Quote from Becky Rose :

but what ratio of it is how quick Hamilton is, and what ratio is how slow Heiki is.

Heikki was regularly fastest in Q2 during qualifying (at Interlagos as well), I'm inclined to think that they're not far apart in raw speed over one lap really. During the races it was completely different however...

Quote from Victor :

Some poking is to be expected. I had to laugh when i saw that clip of massa's dad on tv too - so what? If Massa would have won Hamilton would have been the pokee. Life is so unfair .... :rolleyes:

It's not fun when people start to joke about people with actual problems.
Having some fun on behalf of multi-millionairs I don't really have any objection against.

I just think it's in bad taste to laugh at someone else's misfortune - so what? Hamilton might have been the pokee, but perhaps his family wouldn't be put in the situation where they were cheering because they thought that their driver had done something great, and subsequently made to look ridiculous because of it. It's just extra harsh and unneeded at that point. Anyway, I'll leave it at that since this is a pointless discussion to have, and I certainly have nothing to gain with it.

Quote from DevilDare :

you know the funny thing is that all of a sudden all the people forgot how others were flaming Anthony (which is, a FATHER, who is proud of his SON)
when they had a good race and Ferrari didnt.

Celebrate for Hamilton, not against Ferrari, why is that so difficult? Are you happy Hamilton won the championship, or happy to be able to shove sh*t in Massa's face?

Who cares what others did anyway, it's not important anymore: your favourite driver is the champion, so be happy! Save the smack-talk for next season, it's good fun in between races, not so much when the final cards have been played.

Poking fun at Massa's family for celebrating wrongly (and who really expected otherwise at that point?) is just sad and quite low tbh. What you see is a father incredibly happy and proud of his son, being told it's not meant to be. Can't you all just... you know, be happy for Hamilton, instead of reacting your emotions in a negative manner towards Massa instead?

I'm going to be called a grumpy man with an overly grumpy reaction/attitude here, but when I empathise with Massa's family it's quite sad. Massa drove a great race and was in great shape for the entire weekend. I'm happy for Hamilton, but not happy enough to shove fail-pie in the losers face as a celebration round.

That was some crazy shit right there

Quote from deggis :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vbXMgUTKg

You broke my HEAD!

Yay for the promotions! I must say... the B-Class green is absolutely ghastly

I'll have to reluctantly change some of my colours now, yellow just doesn't look that great in comparison to orange.

I'll reply in this thread to keep things contained. Nothing big, but just an opinion that I have to put out there

Quote from Intrepid :

In my opinion LFS will teach a driver as much about driving as iRacing.

I agree on this entirely since the statement itself is absolutely true. However the way in which the sim teaches you is entirely different. I spent some very good time in LFS and it really introduced me to different racing techniques and some basic racecraft: I learned the gist of trailbraking and defensive driving and the really basic stuff like driving line was already known to me through watching races/playing lesser sims etc. This gave me a good boost in my early iRacing days and I had very little trouble getting out of that 'rookie' zone.

The only true difference is that iRacing encourages safe driving over fast driving at all times, and for me it meant moving away from training like this:

Overdriving from lap 1 -> adjust down to the limit

To the proper way of doing it:

Finding the line -> find marks -> find limit

This is just a bad habit that seems to develop naturally for simracers without real-life experience. iRacing does a good job of forcing their drivers to drive reasonably, which is I think the only part where it's significantly different from LFS or any other sim. At least I feel that it has made me a better (sim)racer anyway.

Quote from StableX :

I think that's incredibly sad........ why include a car they have no or little data for. Pointless considering they go to such detail for the tracks....

It says very little on their actual knowledge of the car itself. The statement is solely about the wing drag and downforce data. It would be sad if they actually don't know much about the car itself for sure.

