Simulazioni, the questions have been answered here.

I was pleased to see most of the questions I had to ask in there, though mainly with negative answers.  One gets the impression that nKPro might be nearing the end of it’s product lifecycle, which doesn’t come as a big surprise as it is seemingly the extension of a base kernel that was built as a pet project in 2001.

Stefano does not come out directly and say so, but perhaps the upcoming release of V1.3 for Christmas will be the last major release of the software as the team move on to bigger and better things.  Ultimately, to constantly adapt and add features to software that was never originally designed to use those features is unsustainable, something has to give, sooner or later.  At which point it generally makes sense to wipe the board clean and start again, but with a carefully planned design as to what features will or won’t be there, and even with a cleaner software design to allow new features to be added with relative ease in the future.  None of this was really possible when Stefano threw “namie” together one rainy evening in 2001.

netKar has always been, as Casillo states, the underdog in the simracing arena, but also a pioneer in so many ways.  KS may not have had the money of some of their competitors to find licences or invest in back end server technology, but where nKPro always won hearts was in the sheer quality of the driving experience, coupled with it being just about the only racing simulator out there that does not make any concessions to gameplay.  It is a simulation of single seater car racing, and so, with it, a training tool for single seater racing.

Over the years I have driven practically every simulator (And quite a few games that call themselves such) released and I always find myself back in nKPro sooner or later.  The vehicle balance, the tyre behaviour, the fundamentals, are closer to real life than anything else commercially available as is the damage modelling and the focus on clean driving that presents no margin for error.  I would, without doubt, recommend this software to any race driver that wants to keep their “eye in” in between race weekends.

It seems that the professional motorsport industry has also taken notice of Stefano’s work, where the derivative BRD simulator (Based on an earlier version of nKPro), used in their Gatwick simracing centre, has won “Motorsport Technology of the year” at the Professional Motorsport Expo.

Perhaps we will see more from netKar Pro over the coming year or so, but in the meantime the V1.3 update, slated for next week, brings some very notable changes.  Not least wet weather, with talk of pooling water and puddles that hints at a wet weather simulated driving experience that has never been so good.  It’s going to be a good Christmas.

F1 2010 Top ten drivers.

It seems everyone’s at it so I might as well join in the fun, time for my top ten drivers of 2010 in reverse order.

10. Rubens Barrichello: The old man pulled a great season out of the bag to almost take the title last year, but this year he’s been back in the midfield and showing strong.  Williams have been hugely impressed by his experience and the clear move to them being regular Q3 contenders in the second half of the season reflected that this experience has paid off.  Minimal mistakes often put Rubens in prime positions to score points in positions that flattered the car.

Best drive:  Hungaroring – Keeping his foot in when Schumacher tried to kill him.

9: Heikki Kovalainen:  Largely unnoticed all year there was an entirely different race going on for honours of the “new teams”.  It must have been disheartening to go from running in a top team like McLaren to suddenly find yourself 5 seconds off the pace.  Curiously, Kovi excelled and looked twice the driver he had looked as “The other guy” at McLaren.  If there had been separate points awarded for the new team battle Kovi would have won by a mile, with 10 “Class wins” and, until late in the season, clear pace over Trulli.  Watching him qualify at Monaco (And becoming the first team mate to outqualify Trulli on said track), you would have thought that pole was at stake.  His enthusiasm all year was admirable and I hope that Lotus can move forward next year so he gets some reward.

Best Drive: Monaco qualifying.

8: Kamui Kobayashi:  Early season unreliability and crashes started to make people think Kamui’s 2009 debut was a flash in the pan.  But then suddenly we all sat up and noticed that someone other than Hamilton was overtaking.  And, to add to the fun, this guy was overtaking where people say “Oh, you can’t overtake there!”  He’s still an unpolished diamond, and only time will tell if that polish will come.  But for now, he adds an excitement to races that reminds me of the early days with Juan Pablo Montoya.  If he’s faster than the guy in front, he’ll find a way past.

