Tag: racing

A long time to do a race ?

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June 13, 2024

10:47 pm

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cars

Hello everyone,

Le Mans weekend coming up and the start of a week off for me. Not going anywhere except maybe day trips … just looking to chill out and there’s some stuff that really needs catching up on at home too. I’ve hit pretty severe energy debt so I need to heavily go on the recharging. I’m looking forward to the race, there’s something very compelling about the endurance racing and GT format. How about a meme though …

Picture. We're looking at a captioned picture of a race track. Lower left, a motorcycle rider in mostly white overalls is kneeling on the track, looking at his red and white motorbike, which is sliding up the track on its side. Captions : "Motorcycle curling. Harder than you think"

A couple of weekends ago, I was watching the Nurburgring 24 hours race. There are several big endurance events during the year around the various championships and Nurburgring fell at the start of June this year. It’s held at the Nurburgring Nordschleife race track in the Eiffel Mountains and I think it’s the longest active racetrack in the world at the moment.

Picture. We're looking at a video window inside a browser. In the background, a very high zoomed out view of a race track winding its way through fields to the left and forest to the right. Over the top is a layout of this almost 26km racetrack.

Lots of screenshots coming from the Chrome window I was using to watch the race. The Nordschleife is a massive extension to the Nurburgring Grand Prix track which takes up the tiny little bit in the bottom left of that track layout. The track itself is 25.378km long, or 15.86 miles. This year, there were 127 cars starting the race of all of the different classes from the GT3 cars which go round the track in 8 and a bit minutes, to the front drive touring car type racers that take more like 12 to 13 minutes to do a lap.

Picture. We're looking at the video again, with 3 race cars on a starting grid and a safety car ahead of them.

That’s a Herbie lining up on the starting grid. This was a VW Beetle RSR, one of 5 cars in the SP 3T class for little cars with turbos. This class also had the crowd favourite Dacia Logan. The first Dacia in the race was destroyed last year in a huge crash in the night time and they came back with an upgraded one this year.

It makes for compelling racing with cars of different speeds and capabilities racing each other. The classes are limited mostly by engine size and whether they have a turbo. There’s an article about it at the link here. There is also a Balance of Performance system, which looks to even out the small differences in the cars. Sometimes they get it wrong and a car gets overly restricted but most of the time, they get the cars supremely well balanced against each other. There’s still overtaking but it means that as the race develops, you have no idea who will come out on top at the end. At Nurburgring, this goes into the pit stops as well. Instead of racing style pit stops, all of the teams have an enforced minimum pit stop time so that no one is disadvantaged if their pit area has a slower fuel pump than the others.

Picture. We're looking at the winding corners of a race track, with a succession of cars rolling through on the formation lap before the actual race. The side of the track is thronged with spectators a couple of rows deep.

The race is a firm favourite with fans as well. This was from the formation lap, where the crowds are allowed in to cheer on the cars they’re following. And then they have plenty of time to retreat behind the barriers before the cars come back round, at racing speeds.

Picture. We're looking at the aftermath of a crash. Two cars are to the side of the track, one has its nose embedded in the car in front of it. A medical car is to the right. The drivers are sitting and standing by the crash barrier to the left, with track marshals looking after them.

And incidents definitely do happen, with the crowds being kept well away from any flying bits of motorcar like what happened in the incident above. Both drivers ok, just shaken up. The one in the sideways car took a turn on the commentary later as well.

What happened there was another car had dropped down oil on the track, which caused the grey car ahead to have a heavy crash. The driver stayed inside until the marshals could get them, which was a Very Good Thing as the driver of the red car also caught the oil at high speed and was out of control right into when they went into the other car. Both drivers ok, the safety standards in these cars are excellent.

Incidents occur throughout the race and the teams are allowed to recover cars in trouble and attempt to repair them enough to get them back racing again. Often, I’ll have the leaderboard as the active window and I’ll be listening in to the commentary while watching the numbers on the timing screen. The coverage is free via Youtube by the way, there’s no paywall (Le Mans is either paywalled for uninterrupted coverage or 25% ads on Channel Not To Be Named).

Picture. We're looking at a screenshot of the leaderboard timings screen. It's an absolute sea of numbers, with the teams on the left, the lap numbers and time differences in the middle and the time they've taken to do the separate parts of the track on the right.
MANY NUMBERS

That’s the timing screen, with the lap being broken up into the sectors. I’m usually watching the numbers for the tail end of the field, where fast cars that have hit trouble are attempting to catch back up again. Or cars like the Dacia are steadily climbing up the field past cars that have had an incident. The commentary for the race is always very clear and interesting to listen to, maintaining what they do over the full duration of the race.

Oh ! Looking in there, you’ll see some numbers like the 29:33.804 where a car has taken half an hour to catch up with someone who has crashed. It makes a delightful mess of the timing screen :-D. Or it could even be the Glickenhaus car down in 118th place there, which had just got back on the track after over an hour in the pits for repairs. (It had a new engine the night before the race and continued to have issues).

Sometimes the cars have really bad issues, or they decide to follow the crowd and start up the barbecue in the evening.

Picture. We're looking at the race track in a darkening scene being lit up by a car stopped at the far side, on fire. A line of fire runs back a decent way from the car.

