I've set myself a pretty big challenge..... (Shaggy's WDC tilt with Super Aguri)

[Shaggy Alonso]

I've decided to try and win the World Championship in the career mode on hard with the lowly Super Aguri team. This means no restarts, if I spin or crash - tough titties. I'm going to do the races at 30% distance with stability control switched off though I will allow myself to adjust the brake bias and traction control. Component failure will also be switched on.

I'm not sure this is even really possible to accomplish as the Super Aguri will be hopelessly uncompetitive at many of the high speed tracks like Catalunya, Silverstone, Indy, Monza, Suzuka and probably a few others. But I think with a mixture of good set ups, some racecraft and ringing the neck out of the car, it might be possible to pull off. I'm sure I can win at Bahrain, Monaco, and Shanghai, and beyond that I'll just need real consistency and a large amount of good luck probably.

I'll let you know how I get on. Anyone else fancy trying this as well?


Race weekends:

Round 1 - Bahrain
Round 2 - Malaysia
Round 3 - Australia

 

[Popeye]

What setting in career mode? I have done it in easy. Busy trying to move and set wet times now. But medium is the next for me.

 

[Peter]

I'm on hard difficulty with 10% race distance(I don't have that much time on my hands to do much more) and I started with Super Aguri and I don't think I scored a single point. Then I wasted season 2 testing for Toyota, then did a trial at Magny Cours for Ferrari and was 4 seconds faster than the passable time and I became their First driver instantly. I'm in a heated title battle with my teammate Massa who is leading the championship with me in 2nd somewhere over 10 points behind but i'm catching him.

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

What setting in career mode? I have done it in easy. Busy trying to move and set wet times now. But medium is the next for me.

I'm doing it on hard. I imagine it would be rather easy on medium. I've changed the OP to make it clear of that.

 

[Jerry786]

do you guys use driving aids? Manual gears?

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

do you guys use driving aids? Manual gears?

For this championship i've turned stability control off entirely which makes riding certain kerbs and wet weather driving in general a real challenge TC and the racing line are the only other assists I am using. And yes I use manual gears with the G25 racing wheel.

 

[kingmart1n]

If anyone can do it you can. I finished a season on hard mode but was only driving in the low teams for 5 race then got a offer from redbull which i took. I think im with one of the top two teams now in my second season.

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

Super Aguri Trial - Silverstone

I applied for a trial with Super Aguri and it was arranged for Silverstone. The target lap time to beat in a single lap was 1:25 which I did comfortably with a 1:23.2. Hence, I was offered the race seat as second driver. Pfft, second driver.....I was now intent on lapping my team mate on a regular basis to show who's boss.


Round 1 - Bahrain

Weather - Hot and sunny

I went into practice with a pretty good idea of how to go on set up.

Since the SA06 has such a pathetic top speed but decent all round handling, I could afford to decrease the wing levels for better top speed. This was how it was set up:

Front wing - 35%
Rear wing - 40%

Front camber - 1.2
Rear camber - 0.4

Gear ratios - Balanced

Tyre pressure:
Front - 40 PSI
Rear - 40 PSI

Tyre compound - Soft

All other settings were default.

The car felt good, nicely balanced and it pointed into the corners nicely. I could have optimised the set up more but there was no need as I was comfortable with my pace. The reason I went with the balanced gear ratio was that none of the straights at Bahrain are quite long enough to make 7th gear in acceleration ratio any use, infact I noticed I actually lost 1mph when shifting up to 7th. So I set it to balanced and never went higher than 6th gear, and just hoped my engine would hold out. The added benefit of this was that if I got bogged down in the race, I could maximise the effect of any slipstream I was getting by punching it into 7th, thus 7th gear would only be my 'slipstream gear'.


Qualifying


Getting through Q1 and Q2 was a doddle, only one lap required each to set the quickest time. Q3 was harder to get the pole as I was weighed down with some 27 laps of fuel to begin with and the other top runners seemed faster in race trim, so I had to hook up a decent lap, which I did with a 1:34.636 - certainly not the perfect lap achieveable but it was enough to earn me pole position with a couple of tenths to spare from Alonso who would start alongside me in 2nd.