Best Drive: Suzuka – Overtook everyone.

7: Nico Rosberg:  At the start of the season it had been established as a foregone conclusion that young “Britney” would be totally destroyed this year by Michael Schumacher.  That didn’t happen, and Rosberg went on to have a very solid, if unspectacular, season.  In nearly every race he put the recalcitrant Mercedes MGP W01 where it deserved to be.  Rarely did you feel like he was overstretching the capabilities of the car, but most of the time he was as far up the field as the car could deliver.  Podiums in Malaysia, China and Britain were class drives and reflected that he was always there to pick up the pieces when RBR, Ferrari or McLaren faltered.  Three retirements, none down to mistakes on his part, points to a well deserved seventh in the championship.  The only question mark over Rosberg has often been his performances under pressure, and once the Schumacher threat was dealt with this year we didn’t really see him troubled in that respect, the pressure was off.  If Mercedes can throw him a good car then he should be in championship contention, we’ll see if he can cope.

Best Drive: Spa – 14th to 6th in tricky conditions was more of an event than his well called podiums or lonely drives to 5th place.

6: Jenson Button:  To an outsider it would have been easy to assume that Button had been driving for McLaren for years.  The manner in which he enamoured himself to the team this year made it look like Lewis was the newcomer, and his perfectly judged victories in Melbourne and Shanghai only served to cement this position.  Unlike Hamilton, Button is able to judge the grip level to perfection and direct the team on whether he wants to come in and what tyres he wants when he does, this alone allowed him to win twice this year.

His decision to run with the unconventional high downforce setup in Monza was also a clear indication that he is prepared to go his own way if there is something he believes in.  Alas, Korea was an example of this risky process going wrong, but he was realistically out of the title fight by then anyway.

Ultimately, he lost out on pace to Hamilton, but not to any great degree, and the two of them spurred each other on to make sure McLaren took second in the constructors championship despite it probably being the third best car over the balance of the season.  Button’s challenge faltered over the year, various updates to the car did not provide a comfortable back end, causing Jenson to lose confidence in the car and with it pace.  Ultimately though, he made no mistakes all season, which is more than can be said of any of the other championship contenders, making this a fantastic debut season for McLaren and plenty of cause to be positive for 2011.

Best Drive: Monza, despite not winning this race was a triumph for free thinking on setup and also a superb drive under constant pressure from Alonso.

5: Sebastien Vettel:  So he won the title, at the last gasp, with a flawless run to victory from the front in Abu Dhabi.  I know, so how can I be putting the eventual champion in fifth place?

Well, it’s simple, he had the best car, he is constantly being talked up as the fastest driver in the universe and he started from pole ten times.  With such car superiority there is cause to suggest that Vettel or Webber should have wrapped up the title a lot sooner.  Intra-team politics seemed on Vettel’s side, so why did he not have it all done by Korea?

Vettel is stunningly fast on a qualifying lap, and can keep that pace up for a race distance seemingly with little trouble and minimal mistakes.  However,  ask him to overtake, or to take a victory from somewhere other than pole, and you’re in trouble.  This season it almost seemed that he couldn’t overtake anyone without making contact, and how he escaped penalty during his “demolition derby” overtaking moves at either Silverstone or Spa is beyond me.  Vettel made mistakes this year, but then so did Webber, Alonso and Hamilton.  The difference being that every race changing mistake for Vettel was distinctly stupid.  Crashes in Turkey and Spa were unnecessary rookie mistakes, and the safety car error in Hungary was a ridiculous mistake borne out of his consistently dangerous safety car restart behaviour (Which stewards also persistently ignore).  Until Vettel can control his temperament, and keep from running into his opponents he will remain the unpolished diamond that he is.  The only reason there were five drivers in line for the title this year was because Vettel seemingly tried so hard not to win it.  Would Hamilton, Alonso or Kubica have waited until the final race of the season to clinch the title in an RB6?  I think not.

Best Drive: Suzuka, inch perfect all the way.