Yep, there’s a car at the end of that line of fire … Driver ok again but that car wasn’t going anywhere after that. It probably had a fuel line pop off.

But with the darkening scene above, that marks the time to start wrapping up here … I had a feeling that we weren’t going to get a full 24 hours of race, the weather prediction was showing consistent rain which means cloud. The Nurburgring is situation up in those Eiffel Mountains, which means the circuit is prone to being affected by low cloud and fog. The race was red flag stopped at about midnight 20 local time as thickening fog made it too dangerous to race. There was an attempt to restart coming up to the end, with several laps behind the safety car before …

Picture. We're looking at the finish line for the race. A blurred blue car is crossing the line to the right, with more cars to the left. A lady in blue coat and black trousers is waving a black and white chequered flag.
There’s a grand stand over there I think

The race was called off due to the heavy fog. A sad end to a race that showed a lot of promise for its first third, not even a sprint at the end to let them race it out for a lap or two.

So, sad end to the race this time but I’ll be looking forwards to the next one in June next year, although it looks like the actual race date will be shifted so it doesn’t clash with Le Mans.

That’s going to be my weekend after tying up loose ends at work tomorrow. Hope it’s a good race ! Have a great weekend everyone.

Watching racing, thinking cars

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May 30, 2022

3:35 pm

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Hello everyone,

I enjoyed watching quite a bit of the Nurburgring 24 hours race this weekend …

Picture. We're looking at the tarmac of a racetack snaking a route through grassy banks to the sides. There are quite a few race cars in diverse colours making their way through, all with headlights on. We can see a few spots of rain on the camera. The caption to the top right is "Total 24 Nurburgring Formation Lap".
Brrrmm

This was actually from the race held in September 2020. It’s normally held a couple of weeks before the Le Mans 24 hour race which aims for the longest days of the year with a little bit of separation to allow drivers and cars to compete in both if able to. The weather this year was far better … previous years have seen the race suspended overnight due to fog or just too dangerous conditions but they got a full uninterrupted 24 hours of running in this year.

It’s a classic race, I enjoyed watching it a lot this time around. And there’s something I find way too fascinating about having the timing screen up instead of the actual cars and watching the sector time numbers steadily collect there. Especially if a faster car has had a problem, got repaired and is catching up through the field again. Or a slower car is steadily gobbling up fast cars that have retired from the race several hours before.

Stats ! It’s run on the Nurburgring Nordschlieffe course which is in the various racing games. I tried it when I played Forza Motorsport way back. Here’s a wiki link. The 24 hour race is held on a layout that includes the 3.2 mile (5.1km) Grand Prix circuit for a total of 15.77 miles or 25.378km. It’ll take the fast GT3 cars 8 minutes 15 seconds to cover that on a fastest lap, or the Dacia Logan taking 11 minutes 46 seconds on their fastest lap.

I like it more when I can adopt? a car to follow for the race and see how its doing throughout the race. Sure, the racing at the top is pretty close and spectacular, like when the Van Thoor Manthey Porsche slightly tapped another car on a fast part of the circuit and pirouetted itself a heap of times before hammering into the barriers. It bounced off a car driven by the other Van Thoor brother too so the commentators were speculating for a while about christmas card lists in the Van Thoor family :-D. But I think I connect more with the little guys, the underdogs, the ones that people write off as having no chance but they’ll keep on punching on reminding you that they’re there waiting to slip ahead when you make a mistake.

And the little Dacia Logan outdid super fast cars like this :

Picture. We're looking at the grass run off area beside a race track on the left edge of the screen. There is a car, stopped, with the back end engulfed in flame with black smoke rising to the left. The caption is "KTM X-Bow GTX".
Toast is good. Toasty cars … not so much

This was one of the oddest things I’ve seen in racing for quite a few years. Before I go on – driver escaped fine and the only things hurt were the grass, several bits of barrier and the car itself. What happened ? The cameras caught the KTM car on fire with the driver looking for a good spot to abandon it. The flames were pretty much out as the car was stopped and the driver jumped out. However … this is where the weird comes in.

Apparently the car wanted to continue racing and set off again, sans driver, down the steep hill. The flames then reignited … Several more cars came through and avoided the fireball before it took an early left and embedded itself in a roadside barrier. The marshals quickly got the fire under control again and the incident was pretty much done again.

Most races would see this being handled under a full course yellow or safety car but this isn’t really practical or sensible for a nearly 16 mile race track. So what they do instead is to have the area with marshals under a Code 60 protocol with a strict 60km/h speed limit. They’ll have a Slow Zone before with a strict 120km/h limit and waved yellow flags before to make it safe for the track marshals to work and return the track to a safe state for racing. I.e. a small portion of the track under a local speed control with the rest of the track under green flag unrestricted racing.

Yep. Enjoyed the race again this year and it was good to see excellent conditions throughout with occasional rain to add even more interesting times for the teams during the second half.

Post Part 2 time !

