lovin the spec racer even if i havent had time to get used to it properly. cam ein from work this morning and entered a race at the glen after about 9 laps practice 9never seen the place apart from the footage of stewart retiring after his team mate died ) did ok till i crashed after 6 or 7 laps but a lot of fun. hope to god they give us a few races away from the d licence drivers this season as it'll be a pretty to loose sr points at that level.

mackie have you put your club logo on your paintwork yet?

only worry i'd have for brawn is the engine temps as they've been telling button to back off to cool the engine quite a lot in practice. now obviously that may be just a case of playing safe but the engine install was rushed and they have said they're working on a new aero soultion to the cooling so they may have problems, especially if they're not running in clean air.

there isa comercial flywheel system being pushed to road manufacturers now, apart from weight a big advatage is there is no danger of a short circuit / fire / battery explosion but it has some disadvantages namely that if it breaks up it will do a very passable imitation of a handgrenade and it also has to run in a near perfect vacuum. williams apparently just repump the air out at the last mintue as the seal are more than adequate for a 2 hour race but road cars will need an air pump which will have to have completed its job before the flywheel spins, this pump also adds weight. further disadvatage's for racing are that you can't charge the system before you leave the pits so it may be impossible to have a fully charged system for a qualifying lap or race start and it also concentrates all its weight in 1 unit, an electrical kers could be built with it's components in differing parts of the car eg bmw fit their batteries in 2 packs, 1 each side of the fuel tank rather than a single unit under the tank

good move by alonso timed the pit stop perfectly

anyone know how many laps the safety car can do without refueling ?

ffs another 30 mins rain, why the hell didn't they delay the start an hour ?

Quote from Mustafur :

I saw the footage and this will be hard to penalise, Vettel is closely behind a bmw i think it was and he was blocked him self so Vettel can't be blamed but either can the person in front as i doubt they were even in the postion to see kovy.

But Knowing FIA Vettel will be punished.

coulthard pointed out that heidfeld blocked him for the same reason last year and both of the cars in front of coulthard got penalised. bit silly really, what is the second car supposed to do, drive through the car in front ?

arsehole, pure and simple. i'm pretty sure that beneton's money went to renault when they were sold

Quote from Becky Rose :

Well I have driven a single seater in torrential conditions, with less power, less downforce, and probably smaller tyres than Tristan, but no comment on the skill i've seen his onboard videos :P

The thing that struck me, and this wont be a problem for F1 drivers, was a wall of water everytime I turned my front wheels. The amount of spray my own tyres hit me with was like being punched by Frank Bruno on PMT.

Visibility was a massive issue even without being behind another car, what you see with onboard cameras is amazing compared to what you see behind the misted up visor streaming with blurry raindrops. So take Frank Bruno and his PMT hitting you and remove all sense of vision.

You can see a little bit sideways, and you start looking for braking points by recognising patterns in the grass at the side of the track. You know when it is time to brake by "feel", which is a combination of circuit elevation, engine revs, timing, a small anthill 30 degrees left of centre and 5 metres away from the side of the track, and an aweful lot of guesswork.

Braking becomes an act of hope, accelerating is a leap of faith. Spotting other cars a matter of listening and guesswork as to the density of the spray around you, and changing the cars direction sucessfully a decision as random as a dice roll.

It is one of the most exhilirating experiences it is possible to experience, and any F1 driver calling for the race to be stopped is a pansy.

Sure it's unsafe, that's what is such a rush about it! I meen helloes! Seriously, why would anyone get into F1 if they didn't live off adrenaline like that?

i suspect a lot of it goes back to didier pironi's F1 career ending crash in germany when he crashed into prosts car because he couldn't see it. certainly it changed prost from being a driver who in lower levels had revelled in wet races to one who intensly disliked them, as he once said he likes going sideways in slippy conditions but hates not being able to see. at the time f1 was in mourning for villeneuve and to a lesser extent paletti (in a similar type of incident ) and to loose the driver who was favourite for the championship was in a lot of ways the final straw. also senna's accident in australia when the recognised rain master crashed into the back of another car on the straight because of the lack of visability once again added preasure.

Quote from Crommi :

Top250 is suprisingly easy, you don't need to be alien to get there. For an example I used to be a typical midpack runner on CTRA and on iRacing road side I'm currently ranked 132th and slowly climbing up.