Race

I got a decent start and moved over to the right, blocking an attempt by Alonso to take the lead into turn one. I soon pulled out about a 2 second lead to Alonso when he had some sort of incident and retired from the race. Schumacher inherited his position. The gap between us was hanging at around 3.5 seconds when I picked up the pace a little and pushed it to about 4.5 seconds coming up to the first pit stop. I had opted to go for soft tyres as this race was about going all out for victory rather than playing it safe and picking up points, as I'm certain later races will be where the SA06 won't be competitive enough to fight for a podium. As a result of the soft tyres, I had to be careful towards the end of both stints in the race. As soon as my engineer came on the radio telling me the tyres were starting to go off, I switched the TC to maximum for that extra bit of security coming out of the slow corners such as turn 8.

I held it together in the first stint and had a good pitstop, 7.2 seconds and after Schumacher's scruffy outlap, I now held a comfortable 8 second lead over him. However, the very next lap I spun exiting that bitch of a corner, turn 8, losing me 6 seconds in total. Worryingly, Schumi would now be in range of my draft but I eventually managed to drop him, all the while conserving my tyres and being extra cautious with the kerbs and turn 8, and I went on to score a victory by about 5 seconds! As an added bonus, Massa who is sure to be a championship contender, retired with a mechanical failure shortly before the end. Also, shortly before the end I lapped my team mate, further cementing my status as No. 1 driver within the team.

This was a good day and I inflicted maximum points damage on Alonso and Massa, but the other 2 contenders for the championship, Schumacher and Fisichella, finished 2nd and 3rd respectively and are likely to leapfrog me in the next couple of races.

Here are the tables:

Drivers

1st. O'Driscoll - 10 pts
2nd. Schumacher - 8 pts
3rd. Fisichella - 6 pts
4th. Raikkonen - 5 pts
5th. Montoya - 4 pts
6th. Heidfeld - 3 pts
7th. Barrichello - 2 pts
8th. Trulli - 1 pts

(All other drivers have yet to score)

Constructors

1st. Super Aguri Honda - 10 pts
2nd. McLaren Mercedes - 9 pts
3rd. Scuderia Ferrari - 8 pts
4th. Renault F1 - 6 pts
5th. BMW Sauber - 3 pts
6th. Honda Racing F1 Team - 2 pts
7th. Toyota Racing -1 pts

(All other teams have yet to score)


So on we go to Sepang, Malaysia where I expect the Renault and Ferrari fightback to begin. Sepang's mixture of straights and high speed corners does not favour the SA06, plus a couple of tricky off camber corners means I will have to be conservative with how I set up the car, further limiting my ultimate speed. There is also a strong chance of rain which could spell disaster Still, if I can get the car into Q3 then there is a strong possibility of scoring some points 👍 However, like most of this season will be, that will involve somehow putting the car somewhere it doesn't belong. I can only do this for so long before pushing too hard and having a DNF 👎

 

[Popeye]

Congrats on the write up.
I'll give it a go in hard. But I won't have time for a while as I'm moving house.
But it'll be the next project.

 

[icelt]

I've decided to try and win the World Championship in the career mode on hard with the lowly Super Aguri team. This means no restarts, if I spin or crash - tough titties. I'm going to do the races at 30% distance with stability control switched off though I will allow myself to adjust the brake bias and traction control. Component failure will also be switched on.

I'm not sure this is even really possible to accomplish as the Super Aguri will be hopelessly uncompetitive at many of the high speed tracks like Catalunya, Silverstone, Indy, Monza, Suzuka and probably a few others. But I think with a mixture of good set ups, some racecraft and ringing the neck out of the car, it might be possible to pull off. I'm sure I can win at Bahrain, Monaco, and Shanghai, and beyond that I'll just need real consistency and a large amount of good luck probably.

I'll let you know how I get on. Anyone else fancy trying this as well?