One thing about the race is the variation in cars taking place. The fastest cars are GT3 standard, so road going race cars like the Porsche cars, the fast Mercs, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and even the hideous BMW M4. Hopefully the Lexus cars will be back as well, they’ve brought the RC F variant of the IS cars I had before. That’s like … a 2 door coupe version of this car :

Picture. We're looking at two saloon cars with swept back aerodynamic roofs. The one behind is red, the foreground and to the right one is silver grey.
Yesterday’s Shinies

Whereas those had 220bhp and a hybrid electric drive, the RC F loses a couple of doors, goes a bit lower, they swap out the powertrain for a 460hp V8 cylinder 5 litre engine and send it round a racetrack. Bit like what BMW will do with their higher spec M cars. The N24 race also includes cars more like what we’d have though, like Hyundai i30N’s, Toyota Corollas, there were a collection of VW Golfs of various ages, Opel Astras and … the Dacia Logan. The Dacia was being a bit of a running joke because it was taking 50% longer to go round the course than the fast cars but … it kept going and came 98th out of the 135 cars taking part despite losing about 90 minutes that would have kept it competitive with the other 4 cars in its class. The two Corolla Altis were doing better than the GT86 car that was also in their class.

So … post part 2 ? I’m warming up the thinking to what the next car I get will be. It’ll be a Toyota again for a bit because I put myself on a multi year servicing deal (might have oopsed there) but Lexus don’t make a car I want to buy any more so I’ll be moving away from that brand. The UX is their small car now and its SUV doesn’t have much sport and little utility. The ES that I have now is too big, as are the other cars in their range since they put the CT/Prius and the IS in the bin.

To be honest though, I’d rather drop a size and cost level and go for the highest spec in a cheaper range than read the manual, see shiny features (even down to a kick open boot release) that aren’t included in the car I get.

Because I like shiny things and I was sad when nothing happened when I waved my foot under the back of the car as well as other things in the manual that weren’t in my car this time. So one thing that might happen next is go for a top spec Lexus CT from the last year they were sold, instead of having something new.

One thing I find odd though is that manufacturers look as if they’re tuning their ranges … SUVs are taking over (I’m not a fan of SUVs) and car makers are either going small or big. Vauxhall don’t sell the Cavalier any more. The Dacia Logan from N24 isn’t for sale any more. Honda aren’t bringing the Integra to the UK.

It feels like an odd trend. Perhaps they’re looking forwards in time to when petrol and diesel cars are stopped from sales. Or they’re recovering from the Dieselgate scandals. One huge consideration for me though is what car I’ll find myself in at the end of the decade … because unless politics change, it’ll be the last car I get due to electric not being a good option for me. I’d have to charge it on a public road with a cable going across a pavement – that ain’t an option and I bet I’m pretty common with that consideration. If you live in a flat, where are you supposed to charge the car up ?

What am I looking at as the options at the moment ? Considerations are : Speed but economical. Toys. Comfort. Size bracket. Being able to put shopping supplies in the boot. The Lexus UX fails utterly on the boot.

I’m actually looking at the latest Puma, even if it is an SUV style. It would feel weird to be back in a Ford after the horrid 2002 Focus ST … but I wouldn’t be captive to an emergency buy this time. The original Puma sports coupe was a lovely little car.

There’s also the latest Corolla hybrid, Lexus should really be looking at bringing a posh version of this out like they did with the CT / Prius. They did a wonderful job with the CT, delivering a solid ultra high quality conversion of the Prius which had them break through into the UK market which was continued with the faster IS300h that I was seeing in work’s car park a lot. It’s weird that they discontinued both CT and IS.

Audi looked ok until you started adding in the options. Similar with BMW and Merc. Vauxhall were a nope (plug in hybrid isn’t an option). And I wouldn’t touch a French car unless thoroughly convinced otherwise. Mazda are a curious one. I wonder why the MX-5 Miata isn’t at Nurburgring … perhaps they can’t fit the safety stuff into them.

Volvo are off the list because their cars are too big. Will have to expand the research a bit while being careful about what any magazines I get say.

Last bit – we had a work trip last week that allowed a bit more research … I’ve enjoyed having decent satnavs in the Lexii, although the last two have had deficiencies come in. (The last IS was an utter failure at last mile navigation, i.e. the most important bit, the destination point can be difficult to set on the ES satnav). This time, we used Android Auto as the satnav. It actually worked really well, with two phones connected to the car quickly and the signal staying good throughout.

However … the reason we used two phones is that sending the signal continuously through Bluetooth murders the battery and we didn’t have charging facilities. My impression was that Android Auto is very viable as a satnav … but I won’t be using it because it connects to one phone only, so I’d have to think of something to allow my music to be used. I wonder if I’d be able to satnav off the old iPodPhone I have, that might sort out that one.

(My main phone is a Pixel 4. Is good phone. My music comes off an iPhone 5, which is staying on an ancient version of iOS so that it talks to an equally ancient version of iTunes. I can’t update them. Similarly, I can’t allow the iPodPhone to connect to the internet because it’s hilariously exposed on security.)

So there’s another big consideration – getting satnav and music via two different devices.

I think that’s it for now though. Time to have a little diversion looking at Mazda’s site to see what they got :-D.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

X, Advent, Racing

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December 6, 2021

9:40 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve missed posting again ! To be honest, I’m pretty burned out at the moment and I’m really looking forward to having the Xmas break off to try and recharge the brain a bit. Perhaps I actually need (hushed voice) an actual away from home holiday. I don’t think I’ve had something that counts like that since (checks photos) 2013. I was suffering from the issues with my outsides then but it was before it turned really bad. I’d been avoiding going to hotels since it went really bad until around 2019 ish. (I was leaking a bit too much).