:feedtroll

Just relax, you've picked one of the busiest times in iRacing history to join up and now you have a rare problem and seem to believe that your $20 makes the iRacing team your personal slaves for every second of the full month duration. I've seen that coming from first-timers in WoW -- you'll get over it soon. They are the best of the best currently, and so is their customer service and response time in an average situation. That doesn't mean that they have one helpdesk employee/slave for every subscriber, who is whipped if he doesn't offer 10 viable solutions to a problem within 1 minute of receiving your complaint.

Just mail them in a grown-up manner (without tapping your watch and counting the pennies you've lost) and spend the time reading up on your problem and/or the iRacing system and how it works. That way you'll make up for some of your precious lost time and maybe not look like a person who has whipped out $20 just to try and find some flaws in a service to troll people with.

It's not normal in that it does not make biological sense to be attracted to the same sex, afaik. It's a natural occurance though, and I have none of the problems that so many people seem to have with it

Same for me, although I was in a test session before it went down.
So, the Radical definitely does not approve of me shifting it from 6th to 1st on the straight without dropping speed. The engine just goes "wheeeeeeee..." - no smoke

It'll be great to see how this factors into races though, I imagine the threat of engine failure will be added pressure to some, and will also allow for some added strategy: now there really is no need to push when you're in between two cars with 15s gap for each of them. I can't wait for the new season tbh

Oh, and there are now basic and advanced setups for every car, and every track, right off the bat! I thought this was great but then I'm really a monkey when it comes to setups anyway.

Quote :

The engine can now be damaged by over revving, especially on early downshifts. There also may be very rare engine failures even without significant abuse, so don't feel too bad if your engine gives up (but try not to over rev). Keep an eye on the water and oil temps -- water shouldn't exceed about 220 F, oil shouldn't exceed 240-250 F, or you'll be starting to take chances. Those temps may start to climb if you are spending a lot of time in the draft.

In before complaints on the forum by people losing a race in their last lap(s) due to engine failure
Wow, this is looking quite good really.

Quote :

Headlining the list of enhancements included in this latest version of the iRacing software are yellow flags on ovals, pit stops and engine-damage modeling. For full details, visit the Announcements section of the member forum and read the accompanying release notes

I didn't expect engine damage, did anyone? I gotta go test the update tonight I guess

Hmmm, I'm excited about this and I don't even care about the damn truck

The problem with Oblivion as an RPG is that it gave me absolutely no connection to my character at all. My character is always the same ugly, generic guy/gal with a randomly generated face whom I don't see anyway. There's no personality which leaves it very open to your own imagination, however since every interaction and action feels so static not even my imagination can make up for it and I never feel involved in any part of the game.

RPG's (mostly the western ones) have become far too based around leveling up and kicking some boss' ass with only a superficial layer of character story to back it up. For many people the open world and side-quests are plenty to make the game great - but I really want to get to know/be the character that I'm representing, and so if something happens in the storyline I want to be directly affected by it, and not through some generic face on my screen. Final Fantasy is a great example of an RPG that makes you feel this: every FF game I have finished left me with an incredibly strong feeling of sadness after beating the game (even after taking 50-100 hours to do so) because there is nothing more to learn about the world and the characters, and there is no more story left.
In Oblivion I'm just quick-travelling to quest after quest and going through the motions to finish the game, which will never happen because I am too apathetic about the world and its inhabitants to care enough to do so.

I need to be emotionally attached to my character as soon as I 'meet' him/her, whether it's an annoying character or not, and if that's not possible because the character is 'mute' like in a lot of RPG's, then things need to happen that make me want to take up his role. I have no interest in the world, however big and beautiful and feature-packed it might be, if I can't connect to my character emotionally.

That said, I guess everyone looks for different things in RPG's and I can certainly understand that. I tend to see them more as interactive stories/experiences, and not as 'games'.

That's the thing with Fable 2... if you don't want to support your wife/kids - don't!