Race weekends:

Round 1 - Bahrain

As a former MF1 warrior racing on hard with no mulligans or resets best of luck to you . Actually it was alot of fun seeing how well I could perform in a slow car and sim'ing a full season. For me in similar conditions just finish a race, much less in the points, was a sweet sweet victory. When you start qualy with the attitude that there is no turning back, well every turn, every oil slick, every nicked curb just becomes... well for me it's hard to describe I guess but "beyond intense" is about the best I can think of. Very fun stuff though. Looking back at my MF1 Setups thread where I also tracked my results during the season I see that I scored a whopping 14 points and finished 11 races total. You will have your work cut out for you, but as fast and consistent as you are I'm pretty confident that as the season progresses you'll find yourself comfortably in the top 3 at most tracks. If I can recommend anything it would be that after you develop your setup for a track is to take advantage of a GPW for that track as a sort of practice race. The main feedback I got from doing this was to get a feel for how my car would respond/act in traffic AND, most importantly, learning the sometimes weird braking spots the CPU uses (even on hard). For example the final chicane at Montreal if a CPU car was anywhere close behind I would intentionally break maybe 50m later than normal, even though it's a slower line, to protect against the CPU car from ramming me.

Anyway good luck again and earning the WDC should prove a good challenge and good fun 👍.

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

News

In light of my win at Bahrain, team management saw fit to promote me immediately to the position of 1st driver but took the strange decision to demote Takuma Sato to test driver role, leaving the hapless Yuji Ide as 2nd driver.

Round 2 - Malaysia

Weather - Hot, humid, patches of light rain throughout the weekend

Friday and Saturday practices

The weekend started off wet, my first wet lap was a 1:43, 2nd was a 1:42 and my third was a 1:40, which put me comfortably ahead of the Midlands but only a couple of tenths infront of Ide and behind the rest of the field

The rain was on and off through the whole of first practice and my engine blew quite late on so my fastest lap was a meagre 1:34.586 to leave me 15th in the standings, but I had mainly been experimenting with my wet weather set up. I had discovered that if I put on enough downforce, should it rain during the middle of the race, I could feasibly avoid doing a second pit stop for intermediate tyres and only lose 3-4 seconds per lap to the top guys on inters, which might be enough to leap frog me up the field should I need to do so.

The second practice didn't feature much rain so I got plenty of track time, trying to extract the maximum out of the set up I was going for. This was how the car would be set up:

Set-up

Front wing - 70%
Rear wing - 80%

Tyre Pressure:
Front -40 PSI
Rear - 40 PSI

Tyre compound - Soft

Gear ratios - Balanced

All other settings were defaults.

Since the SA06 stood little chance on the straights, I decided to try and maximise its speed through the high speed corners. It worked well, I was able to take turn 5 easily flat out and on low fuel, often 6 as well - impressive. After the initial braking for turn 7, I could get on the throttle early and take turn 8 flat too. I seemed to gain a lot on my rivals in this way. I kept the camber settings neutral for extra stability in turns 2 and 9 which could prove especially tricky if it were to rain. The bonus of this would be that my soft tyres could probably last a whole stint without the rears degrading too much - the downside is that the car wasn't ever as pointy as ideally I would have liked, thus my set up was slightly compromised.

I put in a banzai lap during FP2 for a 1:32.5 to put me 3rd overall in the standings, behind Massa and Montoya in 1st who had a 1:32.2. This lap flattered me as it was a particularly good one and I had a bit of draft during it. The fastest non draft lap of the weekend that I managed was a 1:32.8 - 6-7 tenths slower than the ultimate pace. I was the quickest car of all in the first and last sectors but almost a second slower than the fastest guys in the middle sector. I was able to bang in low 1:33's regularly though which I hoped would be enough to take the fight to the factory Honda team and the Toyotas, and maybe even the McLarens.

Qualifying

I went into qualifying, confident I could make it into Q3. My Q1 lap was a 1:33.009, this put me 6th and comfortably into Q2, a full 3.6 seconds quicker than my team mate. I did a marginally better time in Q2, 1:32.976, that landed me 6th again and into Q3 with about a 1 second time difference to 10th place. Q3 was predictably more difficult. The absolute maximum I was able to extract from the car was a 1:34.387 with some 18 laps worth of fuel onboard. Once again, on low fuel the car can be genuinely competitive but with race fuel it's almost impossible to run with the leaders on pure pace. My lap earned me 8th position on the grid, which I was satisfied with as I simply could not have gone any faster with that set up and I still qualified in front of R.Schumacher and Raikkonen. Montoya, who had been strong all weekend got pole position, with Fisichella lining up in 2nd.