Haha, that might have been a bit oversharing for the starting paragraph 🙂 But I think it’s part of why I’m suffering mentally at the moment. When I’m active, I can shift into that faster thinking gear, it’s just taking more of a kick to get me in that at the moment and I’m exhausted as soon as I close up the work laptop every day. Wait … thumbnail pic ?

Game screenshot. X4. We're inside a docking bay, looking at a stubby looking small one person spaceship on the landing pad. It has a big gun poking out under its nose and we can see a short stubby wing at the lower back. We can see a logo behind an open entry door. The logo is of a Pocket Dragon holding a slice of pizza.
Interstellar pizza delivery anyone ?

That’s from X4:Foundations and … the dwagon on there isn’t a photoshopping. I’ve not looked at this game too much so far due to a couple of reasons but I couldn’t resist making something Very Me after seeing a custom logo option in the various menus. Elite only has a small selection of decal logos that you can add to ships and I wouldn’t want to have any of them on the ships.

I might brighten it up a bit though. The default logos in game are all white monochrome, which I tried to follow with the edit of the Pizza Dwagon but I think it’s ended up more as shades of grey instead of a proud logo that stands out to be recognised by people trying out the interstellar pizza delivery service.

Picture. We see a Pocket Dragon standing on a plinth, holding a sign that says "Have I enough shades to audition plz?". The pocket dragon is in grey scale.
Don’t tell him …

Moving swiftly on …

I acquired X4 because of a rising dissatisfaction with Elite Dangerous. Elite is a wonderful screenshot generator but it needs a lot of issues fixing, issues that were introduced as part of the Odyssey update. I can’t see much point in playing the earlier Horizons edition any more, I’d rather stick to the new version. One of the issues is the lighting … I’d find a promising place to make camp at the end of a session, arrive and find that the lighting issue kicks in and you can’t actually see anything.

The criteria is : Find a gas giant with rings and a landable moon. If the moon has an atmosphere, that’s a bonus. And then I’ll head over there and try to land so the gas giant is on the horizon.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're landed on a rusty red barren moon. Our pilot is standing in the bottom right, behind her is the purple moon buggy. Behind there is a rock and landed behind the rock is our ship. In the background, there is a partly illuminated grey brown planet and the rings circle the planet disappearing under the horizon.
Camping at the Grand Rings

The pictures look great when you can find them … but when new bugs come into the game faster than the old bugs get fixed, you have to wonder whether it’s worth spending more time in the game, especially when all of the objectives I have (but one) in the game are completed. The only remaining thing to do that I’m bothered about is to own one of the Fleet Carriers as a mobile base …. but those require a decent investment of time in order to fund them. (Although apparently you can sit in an asteroid belt having an autobattling ship that earns credits at a happy rate – that’s not the kind of gameplay I’m interested in though).

X4 is the fourth game in a sequence of space flight games. It’s always been a very arcadey style of space combat sim, which isn’t a bad thing as far as gameplay goes. One thing it does have as well as the blasting is a more evolved economic model. So whereas Elite only has you flying one of the spaceships around, with the rest in the hangar, you can build up a business empire in X4. When you move up to a bigger or different ship, you can assign a non player character pilot to the old one and send it out to do more trading, mining or have them around to run shotgun on your freighters. Oh and you can build your space stations as well and manufacturing. Kinda like a friendlier and single player version of Eve Online.

I’ve bounced off the X series continually in the past though for multiple reasons, hopefully I can adapt more to X4. That said, the new little ship (unnamed so far) hasn’t left the pad yet partly because I’m still figuring out what you do in the game, mostly due to Pain.

Ouchies hit last week … I think the cold snap is one factor but I was also using the desktop mouse in the wrong position for an extended amount of time last week and that’s apparently wrecked me. Oops. If it’s on the upper deck, I use it with a straight arm which puts a lot of stress on my shoulder, putting an upwards and outwards pressure on it. And that’s still stiff after last week.

So I’ve been on the more hands off games with less movement of the mouse, like Motorsport Manager. Oh and perhaps a bit of Skyrim and Mars Horizon too as well as continuing the repairing things catharsis that Car Mechanic Simulator offers.

Advent ? No advent this year. It was a great theme to have over the last few years, with the themes giving me stuff to write about every day. But … the Lego models take up a decent amount of space, the advent calendar wasn’t particularly interesting this year (unlike the Xmas jumpers from last year) and I was definitely feeling that burn out.

Picture. Front and centre are two lego figurines. One is Darth Vader in his black helmet cape and a red Xmas jumper with a death star ball on it. On the right is a angry looking fellow with a green jumper with a white droid on it. There's a marshmallow to the left and more lego figures in the background.
It’s that time again

Yep. Almost the time of year for Mini Eggs to be back in the shops.

Haven’t had snow yet here, unless it happened in a weekend morning and I completely missed it.