4: Mark Webber:  This may be the only top ten in the world where Webber is above Vettel.  I am not sure how much this is down to marketing, but for most of this season Webber had every bit the pace that his team mate had, and all too often both RB6’s were on the front row.  As mentioned, of course, the car was notably better than the others, but everyone expected Webber to fall by the wayside under the undeniable brilliance of Lord Vettel, didn’t they?

Webber wouldn’t have that, and the driver that most had down as “fast, but not fast enough” stepped up a gear this year, at times driven only by the sheer power of ultimate rage (see: Silverstone).  After splendid flag-to-flag victories in Barcelona and Monaco the momentum in Red Bull seemed to be that Webber was “the man”, then came Turkey, and an ill judged collision from Vettel, and before we knew it the team changed.

Behind the scenes Vettel had been unhappy with being beaten by his team mate, and claimed there was “something” wrong with his RB6 chassis, after Turkey they changed that “something” and Vettel was suddenly in the pound seat.  To this day, Newey will not reveal what that “something” was.  However, the reactions of the team in Turkey and the subsequent Silverstone front wing scandal left Webber feeling distinctly unloved, and fighting harder and harder because of it.  He drove the wheels off his RB6 and took the best results he could where he could, his second place in Spa being every bit as good a drive as his victories.  His tendency to be outspoken in the press probably only served to make the Red Bull top brass dislike him even more, which is why it delighted me that he is prepared to maintain this candour, and his driving this year has put him in a genuine top five driver scene.  Mistakes in Valencia and Korea were ultimately costly, but still left him with fewer mistakes than most.

Best Drive: Monaco – Senna-esque dominance.

3: Fernando Alonso: At the end of the British GP Alonso looked set to be having a pretty awful season.  It had started well with a win in Bahrain, leading many to suspect that Ferrari had a car to challenge RBR.  Following that, various heaps of bad luck in Melbourne and Malaysia, some notable mistakes in Shanghai and Monaco, and a bit of both in Valencia, left many tempted to write off the double world champion as done and dusted.  A mistake for most, because those paying close attention would have noted that the pace of the Ferrari was very good indeed and so one had to assume that when things started going right, Fernando would be right on it.

And so he was, after a win in Germany that got the Fleet Street press delving right into their favourite “We hate Johhny Foreigner” subject matter, Fernando stood on the podium in Hungaroring, Monza, Singapore, Suzuka, Korea and Interlagos, three times on the top step.  This ferocious run of consistency was what took him to Abu Dhabi as the championship favourite, only for a very “Italian” mistake to take him out of it.

At times this year Fernando’s pace was sublime, clearly having the measure of Massa from day one, Alonso slipped into the Ferrari team as a natural leader and, like Button, looked very much at home in his new surroundings.  His pace in the final laps at Korea when his inters looked barely used alongside everyone else’s worn old boots was testament to Alonso’s amazing ability to extract pace without hurting tyres, and still many maintain that, as an all-rounder, he is the best out there.  However, the pre-season hype that put Ferrari as favourites put him into a frustrating situation where his car was very fast, but not quite fast enough.  Mistakes in Monaco, China and Belgium were borne of this frustration and were quite uncharacteristic.  Fernando needs to get back to his 2006 levels of calm, consistent ultra-fast point scoring if he is to take another title.  I’m sure he’ll spend most of the winter telling himself that.

Best Drive: Singapore, majestic around the city streets once again, under constant pressure for a flag-to-flag win.

2: Lewis Hamilton: Hamilton came on very strong this year.  Whilst his driving was the usual “tour de force” of dramatic overtaking, unfeasible oversteer recovery and sheer balls-out speed, outside of the car he changed.  He was much more mature in all of his dealings with the press and purportedly similarly relaxed and grown up within the team.  The arrival of Button may have been of some help, as may have been the removal of his father as his manager.  Either way, I found myself liking Lewis a whole lot more this year.

