Topic: The Motorsport Thread

Damn today was a pretty sad anticlimax. The wacky track evolution meant you could find half second improvements all the time. Only really good laps from the top guys could stand for ten minutes. Ah well, race tomorrow, and chin up!

@WoomyNNYes it’s so interesting to see Formula E tech like regenerative braking to accrue more electrical energy. Helps of course that Porsche is in that sport. It’s such a fantastic test bed for this kind of stuff. Speaking of, hear about the hydrogen powered Hypercar travelling though Spa?

Been a while! But my predictions for F1 have been disastrously wrong. I did at least predict that Sergio Pérez would be a monster points scorer if Red Bull and Mercedes had parity in pace. And Bottas has proved once again that he makes his own appalling luck. When he’s not racing he’s setting up ladders and black cats, and walking right underneath them.

Outside of Mario Kart Racing games generally aren't my forté (though I did used to play Cruis'n World back on the 64 pretty regularly as well), though as I've recently subscribed to Xbox Game Pass to try out the whole cloud based gaming thing (I don't have an Xbox so it also gives me the chance to try out their exclusives) I've found myself enjoying the racing titles I've tried on the service.

Forza Horizon 4 has gotten most of my attention so far and I'm really starting to get into it. Although pretty well versed in the control nuances of most other genres, this is pretty new to me so I had to dial down the difficulty (and turn up the assists) in order to make any headway, and even then victory isn't an assurance (I have finished in first a few times, but often finish as far back as 5th or 6th, out of 12, as well). Luckily placing isn't a requirement to advance, it just helps you unlock things faster, so it's a good pressure free way to get into racing games IMO. Plus, it's an open world game & has other things to do such as jump & speed challenges scattered about the map, a side quest that sees you completing various objectives as a stunt driver on a movie set, and even exploring to collect "Barn Finds" (you can go completely off road, and every once in awhile a part of the map will be colored purple which indicates an abandoned vehicle is sitting around somewhere in the area & it's up to you to nose around & find it).

Otherwise I've also started playing a bit of Dirt 5. It's a more traditional racing experience (though naturally focused pretty exclusively on dirt road racing), and although I still had to turn the difficulty down, I can absolutely smoke the computer on the easiest setting, so I'm enjoying that, lol.

Anyhow they're pulling me away from Ninja Gaiden on Switch so they have to be doing something right, lol.

@RR529 How are you at tuning cars? One thing I learned from Gran Turismo(PS2) was, setting front suspension slightly softer than the rear suspension. Having slightly softer front suspension improves car turn-in. (prevents understeer). I use that in any realistic racing game.

Regarding Horizon assissts, I turn on traction control, and stability control(keeps car from spinning).
It's been a while since I've seen the game menus, so, I can't recall where those settings are.

At some point you can get a good car you can use in a lot of races. Cough! porsche 918 - it's all wheel drive<333

@WoomyNNYes, people in the Xbox thread told me which assists to turn on so I've probably already activated the ones you've mentioned.

I haven't tuned any individual aspect of any of my cars yet though, as honestly a lot of the deeper sim like elements are a bit daunting as I really don't know a lot about cars. One of the reasons I went for Horizon rather than Motorsport is because I heard it was a bit more arcade in vibe/gameplay (though can still be sim-ish if you want it to be). Similarly I heard Dirt 5 stripped back the sim elements to be a bit more pick up & play compared to it's predecessor.

I tried a Gran Turismo back on PS2 & Motorsport variant of Forza back on 360, but was never really able to get into either.

@RR529 I got DiRT 5 for my birthday earlier this year, and also got a wheel and chair to play it in the most immersive way. I'm more a fan of simulation racing games, like Gran Turismo, but this was still very fun. The cars are way too stable, so I often anticipate some sliding and make mistakes that way. But even when turning up the AI to Hard I still win by half a minute.

Thing with rally (or offroad games) is that I like playing in the third person camera, whereas in sims I like the first person view. It's an arcade game through and through though, the races are a bit short, and the graphics and menus are notoriously showy for an arcade game.