Racing ? I’ve been following the Grand Prix racing still. Something has to change there. At the front, you have a driver apparently hell bent on having people run into him and throughout the field you have them slowing to make space for fast runs, which is going to lead to a massive accident at some point. I think it’ll be a close finish at the end of this season and there will definitely be more controversy happening. And at some point, the patience has to run out with a driver who is definitely incredibly talented but has also been incredibly dangerous on the race track ever since he came into the sport.

I suspect you know which driver I mean there. I think it’ll be different again next year, with George Russell coming into the Mercedes team. Whereas Lewis Hamilton has the skill to avoid car damage when he’s been getting run off the road, I don’t think Russell does. There will be more accidents happening next year. But we’ll see there. Hopefully the new regulations next year improve the racing, although Formula 1 has usually been a processional activity where the cars can get close but not overtake on a lot of the tracks. It should be the fastest car and driver that wins and often that isn’t the case.

Something for those who say – “I watch it for the crashes”. Take a look at yourselves please. Those are real people in the cars. Hopefully the two Formula 2 drivers who were injured yesterday make full recoveries. Other drivers have not. Your entertainment should not come at the cost of those bringing it to you. I was wondering when the big crash would happen yesterday. The new Saudi circuit is the second fastest … with many blind corners. It’s not a question of if an accident will happen, it’s when.

I have a vague memory of Frank Williams and Patrick Head having to avoid traveling to Italy for a few years because they’d have been arrested on manslaughter charges (later cleared) in the aftermath of the Ayrton Senna death. I can see the new Saudi traffic as being a track that could potentially kill someone.

And that’s not what I call entertainment. I genuinely thought we’d lost a driver last year with Romain Grosjean’s miraculous escape from a fireball. Seeing that again on Drive to Survive brought out the feels again.

I’ll say it again there – our entertainment shouldn’t come at a cost to other people.

Haha, he says thinking of the Pixel People in the games. Perhaps we’re Pixel People in someone else’s game ?

Anyway, I think that’s more than enough metaphysics for my head tonight. Time to disappear back into book with the music on. It’s currently Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds and then I’ll be buying Leviathan Falls by James S. A. Corey, last of the Expanse books.

Have a great advent everyone, be well.

Cars, racing cars and sweet things

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February 10, 2021

5:10 pm

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Hello everyone,

I might be changing cars again soon … It’s only a “might” at the moment but there are a few compelling arguments either way. The “No Change” route would mean keeping what I have and paying off the remaining finance on it when the PCP* period finishes next year.

*PCP is Personal Contract Purchase. It splits the cost of the car three ways. There’s a deposit at the start and the value remaining at the end is engineered to be the same as the expected future value of the car. So on a car costing £35,000, the up front would be anything from £2,000 to £10,000 and they’d expect the value after 3 years to be around £10,000. And then the finance is for the difference.

The other way would be to hand mine back in early and jump into a different car after delivery.

Erm … we interrupt this post for a very important thumbnail.

Picture. My fuzzy red dwagon and the thin, tall green dwagon are buried in a collection of sweets. There are two small bags of strawberry bonbons, one bag of kola kubes, one bag of lemon sherbets, a bag of chocolate mice, a small number of chocolate brownies and a bag of fudge.
Beware entering food shops while hungry

More on this later.

It’s a curious choice this time around because Lexus have been busy rejigging their range for the UK … You can still buy the CT for now :

Picture. A deep blue hatchback car sitting at idle in a car park. (Lexus CT)
A fine steed

This was my first Lexus, the Tardis Blue Car CT. (That was a shameless attempt at invoking search engine optimisation 😀 ). It was a lovely car too, very well put together, probably as close to perfection as I’ve had in a car and extremely practical besides that too. It had only one problem, under the bonnet there was the Prius hybrid powertrain that struggled somewhat for power. The electric motors give it excellent starting speed but it ran out of puff fairly quickly. It also had to be worked a little harder than the IS300h, which meant the fuel economy while great on paper, would suffer.

I’ve enjoyed my last 3 cars, all three of them being IS300h’s. That’s a saloon shell with more power. It’s a bit sad but there’s been issues with these … they haven’t been the image of perfection that the CT was. I’ll leave the issues I may or may not have with the current one until after it’s gone but … Car 1 had drive by wire issues where it would kangaroo hop into traffic light stops where it should have been smooth. And Car 2 had what I believe was a broken power steering pump. So that was another reason for jumping on the Offer I Couldn’t Refuse last time. Oh and Car 1 had the dead car incident caused by someone in the delivery chain not bolting the battery terminal on correctly.

I know, hard to believe that last one isn’t it. Anyway, both the CT, the IS and the RC coupe version of the IS are being discontinued in the UK. If I change, it’d either be an SUV shell (I don’t like these, too much metal) or the bigger ES saloon. I’ll be pondering on it for a few days.

One thing for this post is racing cars … I have the Steve McQueen Le Mans film on at the moment …

Picture. A Lego Le Mans endurance racing car sitting on a sofa. The centre of the car is white, the outer bodywork and front aero wing is green,
Zoom !

And EEK. Crash time. We’ve had a car spin and the next car through following went out of control and off the road, landing off the track and exploding into flames as the driver attempts to run away. And then another crash with one of the Porsches which also hit the barriers out of control.

The picture and cinematography work is incredible. They’re doing a lot of slow motion and freeze frame to capture the heavy drama of what’s going on.