Race

Thankfully when it came to race day it was still dry. I got a decent start but it wasn't long before Raikkonen was going past me, however I knew I could brake later than anyone into turn one and I did just that, retaking Raikkonen, cutting inside Button and then doing Alonso round the outside of turn 2 ala Hamilton on the Ferraris in 2007. This elevated me to 6th, and if I had been braver I might have been able to take Schumacher going into turn 5, but I thought better of it and eased off the throttle a tad. Encouragingly though, in the first lap I was all over his gearbox, sniffing for a way past.

However, on lap 2 Schumi started to pull away and Alonso began hounding me for position. He tagged me going into turn 11 and I spun 360 degrees with the car and even my race position still intact. Then on lap 3 Alonso spun me AGAIN at turn 4 and this time several cars went past, demoting me to 10th. There was no intervention from the stewards and it became apparent that finishing in the points was now unlikely

I quickly caught up with 9th placed Ralf, but took several laps before I was able to get past him. The problem was that all the obvious overtaking points were at the end of straights, where obviously he had a huge top speed advantage over me. I would be sniffing his arse through the bends and then he would just drive away from me on the next straight

I eventually decided to go for broke and did a lunge on him up the inside of turn 9, braking very late to make it stick, and I blocked him off on the exit. The pit wall was impressed but it still only left me 9th with no points. After the making my one and only pit stop I came out in 8th due to Barrichello retiring - thanks mate 👍

As a result of my earlier spins and then getting held up by Ralf (I was only able to run 1:35 laps behind him) I had dropped off the pack. Raikkonen was 7th and 4 seconds in front of me. My only hope would be if it rained and the whole field pitted for wets. Unfortunately, a weather update came through that the remainder of the race would be dry. I did my utmost to catch Raikkonen, but it was no use as I was only able to reduce the gap to 2 seconds and had to settle for 8th place and one point. Fisichella got by Montoya at the start and won the race, but Juan Pablo took some valuable points of Schumacher, Massa and Alonso so it could have been worse.

On reflection, I certainly had the pace to run with Raikkonen and the Hondas if I was already in front of them, but not to catch them, much less overtake them. Overall this weekend I believe I was the best of the rest after the Renaults, Ferrari's and Montoya who was on fire.

Race results:

1st. Fisichella
2nd. Montoya
3rd. Schumacher
4th. Massa
5th. Alonso
6th. Button
7th. Raikkonen
8th. O'Driscoll

Here's the tables:

Drivers

1st. Fisichella - 16 pts
2nd. Schumacher - 14 pts
3rd. Montoya - 12 pts
4th. O'Driscoll - 11 pts
5th. Raikkonen - 7 pts
6th. Massa - 5 pts
7th. Alonso - 4 pts
8th. Button, Heidfeld - 3 pts
10th. Barrichello - 2 pts
11th. Trulli - 1 pts

(All other drivers have yet to score)

Constructors

1st. Renault F1 - 20 pts
2nd. Scuderia Ferrari - 19 pts
3rd. McLaren Mercedes - 19 pts
4th. Super Aguri Honda - 11 pts
5th. Honda Racing F1 Team - 5 pts
6th. BMW Sauber - 2 pts
7th. Toyota Racing -1 pts

(All other teams have yet to score)


On we go to Albert Park, Melbourne where I expect the SA06 to be slightly more competitive and Q3 should once again be possible. The track's low downforce requirements, level surface and low kerbs, may allow me to be a bit more aggressive with my set up than before. Hopefully another points finish beckons if I can keep it on the black stuff

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

If anyone can do it you can. I finished a season on hard mode but was only driving in the low teams for 5 race then got a offer from redbull which i took. I think im with one of the top two teams now in my second season.

Thanks King. To be honest the more I think about it, the more impossible this seems. A few race wins and consistent points finishes probably isn't enough. I imagine you need to win about half of the races and finish in the points in all the others as the champ usually ends up with over a hundred points. Including Bahrain, I can only think of around 6 tracks where it's even possible to win in a Super Aguri. Assuming I'm even able to win these 6 races, where are the other 40+ points going to come from? Maybe Fishfash and the very best racers out there could do it, but i'm becoming increasingly more negative about my chances. I'm certain I could do it in a Toro Rosso, i'd even be pretty confident in a Midland, but the Super Aguri just has a much lower top speed than any other car and that's a pretty fundamental problem to have to drive around.

