craziest part of the regs has to be the allowance of so many aero parts (especially those little fins on the rear corners) on a series that has so much contact, it's too easy for a slight "rub" to rip off small parts which slow the car down. either ban the rubbing or preferably get rid of the complex aero work, easiest way to do this is stock body shells from a model that has a production run of at leats 10,000 per annum and no loop holes so if audi for example want to fit a front splitter, every car of that model range no matter how basic, has to leave the showroom with the same front spitter which has to be aprt of the front bumper assembly so it can't be removed. allow a rear wing to be fitted which must conform to a standard spec and then let the teams fit their V8s in them but use a spec gearbox and simplify the suspension so it's not too fragile.

actually to save costs why not just let the V8 supercars run instead

to be fair to piquet snr, whilst hitting salazar's head whilst he was wearing a helmet wasn't the brightest idea (salazr's idea of keeping his helmet on was far brighter ) it was at least a fairly understandable reaction. his other antics weren't however and you had to feel sorry for his mechanics with his habit of peeing whilst in the car

yeah, havent been on it for about 9 months but i've got fond memories of it, a track that rewards you getting into the flow through the bends, just be carefull near other cars who may be flowing down a different path

anyone else see it in the paper that button and brawn can't agree on his fee for next season ? button, given brawn's success feels that he should at least get paid what he should have earned this year before he took a voluntary pay cut or more if he wins the drivers championship, brawn only wants to continue paying him the current fee of £3 million

Quote from GrIp DrIvEr :

after all, it happened a long long time ago, in a far far away place...

look i know north west wales is a bit out of the way and we're a bit behind the times but there's no need to go that far

bang goes the theory did something similar with an action man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWATd0LRA_4

since i live reasonably close to both this chap and the store perhaps i should add that this guy and his mate have started a jedi church in holyhead !!

oh and one day they had some one dressed as a superhero jump into their garden, confront them with a light saber (ok it was a stick but the superhero said it was his light saber ) and then disappeared back over the fence. pretty much a normal day in holyhead

Quote from IlGuercio :

It took me ten laps on Laguna Seca to do a clean one.
The fastest i could do was 1.25.025 and i assure you it was bloody hard to make the car go wherever i wanted.

have you tried one of shawn purdey's setups off the forum ? radical can seem like a bitch till you find a setup or setup developer that suits your style. shawn's can be a bit loose but it's not too hard if you're used to lfs to figure what to alter to change that without ruining the setup. i used to really dislike laguna with the solstice, and the radical everywhere but now laguna and radical is one of my favourite track & car combos

anyone taking bets on how many of the new teams have dropped out by dec 31st 2010 ?

Quote from DevilDare :

Nice. Flavio is finally out. The guy is a right arse.....

these days a fat arse

Quote from Minimaxman :

Personally I'm glad to see the back of Flavio. Still think Piquet's ruined his career, which team is going to want to hire a driver that if they have to fire will possibly make allagations against the team. Especially when there's so many up-and-coming F1 drivers, I don't think they'll risk it with Piquet.

true. to be fair to piquet, if he had refused and got sacked no one whould have believed him if he said he'd been sacked for not crashing the car, he's still as guilty as anyone else but i can see why he agreed even if i don't agree with it. and is it any worse than when steve sopper took out john cleland to give tim harvey the BTCC title ? for all we know that may have been discussed beforehand.

according to what they said yesterday, the probelm is that there's such a long run from the pit exit lights to the end of the pit exit lane that given the high speeds at that point its almost impossible for a team or marshalls to judge if a car will arrive at the corner before during or after another exits the end of the exit lane. add in the poor rear mirror vision and a car in the exit lane can't see a car on the racing line. what also may have saved hamilton is that when he saw buemi, he didn't panic and lock his brakes on cold tyres and slide into the middle of the bend but went as far to the inside as possible, if buemi hadn't gone up the escape lane, he was left room to make it through the bend though obviously he would have lost time.

untill they change the rules to do something about the mirrors probably the only solution is an extra flag / signal marshall towards the end of the pit exit lane to signal if a car is close, though once again its a hard thing to judge

Quote from spankmeyer :

No streams, you gotta let me in what's going on.

practice stopped due to a herd of elephants invading the track

when porsche launched the 968 they said that they had gained 5hp by optimising the airflow through the crankcase so that the air being pushed down by the decending piston was vented to the area under the piston that was rising at the same time so gaining by reducing the power needed to push the air down and by reducing the low preassure area forming under the rising piston

im not so sure, despite being a mclaren fan. the kers will be a big advantage in qualifying with the before and after the line opportunity to gain speed on the main straight but during the race i wouldn't be surprised if the fact that force india are so good at low drag high speed downforce, and mclaren admitting they have a problem with the same, means that a force india will be able to exit the parabolica with enough of a speed advantage to negate a kers boost and get into the slipstream. plus if they use kers to defend there, then there will be opportunities to pass before the second chicane and on the run into the parabolica.