I saw the film a while ago and was impressed back then. Both this Le Mans and the more recent Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66) are well worth a watch. They’re both remarkable films.

Things I have been noticing from both though is the differences between racing then and racing now. I’ll get to the Follow The Race stuff later but the opening sequences of the Steve McQueen movie shows the drivers getting set up for the start of the race. They’re wrapping what are essentially bandannas around their mouths and neck before putting on open face crash helmets. Yep. That’s moved on since. Full face helmets, balaclavas and the HANS (Head And Neck System) are mandatory now and have saved many lives. There is also communications between driver and team which can warn the driver if they’re approaching an incident.

The pit stop sequences shown in both movies show the cars moving a little off the main straight and into the service areas. The cars are being refuelled about 10 feet away from where the racing is happening. And it’s side of the road stuff, they have a proper pit complex now with garages. Curiously, a lot of the IMSA races still operate with pit boxes without garages, although these are a long way away from the race track. If an IMSA car has a serious issue, it’s said to be “going behind the wall” to where the garage is.

Another huge difference is the cars. Ford vs Ferrari was in the time of the GT40. It was the story of the 1966 Le Mans when cars looked like :

Picture. A dark green or black racing car with a 2 on the side. It's a closed wheel supercar type, streamlined with a high tail.
Ford’s GT40

Picture is from this Motorsport Magazine article (Link). It’s from the days when streamlining and aerodynamics were just starting to be thought about. They knew to smooth out the cars to get more speed and maybe a little about downforce with that lip spoiler at the back but they understood very little about the more subtle aerodynamic efforts. Developments continued and designers looked more and more at this thing called Downforce, where if they engineered an extra force pushing down on the car, it would mean the drivers could push them harder through corners.

The Steve McQueen film features the Porsche 917 from 1970 :

Picture. Racing car from the 1970s. It's a Porsche 917 closed wheel sports car in the Gulf livery of light blue on top and orange below the door.
Steve McQueen’s racer

Picture taken from a Road And Track article (Linky). See the extended bodywork at the back ? It was intended to improve the downforce, which apparently it did. However … it also led to instability and a likelihood of the car going end over end.

That’s been one issue with racing cars over the years … They’re great going forwards and around corners but if something disrupts that like a crash, then they can quickly turn from racing machine into a sail that catches the air, taking the car out of control. The tolerances were so fine that the Mercedes cars ended up flipping at 200+mph as they went over the Mulsanne Hump, the crest allowed enough air to get under the car and catastrophically disrupt the airflow, after which the driver would be just a passenger.

(Don’t worry about this for road cars, we don’t go fast enough although sidewinds can make driving into Interesting Times sometimes).

Things have improved a lot … The endurance racing fraternity took a look at why the crashes were happening and enforced design changes like the shark fin that acts like an airbrake if the car goes sufficiently sideways to get in trouble. (It also pivots the car back up the right way). The endurance cars also have cut outs above the wheel arches which counter the tendency to flip before it happens.

(Rabbiting on detector alarm is going off).

I think that’s enough from me about the racing cars for now.

Steve McQueen’s Le Mans and Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66) are both excellent movies and I’d thoroughly recommend a watching. They have more than their share of tragedy though amongst the drama.

Before I close up though, the information around the races is SO MUCH BETTER now. In the movies, there’s an announcer that also acts as a narrator for the audience and the people in the pits are using stopwatches to time their cars. Nowadays, we have streaming video services covering the races that usually offer extra feeds as well as the main feed. The official timings are available and in races like Le Mans and Nurburgrings with their very long tracks, the timings get split up for the various parts of the course. There are also the twitter feeds for the teams and organisers keeping you up to date.

Yep, close time …

But first … today’s out among people job was the car service and on the way back there is the farm shop service station … It’s at a lower level of service at the moment due to Pandemic Things but they’re still offering hot sandwiches (no running to the loo this year – hurrah!) and drinks and the farm shop is mostly open.

I may have visited the farm shop while I was very hungry, hence the opening picture and thumbnail. Alas though,

Picture. A chocolate dwagonsaur is perched on top of a box., It is mostly milk chocolate but there are white dots in there as well.
This one from last year didn’t last long

Gosh that film flew by. (Steve McQueen’s Le Mans). Almost at the end, the race is over and we’re getting long lingering looks between two of the stars.

Munchies ? Yep. Munchies happened. Sadly no chocolate dwagonsaur yet this year. Maybe later. They only had minimal Easter Stuff out there earlier. That’s pretty understandable given the current times. Hopefully later :-).

In the meantime, time for the traditional send off : Stay safe, be well.

Day 16 ! And return of the racer

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December 16, 2020

9:30 pm

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Hello everyone,

Oh wow, Headline analyser actually likes that one. It’s a widget that tells me what it thinks of the post title that my brain semi randomly stumbles upon. Usually it’s in the range of 30 to 40 out of 100. You know, make you feel better about avoiding clickbaiting. It’s saying 65 today. It still thinks I need to add in some uncommon words, emotional words and power words.

(What’s a power word ?)

And does it count as digressing if you never started on the point to begin with ? Here’s what was behind the door today.

It’s working it’s working !

