F1 2016

[Longknife]

I have noticed the same phenomena in Asseto Corsa. I run at 95% AI level & one track I will get thoroughly trounced & the next I am smoking them. I have no explanation for the behavior because some of the track I lose badly on are ones I am actually good at.   

[Asid]

25% off on STEAM

http://store.steampowered.com/app/391040/

[JudgeDredd]

Daaaamn 

It's worth every penny I paid - but that seems awful early bearing in mind the reviews have been positive

[JudgeDredd]

I definitely need to lower the AI. Not only is it kick arse on Legend, but any hopes of managing to perform anything related to times is just completely out of reach.

Here's my rather sorry attempt at the tyre test - not a single point. And this is not down to not knowing the circuit - it's down to what the game has deemed an acceptable lap time for what I set the AI to.
 

The game needs an "in-between" here. I find it too easy on Expert and I'm out performing where I should be and yet I'm left stationary one level up.

[JudgeDredd]

Started P2 at Catalunya on full wets as it was raining. The car was like a hippo on roller blades so I changed to intermediates which helped - still well down on pace

 

[JudgeDredd]

I just raced Catalunya in Spain last night.

Here's a few laps before and after my one and only pit stop.
 

Example of tenacity...

I qualified 22nd (because I had put the difficulty up to Legendary!). I raced full race distance - 66 laps - in the rain. It was throwing it down for the whole race. On wets for the entire race with 1 pit stop on lap 35. I was lapped twice by Hamilton - and pretty much lapped twice by all the drivers up to something like 10th place and my team mate lapped me once too.

And I finished the race. It took around two hours (1:48 per lap). I wanted to give up. I don't like Catalunya anyway and the weather made it really difficult - and add on seeing your team mate lap you   

Driving in the rain requires a huge amount of concentration because it's just so hard to race in those conditions.

Rival (Gutierrez) is beating me by about 7 points at the moment.

Next race is Monaco. I can't say the rival situation is going to get any better because it's Monaco - but I was able to turn the difficulty down from Legendary to Master (which is the new level they put in for 1.06 to bridge the huge gap I noticed between Expert and Legendary)

[Longknife]

You're a good man! I HATE racing F1 in the rain. Im absolutely terrible at it.

[JudgeDredd]

I just remembered I had posted about this here...so no-one knows I did terrible at Monaco. That was no surprise. I'm not good around Monaco at all.

The other night, I had a great race in Canada (I love Canada anyway).

I was lucky in qualifying which put me out of position on the starting grid...I qualified 1st.

I was placed 10th in the first qualifying session, went through to second qualifying session and placed 9th. In the final qualifying session I was placed 1st out of the 10 remaining. That was because I went out and banked an early lap and whilst I was on my final sector of my fast lap, the rain started to fall. So the rest of the 10 were either doing their lap on slicks and having a hard time, or they had to go out on intermediate tyres.

Whatever the reason, I started Pole Position.

When the race started, I had a good start and started to pull away. The track was wet and the rain was falling. The entire grid was on intermediates though the rain wasn't forecast to last long. There were lots of tricky moments, but I kept it on the track and out the wall and pulled out a 6 second gap between myself and the pack. Hamilton and Rosberg were the closest behind me about 4 seconds back.

The track started to dry and the engineer was telling me it wasn't quite time to change tyre. So I stayed out and stayed out but watched as Hamilton and Rosberg were getting faster and faster and closer and closer.

On lap 15, I got an engineer call telling me Hamilton was going slow and had a problem with the car.

2 laps later there was a yellow flag situation along the back straight...it was Hamilton going slow!! I flew past him with Rosberg still on my heels. I then got a message saying Hamilton was out the race. Another lap past and Rosberg was nowhere to be seen...another message, Rosberg had a terminal car issue and they were retiring the car.

This left me 10 seconds ahead of the next car which was Verstappen.

I decided to jump in the pits and stick a nice fresh set of Ultra Soft boots on in lap 19. I was back on the pace...but Verstappen was catching, lots of them had pitted too.

Slowly but surely Verstappen was catching...but very slowly. On lap 35, I jumped in for another set of boots. As I had 35 laps left and the Ultrasoft tyres had lasted 16 laps, I decided to NOT go for another set of Ultra Soft, fearing I would have to do another pit stop and so I went for the Soft tyre.

This put the pressure on - Verstappen was catching more and more after that, faster and faster. On lap 58, he took me on the pit straight. He has the Super Soft tyres on. DAMN! Why didn't I think about the SS tyre? getting 16 laps out of the US, there was a good chance the SS would've lasted.

Next behind was Ricciardo closely followed by Raikkonen and Vettel. They were catching me - slower - but they were catching. However, as they were embroiled in their own battle, I was relatively safe. From about lap 64, I continually had to defend against one of them (as they kept swapping places between themselves).

Always down the back straight and always at Champions Wall. I always took the inside line into that chicane and they always backed out, giving me some breathing space for the rest of the lap.

I held them off - came in 2nd.   :

I found out that what the rest of the field had done (or most of them) was put Supersoft tyres on in both their pit stops. That's why their Supersoft tyres lasted that final stint. Where I had put Ultrasoft tyres on, I changed earlier giving me a longer second stint to complete. Two sets of Supersoft would've done and I might well have managed to keep Verstappen behind.

Super race. Very close. The weather helped stick me in a position I shouldn't have qualified in but the racing was all me. I had lowered the difficulty for this race and thinking about it, perhaps I shouldn't have as it's a race track I'm familiar with.

Next is Baku in Azerbaijan - not a circuit I know at all!! I'm not expecting a repeat. I will leave the difficulty where it is as I'm not familiar with the circuit.

[Asid]

Nice write-up.

Second is better than third  or no finish 

I think you forgot the screenshots 

Thanks for posting. I look forward to your next race.

[Longknife]

Sounds like a great race!

[JudgeDredd]

I'll try and remember a video next time. Problem is, the races are about 2 hours long. I have no problem recording them...but editing them for "juicy" bits could take some time.

I will give it a bash next time though

[JudgeDredd]

Doing Track Acclimatisation at Baku and it's fubar.

Turn 10 has you hugging the right hand wall...makes no sense as it's a terrible line to take up the hill towards the right hand corner. Apparently racing line shows there too (I don't know as I don't have it on).

Point is - you will not get ANY points for turn 10 in Track Acclimatisation