Alas, he once again did not have the best car in the field and so was left to make up the difference with nothing but heroics.  He did not fail to deliver.  He once again pulled off overtaking moves that no one else seemed to be able to, and was seemingly unable to give up at any stage.  You always felt that Lewis was giving it everything he had, and at times he had that McLaren in places it did not deserve to be.  Winning in tricky conditions in Montreal, in a race where sheer driver skill made the difference, was a sign of his ability.  His victory in a tricky Spa was just as inspirational, and treading on the podium nine times (Would have been ten but for a tyre failure in Spain) reflected that Hamilton may be the fastest driver in the field.  Crashes in Monza and Singapore were, like Alonso, the product of trying too hard in a car not up to the job.  In a very strong field Hamilton singles out as not only the last driver you want to see in your mirrors, but also a man who will take more titles as soon as he gets a quick enough car.

Best Drive: Montreal, combative victory from a pole position that no McLaren deserved.

1: Robert Kubica: It may seem an odd choice, after all Robert was not involved in the titanic championship battle at the front, but there was one constant that impressed me about Kubica:  In every race, he repeatedly flattered the performance of his car, and made absolutely no mistakes.

It is telling that Kubica made Q3 in the troublesome Renault in all but one race this year, and stepped on the podium three times in a car barely worthy of a top ten result, Kubica is an enormously talented pilot.  His single minded focus has allowed the Renault team to really get behind him and the hard work being put in by the driver is reflected by everyone in the team.  Renault made a big step this year and you feel that if they can take that extra step to race winners then Kubica is in with a real chance of a title next year.

In 2010 Kubica’s sheer driving talent was evident in various races.  A fortuitous second place in Melbourne was only the beginning, watching him in Monaco from the first practice on Thursday was inspirational, small slides here, “dab of oppo” there, brushing the barriers with razor sharp precision. You really felt he had a shot at victory around the principality until the Red Bull showed it’s hand.  His Spa performance was similarly amazing, though he was annoyed with his slight mistake exiting the pits that allowed Webber to take second, after trying to take Eau Rouge flat, one handed, on cold tyres.  This man is a machine, a pure bred, race car driving unit from a cold, dark place.

Best Drive: Monaco, just looked better than everyone else.

iRace Planner.

For any Android users out there, ensure to check out Nicolas Bihan’s great app that allows you to plan your racing schedule, linked here:

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/entertainment/irace-planner_mwiz.html

Personally, I often find myself too busy to keep up with schedules and having it available on my mobile device whilst out and about, as well as being able to set reminders, is a great help.  It’s also pretty sweet the way you can pop out a Google maps view of the given week’s circuit satellite imagery.

Christmas gifts from Kunos.

Marco from Kunos Simulazioni has published a tantalising video of the upcoming December update to netKar Pro.  This time we see a variety of new and exciting features, as an Osella PA21S is taken up the Trento Bondone hillclimb course in heavy rain.

The wet weather effects are delightful, with raindrops hitting the driver’s visor (though maybe not enough for the relative level of rain), puddles and wet road reflections.  You can also see the track reflections on the car as it squirms its way up the road, another new addition to the sim, and personally I think the car sounds awesome too.

Can’t wait to get my hands on this….

GT5 Diary Part 3…

Progress has been slow, not least because of a family christmas visit this last weekend, but also because I seem to have reached a gameplay impasse to some extent.

Where progress through the racing series was once rapid, I reached a point somewhere mid-way through the amateur series whereby advancement required me to purchase specific cars for certain races, meaning that i had to re-run previous races to build up some cash so as to buy various lumps of metal.

It’s odd, because my aim of making that money also levels me up, which provides me with the chance to enter different racing series, and thus the new level renders the cars I have more useful, and thus the original aim of saving up to buy a new car is negated as when my level goes up I no longer need the new car and can safely ignore the random race series I was looking at.

Follow that?  No, me neither.  In short, when one saves up to have to buy an American Muscle car, one finds oneself having re-done enough races and earned enough “experience points” (Does this sound like “grind” to you?) to not require an American muscle car any more because one can now enter a series for normal cars.