Actual pod racer today. Which meant it was time to talk … racing games …

Pedal to the metal

That’s Revs, a game that came out in 1984 for the BBC Micro made by none other than Geoff Crammond. Yep. The one that next went on to work on the first F1GP game by Microprose. Not sure if that got continued on to become the F1 games we have today but Revs was an excellent start. It was a game simulating a Formula 3 car and when it came out, only the original Silverstone layout was available. It was later expanded to include Snetterton, Oulton Park, Brands Hatch and an older Donington park layout.

And it was a cracking game too, although with the amount of practice we got, we were far faster than the computer drivers. As you’ll see in the picture, it was very much limited to the graphics of the day but those graphics worked extremely well.

It had some weird tricks too to make that work. The old BBC had 8 display modes and I think that’s using 2 of those at the same time. This is from the days when computer memory was measured in kBytes …

The other game of the day is approaching becoming my most played game on Steam. It’s …

Dragon go zoom

Of course I had to choose the Dragon team first. This is from the very earliest days of the game on PC, before custom teams were made available. Oh ! I forgot to name it, this is Motorsport Manager. I’d been bouncing through a few racing games but none of them held the attention. Let’s see … from the picture :

Grand Prix Manager 2 – nicely detailed … too detailed. If you have to select individual gear ratios and there’s no help from the game for set up, then the detail has gone too far. That said though, Grand Prix Manager and GPM 2 were the benchmark games in this genre for a very long time surpassing :

F1 Manager – I have no memory of this. It may have been so bad my brain deleted it.

Grand Prix World – this one came along in 1999 as a sequel to the Grand Prix Manager games. It was pretty good to start with, although it did have more than its fair share of bugs. It had the usual problem of Formula 1, that of a lack of overtaking. If you set up the cars for high top speed, the rear wing would fall off (known bug). The sponsorship amounts would also be static while team costs increased, so there was a finite amount of time one could run a team for.

Is this the way to the kebab shop ?

Back to Motorsport Manager. It started with the Formula 1 style single seaters, with those going across all conditions, whether that be rain or shine, hot or cold. Whoever managers the drivers and tactics better wins the race. One of the reasons why I like this game so much is that good tactics work, bad decisions get punished. My number 2 driver there, Maduka, had tyres that were near the critical point and would have started losing seconds per lap if they’d degraded further. Like Barth being overtaken before the line, losing 3rd place.

The locations owe a lot to real life tracks too, although suitably altered for licensing purposes. The above track was the “Milan” track, which looks suspiciously similar to Monza. There’s a Guildford track, Black Sea (Sochi) track, the Rio de Janeiro track turns right instead of left at the start and there are analogues to Nurburgring and Spa too.

The tracks don’t matter that much though, outside of emphasising different parts of the cars.

PIZZA DELIVERY

The game was expanded later with downloadable content expansions covering GT cars …

Dinner’s going cold …

And Endurance racing that could go up to 6 hours long for a race. (Lots of fast forwarding).

Last one cleans the cars

Some seasons go better than others … (This would be at the start of my current campaign when the cars and factory is rubbish !)

There are a few issues with the AI though, which can make the races a bit easier. They don’t handle the changeover between wet and dry well, which can lead to situations like :

Rain ? What Rain ?

There’s my two drivers on the dry tyres for the first three laps of the race, making a gap big enough to make a stop for wet tyres. And in the meantime, the computer cars tyres have all been wearing out fast in the dry.

That wet / dry issue is the only issue I have with this game though. Apart from that, amazing game. If you’re interested in a racing management game where you watch the races and occasionally intervene at key moments, this is perfect.

(The limited interaction is also great for my hands).

One last pic ?

There are no words

There’s a comprehensive livery editor in there as well where you, yes you too, can create cars that will make the scrutineers shout NO ! OFF MY RACE TRACK !

Stay safe, be well everyone.

Well that was a race … Also, impending advent

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November 29, 2020

7:18 pm

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Hello everyone,

I feel I need to talk about what happened in the Bahrain Grand Prix today but that’ll come after a little bit of spoiler space talking about something else. It definitely needs a big caution warning as the pictures that will be on the news, the description of the accident and the potential consequences are grave and distressing but the important thing is that the driver is banged up but ok and I hope he’s racing again next season (only two weeks of this season left!).

It’s almost Advent season …

(this is the point where I’d put the twitter thumbnail pic in but I don’t think pictures are going to be appropriate today)

I have a couple of plans for posts over Advent season. I missed out on getting another Marshmallow Advent calendar but I did manage to acquire another Star Wars Lego calendar. The chocolate ones were looking incredibly tempting in the shops too …

So Star Wars Lego plus … I’ll be talking about games. I’ve got a decent list of games together. I’d intended to be playing a few of them again so I could farm some screenshots. That hasn’t quite happened, partly because mental energy hasn’t really been there to open them up again. But maybe mostly because Mars Horizon came along and it is perhaps the most addicting game I’ve played … Oh and it’s a lovely little space programme managing game too. I would thoroughly recommend it and I’m hoping we see more from the devs, they’ve made a little marvel here.