As a former MF1 warrior racing on hard with no mulligans or resets best of luck to you . Actually it was alot of fun seeing how well I could perform in a slow car and sim'ing a full season. For me in similar conditions just finish a race, much less in the points, was a sweet sweet victory. When you start qualy with the attitude that there is no turning back, well every turn, every oil slick, every nicked curb just becomes... well for me it's hard to describe I guess but "beyond intense" is about the best I can think of. Very fun stuff though. Looking back at my MF1 Setups thread where I also tracked my results during the season I see that I scored a whopping 14 points and finished 11 races total. You will have your work cut out for you, but as fast and consistent as you are I'm pretty confident that as the season progresses you'll find yourself comfortably in the top 3 at most tracks. If I can recommend anything it would be that after you develop your setup for a track is to take advantage of a GPW for that track as a sort of practice race. The main feedback I got from doing this was to get a feel for how my car would respond/act in traffic AND, most importantly, learning the sometimes weird braking spots the CPU uses (even on hard). For example the final chicane at Montreal if a CPU car was anywhere close behind I would intentionally break maybe 50m later than normal, even though it's a slower line, to protect against the CPU car from ramming me.

Anyway good luck again and earning the WDC should prove a good challenge and good fun 👍.

Thanks for the tips 👍 The fact i've managed 11 points in two races makes me proud (should have been 13 if it weren't for Alonso's misdemeanours).

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

News

My 8th place finish in Malaysia prompted the team to send me an e-mail, personally thanking me for my performance, stating 'it simply had to be seen to be believed' Later that night, way up in the Petronas towers, someone knocked on the door. I opened it and what looked like two Malaysian hookers were stood there in front of me, scantily clad. They said they had been sent up to me as a present from team principal, Aguri Suzuki - paranoid as he is about me leaving for Ferrari. However, they came at a bad time as I was just in the middle of watching Time Team, so I politely declined their offer and shut the door. I then got into my Super Ted Jim Jams, curled up in my Spiderman bed sheets and went to sleep after an exhausting day 👍

Round 3 - Australia

Weather - Warm, sunny, few clouds, dry.

Friday Practices

FP1 - 1:26.486 (8th)
FP2 - 1:25.6xx (3rd)
FP3 - N/A

I went into practice with a clear idea of what I wanted in terms of set up. I was able to play around with the settings more than I could afford to at Bahrain or Sepang because the track is such a flat one without any awkward off camber corners. I started by putting a bit of camber on, and lowered the downforce a bit. Then I started trading downforce for more camber - the theory being that there are few high speed corners that the downforce would be required for, but plenty of slowish point and squirt corners that need a pointy car. The result was a car that wasn't as slow on the straights as before but also one that could turn into the corners quickly.

I ended up with this set up:

Tyre pressure:

Front - 50 PSI
Rear - 40 PSI

Tyre compound - Soft

Front wing - 25%
Rear wing - 40%

Front camber - 2.0
Rear camber - 1.2

Front suspension - 17
Rear suspension - 17

Gear ratio - Acceleration

Albert Park is a track where I feel the driver can make more of a difference than somewhere like Sepang where you simply have to have a fast car. It has lots of hard braking zones, slow corners where you have to be careful of the kerbs and a couple of fast commitment corners. The set up was working well, I was competitive. So I firmed up the suspension a little as well and I started to go faster again. My fast lap in FP2 was on low fuel and with a bit of draft, but I knew I could almost go as quickly without draft. However, Schumacher did a 1:25.3 to clock the fastest lap all weekend. Although I was competitive, I still wasn't fast enough to be in with a chance of winning.

Qualifying

Q1 - 1:26.253 (2nd)
Q2 - 1:25.788 (1st)
Q3 - 1:27.166 (4th)

I breezed through Q1 and Q2 but and was in a good position to qualify in a high position even with race fuel on board. Pleasingly, my Q2 lap was without any draft at all.