Oh well, ho hum, I still got a lovely Lancia Delta HF integrale and it’s quite good fun, but on the whole alot of the lustre of the game is starting to wear off, the grind up the levels and through the various race series is all a bit “de ja vu”.. I am not sure there is enough newness in there to make it a fresh experience, and arguably there needs to be more American Muscle Cars to buy if there are so many races based on them.

I want to be tiresome for a while and talk about physics again.  It was asserted by a notably French friend of mine that:

“..this is Gran Turismo. You’ve never liked Gran Turismo for its hardcore realism. It’s a mainstream game designed to be played with a wheel or a pad by teenagers around the world.  It’s a very forgiving model of course, how could it be different? Its target is the kid in us, the one who stares at sports cars in the streets. The good news is that you have not lost contact with this kid.

This game is more about cars than racing. Kaz Is fascinated by the industrial object that is the automobile, and he’s fascinated by the emotion this object tends to give to people. This is clearly shown by the splendid opening clip.  If you like cars and would like to have an interactive encyclopedia of automobiles then go for it… If not then there is still plenty of choice for the hardcore… First one being… Reality.”

Whilst I was touched by the sentiment, and the poetic Frenchness of its delivery, I don’t think I necessarily agree with the “If I want realism I’ll go outside” suggestion.  This is mainly because the tagline of this game is “The Real Driving Simulator”, and this implies to me that there should be some focus on realism, call me mad.

There is, of course, albeit sadly not that much has moved on since previous iterations of the GT series.

What got to me last night was this tyre heat cycle modelling that seemed initially to be quite developed from earlier games in the series.  Further testing has revealed to me that tyres will not really overheat unless you are going crazy with them, just driving them hard will not overheat them, even in the following circumstance:

For reasons best known to the developers, there is a new track in GT5 featuring a rather absurd 360 degree corner.  What this corner gives us is quite a nice physics test: a long, long corner with which to play with the balance of the car and see how it reacts to various mid-corner control inputs.  It is quite easy to see the overheating process here, by simply provoking the car into a lurid slide that can quickly make all tyres turn red.  Thankfully, as previously mentioned, they very quickly drop this temperature, even though they are in the middle of a 90mph corner.

However, what seemed odd to me (Other than the instacold) is that when taking this corner cleanly, but fast and hard, in such a way as to get round it as fast as one can, involves putting a huge amount of load into the left side tyres, particularly the front left, which is at a considerable slip angle for some time through the corner.  It is gently pushing, and the car is being held in steady state of yaw all the way through the corner, at not inconsiderable speed.

Throughout this the front and rear left side tyres do not gain any heat, neither do they overheat, prompting a more gentle approach, as would be the case in such a long corner.  It seems that the heat modelling works in, more or less, an on/off way.  As soon as slip reaches what the physics model decides is an unreasonable level the tyre goes red and there is a huge drop off in grip, tuck it in and reduce the slip and the tyre goes back to blue almost instantly, there is no progression to this heat cycle and no notable increase in temperature from what I would call “heavily working the tyres.”  Hence the heat in the tyres is not really cumulative over consistent heavy driving.  As such, it is very easy to find the point whereby you can avoid any redness, but still work the tyres quite hard and thus have the tyres almost constantly at their optimum range.  This, for me, breaks down some of the illusion built up that the tyre is a constantly changing variable in the physics engine, or that this game is quite so much of the revolution it was sold as.

However, I should really just listen to the Frenchness and get on with having fun instead of all this analysis..  if I can.

Finally, I tried a special event utilising the Lotus Elise 111S last night that seemed to suggest very, very odd mid engine behaviour.  I shall be doing more research on that for next time, especially after I have checked whether that Elise had a grand piano strapped to the back of it!

New Alpha car footage for nKPro

The guys at RSC posted this footage of a shiny new car for nKPro.

Not a single seater, but looks entertaining enough.