BTW nice setups you posted for the mazda

Quote from TexasLTU :

Why? Theres no more butlers for super-champion Hamilton. Maybe we'll see Heikki showing good results.

only if he learns to complete at least one lap in a race

Quote from titanLS :

Talladega was released today, fwiw. I've never been crazy about ovals but a lot of people are freaking out about this.

i've just seen a couple of clips on youtube and the banking looks crazy from inside the car, the races there should be incredible.

Quote from JeffR :

Computerized sequential shifter (turn down sound, rear end is loud):
http://www.supercarchallenge.nl/video/Assen-bmwSTW.wmv

forget about sounding like a dentist's drill that sounded like it was inside a tooth being drilled by a dentist's drill :ambulance:ambulance:ambulance


alos he doesn't really seem to grasp the idea of the yellow flags at the start of the second lap does he ?

well i just spent 10 mins in a mazda pactice trying to explain to an american the difference between when something is "a load of bollocks" and when its "the dog's bollocks". felt like i was robert carlysle in the 51st state with samuel l jackson

it happens all the time, did anyone at brabham really believe that the fan on their car in sweden 78 was there as a cooling device, or that the lever in the cockpit in 82 was " a handbrake that works by lowering the suspension so the edges of the sidepods are in contact with the ground" and not a device to allow them to get around the minimum ride height rule after movable skirts were banned. similarly did ferrari really believe that alonso's car at monza really interfered with the ferrari's qualifying run when it was that far in front of it or that schumi really lost control at monaco when he caused the yellow flag to be deployed in qualifying?

no excuses for mclaren or hamilton and in fact incredably stupid of them for the sake of 1 position but no different in principal from the above incidents and many others where the team / personel have gone on record stating facts which most of the world find very hard to believe

i'd say all these type of threads are actually a good sign. if i was a dev i'd much rather have a forum full of people screaming for the next update / new content because they love using lFS and want to see it improve rather than a user base who aren't bothered if my brainchild improves in the fuiture as they'll just shift to the next new thing.

i dropped in for a practice this morning at 6.30 am after work and managed 25.7 which wasn't too bad for first practice but a certain dale jnr managed a 25.398 and he was only 2nd fastest

you forgot to say that the comentators will mention at least 10 times how hot / humid it is

Quote from J@tko :

Something I thought of last night - think of who wins if the Brawns are DQed for their illegal Diffuser?

i think that if it's found to be illegal it will not be retro active, i.e. it just wont be legal for future races but will be ok for races that have taken place similar to how they ruled on mclarens "fiddle brake" arangement a few years ago. in someways it would be the ideal solution for the FIA as it would allow them to close the loophole but still give the teams concerned time to make plans for new parts plus a few races to gain the rewards for their ingenuity.

i didn't catch the story properly as i was on iracing at the time but bbc breakfast were saying that brawn have anounced they're laying off something like 1/3 of their staff. hope i got it wrong or its not true as even allowing for people that were associated with the testing team being surplus to requirements, that could hurt a lot of the development they'll need to stay in front.

or villeneuve in 79 ?

for those that don't here it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJ-1frbzZA

i just hope that we go into the last couple of races with 4 or more drivers still with a chance of winning the title. then maybe the FIA will stop this stupid winner takes all idea for next year.

the point i was making was they both were lucky today especially lewis as the gearbox could have failed 50 miles further along and he wouldn't have finished and it actually kept him out of the carnage. not matter how good if he'd have been were heidfeld or webber were, his race would have been ruined.

agree with you about his drive though, after all acording to a lot of other team supporters he was in the worst f1 car of the last 50 years and should have concentrated on next season. so either the mclaren is better than they like to think or he did a good job, certainly he and the car did a better job than the drivers who went off track, hit someone else or who's car failed

all i'll say is the 2 luckiest drivers of the day came 2nd and 3rd. most races barrichello wouldn't have got a 2nd place after the first lap. even more lucky was hamilton loosing his gearbox in qualifying. if it hadn't failed then it could have failed in the race but even more luckily if he had qualified were he was expected to, he could easily have been caught up the t1 mess (assuming it still occured) as it is a 5 place penalty became a 3 place penalty thanks to toyota and he then avoided the carnage before being gifted 3 places by 2 of his possible rivals hitting each other and a toyota that thought it would mow the grass when behind the safty car. as it is the 2 of them are only 2 and 4 points behind button

the question is do you believe luck balances out or do you follow the napoleon theory of a lucky general being preferable to a good general

funny branson saying that we almost never knew how good this car was because of honda pulling out, remember the first time honda pulled out of their return as a constructor after postlethwait died when their car had been very fast in testing ?