For Q3, I decided for my race strategy to set it so I would pit on lap 7 instead of the default lap 9. I did this so that I would have 2 laps less fuel onboard for the session to help me bang out a good lap time. I could then just pit a lap or two later than scheduled in the race, as the team usually tops me up with a couple of extra laps just incase. My Q3 lap was a good one, but I had time for one more when I collected too much grass on the exit of Stewart (T14) and put the rear of the car in the wall, my session was over and I had to settle for 4th, which was a tad frustrating because just one more tenth would have elevated me to 2nd on the grid. Schumacher got the pole with a 1:26.8 and was followed by Alonso and Fisichella. Montoya, Raikkonen and Massa were all further down than they ought to have been. Barrichello started in 5th with Button all the way down in 14th.

Race

I had hung everything out to dry in qualifying, risking crashing out in order to gain a tenth here and there, but I knew for the race this was no longer an option. Given the narrow layout of the circuit and all the kerbs I would have to mediate my pace in order to bring the car home safely, with some points in the bag. Furthermore, with my set up, I was utterly screwed if it rained as I was running with less downforce than anyone else and had a twitchier car than anyone else in order to be competitive. There were also a couple of corners such as turn 5 and turn 12 where there was every chance of getting it wrong and smashing into the wall.

I got a good start, left Barrichello for dead and was pretty close to Fisichella going into turn one. However, Fisi pulled away on the ensuing straight and Barrichello caught me up, forcing me to go defensive into turn 3, then I absolutely hung him out to dry on turn 4, resulting in him and a bunch of other cars going wide and giving me plenty of breathing space, Montoya was now the car behind me. At this stage Alonso was past Schumacher but with Fisi and I holding station.

For the next few laps I was hanging on to Fisi in 3rd but slowly dropping Montoya behind me. When it came to the first round of pit stops I was around 2 seconds behind Fisi and about 4-5 seconds clear of Montoya. However, I decided not to pit the lap after my scheduled stop, but the lap after and this possibly came back to haunt me. My tyres were a bit wrecked at this stage with the camber settings I had been running and I made a mistake at turn 4, and incurred a 6 second penalty. Montoya was now right with me and there was an oil slick on the entrance to turn 6 which almost spun me, now Montoya was breathing right down my neck. He made slight contact with me at the entrance to turn 9 but I remained in front. Then braking for turn 11 he knocked me right off the track and gave me a left rear puncture Rear punctures are the worst because they make the car incredibly easy to spin. So I think I spun twice on the way back to the pits. By the time I pitted, I was in 16th place - game over. Infuriatingly, the fat one, Juan Pablo, emerged from all this unscathed 👎

A lap later, a few late stoppers had pitted and I moved up to 13th place. Christian Klien in the Red Bull was a few seconds down the road and I soon caught him up and barged my way past at turn 3 for 12th place. Once again, my only hope for a good finish now was for it to rain, but a weather update came through to say the race should be over before the rain would come.

By this point my head had dropped and I must have spun the car 3 times in the last 2 laps, Klien got by and I finished up in 13th, and worst of all was that bastard Montoya finished in 4th, the position I would have easily finished the race in. Very frustrating, I easily had the advantage over Montoya and might have been in with a shout even of leapfrogging Fisi in the pit stops. I had been looking forward to a nice 5 point haul but it wasn't to be

Race order:

1st. Alonso
2nd. M Schumacher
3rd. Fisichella
4th. Montoya
5th. Raikkonen
6th. Heidfeld
7th. Massa
8th. Rosberg

13th. O'Driscoll

Tables

Drivers

1st. Fisichella - 22 pts
2nd. Schumacher - 22 pts
3rd. Montoya - 17 pts
4th. Alonso - 14 pts
5th. O'Driscoll - 11 pts
6th. Raikkonen - 11 pts
7th. Massa - 7 pts
8th. Heidfeld - 6 pts
9th. Button -3 pts
10th. Barrichello - 2 pts
= 11th. Rosberg, Trulli - 1 pts

(All other drivers have yet to score)

Constructors

1st. Renault F1 - 36 pts
2nd. Scuderia Ferrari - 29 pts
3rd. McLaren Mercedes - 28 pts
4th. Super Aguri Honda - 11 pts
5th. BMW Sauber - 6 pts
6th. Honda Racing F1 Team - 5 pts
= 7th. Toyota Racing, Williams Cosworth - 1 pts

(All other teams have yet to score)

Well, any hopes I had of winning the championship seem all but over now. An 11 point gap seems insurmountable (I'm yet to have an engine blow out)

Happily though, we go to Imola where I think we are in with a real shout at victory. It won't be as easy as Bahrain was, but I should be able to put the car in a high position. Of course, if it rains then there isn't a hope for me, lets just hope it rains at all the tracks which I haven't a hope of scoring in anyway 👍

 

[Peter]

Melbourne seems to be more of a high downforce, low top speed track. I think you would have had some better lap times if you went with that setup.