@WoomyNNYes I'm a complete casual. Why? I use traction control. I've learned that you're meant to be progressive with your throttle application, so before this I always jammed the throttle and spun off. Of course you want to get on the power as early as you can, so I turned traction control on. On everything from DiRT 5, to GT, to the F1 games... it's my best friend.

One thing I noticed is that I always lean for maximum rear brake bias in actual cars. In normal cars, they have terrible cornering speed so slowing down is important. And since most corners (including some I'd take flat out in a single seater) are very slow I always go for rear brake bias.

@TheJGG It sounded like RR529 could use a tip. So that's why brought up tuning.

Yeah, that rear brake bias<333 Ps2 Gran Turismo taught me so much about tuning, and diving skill.

Now that these games have gotten me started on a bit of a car kick (which I'll probably burn myself out on in a week or two, as these things typically go), I watched two racing related movies today.

The first of which was a 70's comedy called Eat My Dust that sees a young Ron Howard playing Hoover, a teen from a small southern town who steals a race car to impress the girl he likes, and the two (along with a gaggle of other youths) take the car on a bit of a countryside joy ride with the police (and other racers) hot on their trail. It's actually a bit tamer than I was expecting for a 70's teen debauchery film, though it still delivers a few chuckles even if it's otherwise pretty unremarkable.

Second was the Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which was a pretty fun time, and I'm a huge weeb so any film set in Japan is gonna' get a watch by me, lol. Though I'm absolutely not buying the MC as a high school kid, and the substitution of Marvel properties in place of anime/manga for what little "nerd culture" was featured in the film felt odd (granted, most of it was Hulk related stuff owned by an American character, but I digress).

@WoomyNNYes It’d probably help me if I tuned things other than downforce, brake bias, traction control and tyres!

Shame Lewis Hamilton didn’t use rearward brake bias when restarting for the Azerbaijan GP a few weeks ago. That still hurts now, and it will, especially if this is the reason he loses the championship!

@TheJGG Oh, that's right, Hamilton lost the lead, or good standing, when they restarted, if I recall, I skimmed, watched some of the race. That's the race where someone's rear wheels locked up, they spun, and the rear wheels did that weird chatter-bounce as the car skidded backwards.

As far as tuning goes, are you not picking the lighter weight redcution, like Stage I, Stage II?(some in-game race cars may come maxed out in that respect.) Or buying race intake/exhaust? Lighter flywheel=quicker throttle response.

If you can customize the transmission, I sometimes tweak the top gear to add a bit of top speed, if it's advantageous.

@WoomyNNYes He was second on the grid, for a two lap shootout, and accidentally set his brake bias forward! He had a great start and took the lead but as soon as he hit the brakes, nothing happened, because of the brake bias. He went straight on, and rejoined in last. Lost the chance to take massive points from his championship rival, who’s crash was the reason they had that two lap sprint to begin with. And as for the rear tyres, those were failures. There was a massive investigation as to why the tyres randomly failed like that, and it was ultimately due to tyre pressures.

In GT Sport, for the cars I use frequently, like the Super Formula car, I unlocked all the power ratio and weight reduction upgrades, the car’s so much faster in corners thanks to that. My race strategy is usually to make up time in corners, and therefore run lower fuel settings, so therefore I lose time on straights…

The amount of tuning you can do is exhaustive to the point that it’s terrifying honestly. I have played around with the gear ratios and downforce levels, but not recently. I’ll spend time time on it today and see how that affects car balance. On power heavy tracks I put maximum downforce, as questionable as that may be!

Caught a couple of races over the weekend.

First was a MotoAmerica Superbike event on Saturday evening. It only consisted of 17 or 18 laps so didn't even last quite an hour so I fit it in my schedule. I'm sure it'd be much more exciting if you had someone to follow, but it still managed to keep my attention due to how nerve wrecking it looked when they took corners due to how close to the ground they had to lean.

Second was the weekend's big Nascar race on Sunday. I wasn't sure if it would hold my attention for the entire duration due to the clichés you always hear about it (just turning left in a circle for a few hours), but I actually managed to sit through the whole thing. It certainly helped that I chose to follow a driver (Kyle Busch, simply because his car was sponsored by M&M's candy, lol), who ended up managing to win the race in spite of some car trouble through a large part of the race (his car was jammed in 4th gear for multiple laps). Apparently it was his second win of the season, putting him 4th in the overall point rankings.