I was happy-happy with my first wife and even bought them a nice mansion to stay in. Then when I walked up to it some time later to greet my second child (first son) for the first time, he had a distinct dark skin tone (in other words: he was black) now I didn't know if this was a bug or if my wife had some little adventures while I was out on my own, but I took no chances and scared her right out of the house/my life ;D

Then I gave my character unkempt long hair and a tramp-beard, pauper clothes and fed him pies until he was as fat as could be. The game is a real playground for people who love to (role)play out a variety of characters in a world that responds more or less as it should.

My only issue with it (apart from some frustrating bugs) is that Peter Molyneux said it would cost 100 million to buy everything in the game, and I'm the King and own everything with a measily ~4 million in real estate, and that only took me 3 days to accomplish.

Back OT though: Fallout 3 seems to be Oblivion with guns, and I have no interest in Oblivion really. I'll wait until I hear some friends about it before trying it myself.

Quote from dawguk :

Another query:

As a rookie, I can't change any of the car setup, which I suppose I would expect. Using the normal Solstice, I can just alter suspension settings. Is this a limitation of the car, and do setups become more advanced when I'm in a more advanced car?

Yes, the Mazda and Radical have a lot more options to fiddle with.

I'm fine with people having some national pride in Hamilton, but don't shut up about him and pretend nothing happened when he does stupid stuff, or pushes people wide at a track for no reason. It's awfully childish to only cheer about a persons good traits and ignore their bad ones in discussions, even on the internet.

And what happened to Jenson Button? He was quite popular during his entry into F1; was going to be the next champion and all that... and he got dropped harder than a brick as soon as people figured out he wasn't going to be in a position to win races. Does he have any fans left?

If you only cheer for a person because he's from your country and winning, then you're not a fan of the sport or the athlete, but a fan of your country's success. And I'm not going to be a big hypocrite and say that's a bad thing (I cheered for a whole bunch of Dutch athletes I had never heard of during the olympics!) but you're going to have to do some self-reflection and maybe come to the conclusion that you might not be cheering for Lewis Hamilton the person, but Lewis Hamilton the success-story instead.

Quote from anttt69 :

Of course everyone has the freedom of choice (well almost) just seems funny, they release half a sim & people still pay the earth to play it?

If you really believe that iracing is not a simulation then you are a wally.

So... are you positive or negative about iRacing? I can't really tell.

Quote from The Moose :

But iRacing is capable of large grids and should bloody well have them.

You have to remember that the Skip Barber series is only class D, and it's basically still a car for freshly promoted Rookies (and rookies at 4.0 SR) so it's supposed to have short races with small grids. In effect the gridsize should increase gradually as you license up: the Mazda has a maximum grid of 20, and I'm sure the Radical will be around 20-24. Last 'week 13' we had the late-model madness with grids of 40 (I think) which did develop into total carnage as drivers from all levels were mixed, however it shows that they didn't put these grid limits in because of technical limitations, but because of how it fits into the licensing system.

Good advice for people thinking about trying for a month!

As for the series in which I'll run... it'll have to be the Skippy again unless they fix the current aero issues. The Radical will also not last for 1 hour races with the current way in which it eats tyres. Hopefully the update addresses these things and I suspect that it might, but currently there's little fun in either understeering a radical all over the place, or running ultralow downforce in the Mazda on every single course because the extra speed you gain in corners seems to offset the lack of wing by generating more downforce through raw speed

Quote from Becky Rose :

It's often said that in F1 once you win a race winning becomes easier.

Unfortunatley nobody appears to have explained this concept to Lewis' team mate.

I don't think even Kovalainen himself considered that a win

Quote from SamH :

I don't see that at all. Every race and every season is its own event or series of events, with its own variables. I don't think there is such a thing as "on a roll" in F1, frankly.