Ford supercar V8

hmm so thats half the australians happy and half threatening to leave then !!

Quote from 5haz :

I'll bash you with stones for insulting Ferraris, the Mclaren looks nothing like a Ferarri, its ugly!

to be honest i'm not a lover of the direction ferrari are going in either with the new cars front end, and why cant they design the rear lights so they fit under the rear wings rather than stick out on top like the stumps left behind after a 50's cadillac's had its fins chopped off ?

Quote from DaveWS :

After having another shocker in the Mazda, (god that car just brings up all of iRacing's flaws, I'd like it to go burn in hell for eternity please) I decided to use $15 of my remaining $25 credits to get the Jetta. Man. So much more fun. I've only done a few laps at Laguna, but it's nice to be able to push a car without it snapping away from you before you have a chance to see what happened. In fact I might get Sebring for next week...

if you stick with the mazda and find someone who generates setups you like, it's actually a very forgiving car and you can run really close to each other.

just watch out for the aero push, especially at milwaukee, when you get right behind someone, far better to run offset half a car width through the corners and if possible try to cope with a loose setup so the aero doesnt make you too tight. another trick for milwaukee is try to set the thing up for as much mechanical front end grip as possible as this also helps reduce the aero effect

Quote from anttt69 :

Now im confused, i'm racing the Skip at the mo & on the schedule thats week 5, Lowes road right.
So week 5 for Mazda is Laguna which will end tomorrow?

Why cant they just put dates on the schedule instead of week numbers?? How are you even supposed to know when week x is?

all you need to remember is that the weeks end on a monday night (in the uk) which may seem stupid but was brought in as people complained about the tracks changing durring a weekend, as it happens it actually mirrors real life with bankholiday meetings or rain delayed sunday races.

with the exception of the jetta, all series are in sync with each other so if your series is on week 5 then all the others will be on week 5

Quote from AjRose :

I'm sure he will do better than Badoer would.

yes but will he score points ?



only kidding, he's experience enough to adapt to a new team and car fairly quickly and of course he's got the advantage of being race fit and used to the way this years cars feel.

it'll be interesting where he goes next year as he may now be looking for a race seat (thats a seat as in chair not a SEAT as in touring car) rather than the testing position at ferrari he was rumoured to be going for. also he now will bring some info on ferrari with him.

as an aside, anyone else wonder about the rescheduling of the time for the final gP and that it may not have quite as much to do with TV audiences and more to do with running a race in cooler conditions to stop the brawns running away from anyone else and possibly spoiling a final race title battle ?

as some of you may know i'm semi retired these days, sold own business, paid off mortgage etc, working in supermarket just to pay day to day bills

things like this happening to becky make me so mad at some of the idiots i work with, they get away with being at times totally incompetent at their job but in 6 years the only redundencies i've seen have been due to theft or a store closing (and all of those from the store that closed got taken on by the new owners of the building) yet all they do is complain about the company and the management and how they have to work too hard. they really have no idea what it can be like these days.

anyway i'm sure becky that you'll soon find something else and just remember that if thats the way they work then you're better off without them and they're worse off without you

oh and here's the youtube video i turn to when i need cheering up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0

Quote from keiran :

Yea, that would Richard Crozier. Theres a few names in their that I used to race against Ben and Elliot Mason being a couple.

Cars look awesome fun to drive and have been told by a few people they are great fun!

richard's boasting on iracing at the moment as he's the first driver to have won a race with every car

a bloody good achievement which im sure has peed off a few americans (only kidding)

even better he's the celtic club captain

Quote from [RCG]Boosted :

disable UAC (use google) that will get u started.

thats a bit tough on these people

http://www.ulsterautomobileclub.co.uk/

the european distributor for these is based in anglesey and uses my local circuit. funnily enough scotland seem to have taken to them in a big way.

the uk legends championship gets a reasonable amount of coverage on motors tv

on board from race at anglesey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... W_7I0&feature=related

have to agree with spanks about ovals. i dont like the cars due to the weight compared to single seaters and i hate the claustriphobic nature of the short ovals but i can understand why people love them. certainly i love the mazda on an oval and am really looking forward to the indy cars.

going slightly off topic, i wish lfs could gain a couple of different ovals, just so epople could have the chance to experience the differing natures of oval racing on different tracks, the current oval just lends itself to the "all they do is go flat out and turn left" argument a bit too easily, something similar to any 2 from milwaukee, bristol, lowes or phoenix would show the differnt natures of ovals