Otherwise I've been continuing to play Forza Horizon 4, and I'm really starting to get the hang of it now (I've been winning so much the game asked if I wanted to turn up the AI difficulty, though I declined for now). It's inherently fun in a way you usually only see from first party Nintendo games (it feels good just to move about the world), and I like that it's been giving me lots of 80's cars, lol (there's just something I like about their boxy, yet somehow futuristic design). Here's some screenshots I've taken so far (all playing on the cloud):

This morning I managed to catch a Formula 1 practice race, and I noticed that the racers' placement was determined by their fastest lap & not by which car crossed the finish line first on the last lap.

Is that how winners are decided in races proper, or was that only because it was practice? In NASCAR for example, the car ahead on the last lap wins regardless of how fast they were elsewhere during the race (last Sunday, the winner won because the cars ahead of him were running out of fuel & had to pit close to the end, giving up their positions and allowing him to take the lead with a few laps left), and I'm just wanting to know how different it all works in F1.

BTW, Hamilton had the fastest lap, with Versteppen in 3rd (only mentioned because those are the two racers I hear mentioned the most).

@RR529 Alright… my time is now! Those are practice sessions, to figure out set ups for the race, plus doing qualifying and race simulations by running different tyres for certain distances. In practice the driver with the fastest time is first, though it’s just that, practice. There’s no points on offer.

If qualifying is cancelled though, for whatever reason, like a typhoon (Japan 2019, where it was delayed to Sunday morning), they set the grid from Practice 3 as a backup.

Qualifying’s tomorrow, and that decides the grid for Sunday’s race. It doesn’t offer points, though there’s something new happening soon… F1 is trialling a Sprint Race, about 20 laps, to decide the grid in a more competitive way. In two weeks when F1 goes to Britain they’ll have qualifying on Friday, then a sprint race where they give points to the top three finishers. That then decides the grid for the main race.

Anything I can answer while I’m at it? Hope that helps clear that up!

@TheJGG, thanks! I figured it was just because it was practice, but I wanted to be sure.

I caught a NASCAR practice run today & it was pretty much the exact same, where they were just ranking by best lap time. Interestingly enough, they're racing on a "road course" this week (a track more akin to what you'd see in F1, it's not an oval track with only left turns), which is something I was unaware was a thing in NASCAR.

@RR529 Yeah I watch IndyCar from time to time (if the races are early enough, so no Texas or Long Beach this year) and they have a mix of road and street courses too. I’m not a fan of stock car racing or ovals so NASCAR’s not for me. Thing with ovals is that they produce decent racing despite being in theory a very boring idea.

I prefer road courses in Indy because they provide a legitimate challenge for drivers and teams, instead of being a showcase of the best engine, and a mix of highway draft passes. The racing in Road America a few weeks ago was amazing, same with Belle Isle in Detroit. There’s only one more oval this year and we’re around 8 rounds in, so it’ll be interesting to see how the oval goes.

Thing with IndyCars is that they’re built for top speed. Meaning they’re driving like pigs through corners. In F1 the difference is shocking, when comparing laps of Circuit of the Americas, which they both race.

@WoomyNNYes here's a dumb fact for you, yesterday some 17 post race time penalties were issued to drivers in the two Formula 3 races. In F3 they reverse the top 12 for the first race, and that makes the grid for the second, and the guy that finished 12th ended up 6th thanks to all the penalties. Seems like the only guy that didn't get one was the winner!

@TheJGG I looked up an article on that. That's so wild. That many violations... one could argue, was everyone drinking? Lol.

Formula E in New York City... predicting what happens in a Formula E race is nigh on impossible. Most days even a longshot guess ends up coming true.

That reminds me of a F3 race in Monza 2015 (I think), in which there were so many incidents that the race was CALLED OFF due to "poor driving standard" i.e. turgid driving. Ironically, a lot of the drivers at the race got to F1, such as Albon, Stroll, Giovinazzi and even Leclerc.