There are so many variables in F1 that I don't really think you'd ever be able to quantify a driver on losing streak. You can get in a naff car, that you simply can't get to work, but it is standard practice for a team to gather comprehensive telemetry and I don't think any team these days is under any illusion about where their limitations and/or bottlenecks are. A losing streak in F1, for a driver, would be simply a driver not capable of doing what's needed or just not on top of his game. I don't think you can realistically define a losing streak more granularly than a whole team as a package.

Well, this is something I can honestly only draw from my own experiences in competing in various sports/hobbies; it's just harder to perform well when things have not been going your way. Hamilton's main strength seems to be his incredible confidence in his own ability, and this undoubtedly motivates him to an even higher level. I just wonder how he would be doing, from a psychological stand-point, if he had started his career in a Force India.

This might be a laughable example when compared to an F1 driver/team, but when I started iRacing I built up an amazing confidence and got into streaks of great results. Then due to some brainfade I managed to spin out of the lead on the last lap of a race, while I was in front of a proper alien. He couldn't avoid me and I couldn't get out of the way, and the end result was that we both finished last and second to last. We talked it over after the race and for some reason I was really apologetic about the whole thing; he didn't seem to mind much. The end result was that it took me a few weeks to gain that confidence back and get into a winning mood again.

Now, I know that F1 drivers have a much more controlled mind than I ever will, and that they are able to (mostly) block out such negative thoughts, but I do believe that although Jenson Button has great love and passion for his career, his self-efficacy will be a lot lower than Hamilton's. That won't mean that Button cares less than Hamilton, or doesn't want to win as badly, but it does mean (and I am assuming that my theory is correct, obviously ) that Hamilton has a much bigger belief in himself and this is what drives him to keep going.

I'd just like to see if he would be the same guy if he hadn't won anything yet, and his best result was a P6 finish and he was glad to score some points for his grid-filling team, do you catch my drift?

It's not about "being on a losing streak", or like you said, underperforming at his job -- I realise that drivers in lower teams are not paid to win WDC's -- it's just about the build up of his own self-confidence and self-efficacy and how it would've been if he hadn't had such a relatively easy start to his F1 career.

Anyway, I think I'm straying far too much towards theory and back-to-the-future styled parallel universes in my arguments, and it's gone down to hypothesising over things that weren't, and won't be. So I'll leave it at that.

Quote from SamH :

I don't see much by way of fanaticism regarding Hamilton. Perhaps you see it because it irks you so much. I can count 2 fanatics on this forum, for whom Hamilton can do no wrong. Everyone else who argues in favour of Hamilton delivers their arguments with healthy substantiation.

Then I guess those 2 have formed the majority of my opinion. Perhaps that's bad perception on my part... that or damn impressive on theirs

Quote from SamH :

Nope, I wouldn't. There's a lot to be said for a bit of patriotism and I have no issue with people finding some pride in Hamilton for that. It doesn't equate to nationalism, since the British Nationalists (as an example) find nothing positive in a chocolate-flavoured F1 driver.

Patriotism, nationalism... I'm Dutch and I often make the mistake of believing words to be synomyms :P
Being proud of a countryman for a great performance is fine. Shamelessly dismissing everything he does wrong as perfectly fine, or someone else's fault, is silly.

Quote from SamH :

I'm talking realistically, not just because Hamilton flies the same flag I do. Hamilton has everything that the legends have IMO, except track time. But then they don't make castles as old as they did, do they?

Agree to disagree. I think he's just a fast guy in a fast car under highly ideal circumstances and I would love to see how he does in a bad car, and seeing how that affects his mentality and how well he bounces back from that. That's also the point I'm trying to make with

Quote :

He's in his 2nd season. How exactly is he supposed to have the history in F1?

I must've been unclear on this: I'm not talking about the history he's had so far, I'm talking about the history he didn't have. Winning is easy, and once you're on a roll it only becomes easier. Bouncing back from a losing streak is hard, as is climbing out of the mud that is a low-budget F1 team. Hamilton has done great things in his racing career, but he hasn't had to face the usual hardships in F1 and probably never will.
That's my point.