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

Melbourne seems to be more of a high downforce, low top speed track. I think you would have had some better lap times if you went with that setup.

In real life, perhaps, but not in this. Trust me, there aren't the corners for a high downforce shod car to get its teeth into. Just as an experiment, I ran the car in high downforce 60%/80% front and rear wing and I was approximately a second slower than with the low downforce set up, despite being able to accelerate earlier out of corners. Melbourne is basically a series of straights broken up by chicanes, a little like Montreal. So good speed on the straights is essential 👍

 

[Peter]

Perhaps if you used more of that downforce in the front rather than the rear for more front grip.

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

Perhaps if you used more of that downforce in the front rather than the rear for more front grip.

Although I didn't try it on this occasion, that is because I've tried that style of set up before at Melbourne, and while it can yield good lap times, it also makes the car quite oversteery and hard to predict. There are a couple of turns, particularly the exit of turn 6 and turn 13 where the car would spin with this set up on occasion. If my only goal was to bang out a really fast lap I might have gone with that set-up, but the car has to feel stable and I have to be confident that when I put my foot down it won't spin out. There probably won't be a single race in this championship in which I have more front wing than rear.

 

[Kakundoo]

I have followed your example Shaggy and decided to give it a go myself. Today I tested out for the Super Aguri team and with a stunning accumulative lap time at Silverstone, the team boss offered me first driver straight away which I was surprised at to be honest.
I then continued to have my first race at Bahrain and was comfortably fastest through the entire weekend. Although Q3 did pose a problem for me, but managed to pull out a 1:34.412 to get ahead of Alonso.
I won the race even though I spun 3 times accidentally at various points and Alonso and Massa both went out with Schumacher finishing second, a lot like your first race as well
Malaysia will be very tough but after reading your race review, I'll learn from that and try to avoid any contact with anyone and take a much more laissez-faire approach and just focus on putting some decent laps in, and see where I end up.

 

[atteiros]

I just recently started taking F1CE seriously again and this is a very fun and interesting read!

I really don't even know if I have the skills to finish a season with a top ten on SA! 👍👍👍

 

[Kakundoo]

Did Malaysia last night and managed a 4th position after Raikkonen knocked me off out of 3rd place. I'm considering making my own thread to document my progress...

 

[DTLaw100]

Hahaha loved the bit about the Malaysian hookers!!!
I think you made a wise decision

Great thread this just fuels my need to play this game!
Wots happened to the rest of the season i feel like your show got canceld

 

[Shaggy Alonso]

Hahaha loved the bit about the Malaysian hookers!!!
I think you made a wise decision

Great thread this just fuels my need to play this game!
Wots happened to the rest of the season i feel like your show got canceld

Hey, glad to hear at least someone's reading. I've got a bit preoccupied with other things but I'll come back to it eventually. Have you already got the game and just not played it in a while or will this be your first time? It's supremely underrated, great racing game 👍

 

[DTLaw100]

Im getting a ps3 in a couple of weeks so to prepare iv already bought f1ce as it was so hard to find! And a g27 also, they are both sitting under my tv taunting me

Im a big f1 fan and have played all the f1 series, i played the demo when it first came out and loved it but since i didnt have a ps3 i couldnt get it.

Im finally getting one mainly for gt5 but looks like that wont happen for while, oh well il be more than content with this game!
Iv been constantly looking in this forum while I wait and by what iv read it just confirms
that i will love this game! From being able to race my own career to being able to drive
the parade lap!

I cant wait!!

I look forward to your next instalement while i wait

 

[Christian_C]

I commend you on your ability to even manage to score above 10th in this car, I've been playing the demo and I'm pretty certain I must be one of the worst players of F1:CE ever as I can't even keep up with any of the AI on hard.