Honeycar
for example: Momo lost the semifinal at the french championchip, Itto lost the final at the IAA in Frankfurt...for both the prize would have been a Nissan 350Z...
I don't think in Momo's case it was about pressure. If I remember correctly, that guy was one of a pair of brothers that apparently do nothing all day but race each other on GT. They had never been doing OLR, but they beat Momo because they were
faster. Is that scary or what?
I've thought about an international driver's ranking before. But apart from that, a few simple remarks:
For the best OLR racer, the amount of effort you put in doesn't matter. If you win, you win. Simple. If someone else could have done better, well ... they didn't! Results count.
For the best skilled racer, it comes down to a live competition. Who crosses the line first? Something like our LAN parties in Germany do really help. They are still not 100% reliable - you can be very unlucky in accidents. Last RPC I was at, Flinx had some bad luck, among others getting stuck behind me on one race and being to much of a gentleman to push harder to pass me, not realising I had screwed up and left ASM and TCS on. Stuff like that happens a lot in races and unless you are pretty aggressive (as some drivers are), you can suffer from it - drop out of the top league once, and you may never catch up in the standings again. But it is part of racing, and in general, the best driver does come out on top.
You become the best racer through a number of skills. You can become one through putting in a *lot* of practice, getting to know the details of the tracks and the cars. Or you can be fast by understanding racing physics very well. If the competition is tough, you will definitely need both to keep with the top.
Drivers like Hugo and jmr, I know from experience, are drivers that perform well immediately, even on tracks they don't know yet - they learn really fast, they know how to take the turn the first time they see it, and they feel from the car what its limits are. Part of that is experience, part of that is insight into how the car works. It makes them very talented drivers, and if they apply themselves they will always do well. If you put them in real cars or karts, they will do well there also. At least for these two racers, I know this for certain as it has been proven in practice. But, I'm probably going to get flamed for it, right now the highest level of GT driving takes place in France. Maybe at this moment, if jmr and Hugo tried, they might beat all of the drivers, but the number of drivers there who are of the same skill or almost the same skill as they are is very high. But that is just my opinion. GTIRN obviously harbours a lot of talent also. And you pick up all the scattered US talent, you might be able to find a good group also - right now though, they are still very much that - scattered.
The other way round works as well by the way - real track skills translating to the game. A driver like kart.no.38, who you'll see in the last race, plays very little GT. But he does a lot of semi-professional kart racing (meaning he gets paid to do so but doesn't do it full-time yet). And he does very well there too. That skill and insight from real racing, he brings to the game, and the more realistic the physics of the game are, the better he does in the game.
In the end, you can rank a driver through a number of skills. Which skills are more important depends on the situation. Setting up a world championship, or a ranking system, means you will be making a choice which skills you value more, by providing situations (races) that test those skills and assign value to it (through points). You can never be 100% objective in that - always some skill will be test more than another, and you will have to draw a line.
I wouldn't, personally, draw conclusions from the BC races. As arrogant as the French drivers can be, many of them would indeed have won or done much better in their races if they had put in the right amount of effort. I know this, from watching them on their own board (sometimes it is nice to know many languages), and following their Live events (though I still have to attend one, look forward to do that now that I live a bit closer to them).
I think the same, by the way, goes for much of GTN's team too. At the same time, some of the toughest online competition right now takes place at the German boards. But the only proper conclusion from the BC races right now is that the winner won that particular race.