The Xmas season is going to be an odd one. England is still under lockdown for a couple of days due to ongoing pandemic. (Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland are subject to different restrictions). We should be continuing the lockdown after the intended end on Wednesday 2nd. That’s my opinion. The virus does not care about our individual freedoms. If the virus could feel, it would actually rejoice if we were to go back to normal on Wednesday. A virus only wants one thing, to spread itself to as many victims as possible. And by going out again and ignoring precautions, we allow it to do just that.

The UK is down to 11k cases daily now from a peak of 25k, although the statistics are lower on the weekends with our reporting. We need to be consistently below 1000 for at least a week before we allow the lockdowns to lift. As soon as this virus gets a chance, it’s off again with the super spreading. It’s like a spark on kerosene in an oxygen rich environment.

So yeah, I think Xmas gatherings are most definitely at risk still at the moment. And it seems like Xmas is being seen as an exception at the moment, in a way that the festivals of other religions have not been. (I’m not going to name them all because I’d get it wrong) The popularism should not be neglecting other groups in favour of their core groups. But … that’s the way popularism seems to be working.

Sidenote – one of the most brilliant moments in Babylon 5 came at the end of the A Parliament of Dreams episode where the station has a weeklong festivals of the diverse religious beliefs of the races inhabiting the station. When it came to the turn of Earth at the end, the commander of the station, Commander Sinclair, starts to lead the ambassadors of those races down a procession of representatives of the varied and diverse religions on Earth. Brilliant, symbolic and perfect. And the episode faded out from there giving the impression of infinite diversity of beliefs, all valid.

Caution warning – I’m about to start talking about the Grand Prix incident now.

The reason for that caution warning is that I know that people have their triggers where reading about another incident will cause their trauma to resurface. I have my own unconscious triggers there where if I see certain things or incidents, my mind will retreat behind the barriers.

It’s awkward to talk about that, mostly because I don’t think I have the words to express it. But one of the artists I follow (she does great work and she’s one I’d like to be able to get close to in style and skill) was involved in a fatal (for the driver at fault) road accident that left her permanently marked both physically and mentally. If she were to be exposed to the basic description of the accident at the Grand Prix today, I suspect that she would be retreating very quickly into a psychological armour shell that she would be silently screaming behind and that a lot of her healing since her accident would be undone.

So please, have respect for how deeply you discuss the accident. And some of the below will be too deep for some readers.

What happened ? Romain Grosjean, in avoiding a potential incident ahead of him, ended up tapping the wheel of the driver behind and this resulted in his car going into and through an armco steel barrier at probably 150mph with an immediate flash fire. After seeing it a couple of times, I would attach no blame to anyone involved, they were all taking sensible action.

When pictures were eventually shown, the resulting scene was a car that had been cut in two, apparently around where the driver is. I think this is an illusion and that the bodywork separated from the survival cell which was fully intact. The rear of the car was on the track side of the barrier, Grosjean had to escape the survival cell front end, through a fire and with the track side barrier in the way.

Is he ok – apparently the damage is just minor burns plus broken ribs. That’s a miracle and a testament to the fitness of the driver, the safety features introduced into the cars and the strength of those cars. When seeing it, I was giving it a 1% chance of survival and it’s a huge relief that this time, he’s come out fairly ok.

It’s the worst accident that I have seen in 40 odd years of watching Formula 1 and other motor racing, although memory is fading on incidents like the ones to Gerhard Berger, Johnny Herbert, I wasn’t around to see the Niki Lauda fire and we were away for Senna.

Halo – I was opposed to this when it came in, because I was thinking of the incident that really ended Filipe Massa’s career (he wasn’t the same after he came back). In that case, a chunky loose suspension spring came into the cockpit and clobbered him on the head. The halo wouldn’t stop that.

But what the halo did do was that when the armco barrier was pierced, it steered the broken pieces of barrier around and over him. I was more in the aero screen camp but that method doesn’t have that solid structure down the centre.

The halo clearly saved his life. And one life saved makes it the most valuable innovation to come into motor racing in recent years. The thought is that it has also prevented other injuries from flying wheels and tyres.

I suspect, like on our motorways, armco barriers are likely to become outlawed and replaced with tyre barriers to absorb the energy of an impact or concrete blocks to redirect the energy of the incident.

Should they have raced ? I was finding that a difficult thought, because I really don’t like seeing people get hurt, including the potential for people to get hurt. However, you accept a certain amount of risk when you do sport and you have to recognise that the decision of the people taking the risk is important, your decision to watch is completely separate.

I have skin in that game too. When I had my first cricket head injury, I obviously couldn’t take any further part in that game. My nose had been kinda rearranged and I needed to get properly checked out. I was apparently less coherent than I thought I was. But I managed to get another game in before the end of the season. I think that was critical in order to face off that potential psychological demon before it had a chance to take root and affect my ability to play cricket in later seasons. Oh and the game I got hurt in continued and I’d have been disappointed if it had been called off.

I was relieved when I saw that Artist Lady up above was able to drive a car again, although she said it took a lot to get her to that position and I don’t think she drives in darkness again yet.

So yeah. Misgivings about the race restarting but it’s the drivers taking that risk, it has to be their decision.

You recognise the potential and risk of Bad Things Happening and decide whether you want to be a part of that. In my case again, I thought there was far too high a risk of me, due to my shoulder injury, bowling a ball that could have seriously hurt and hospitalised someone. So I stopped bowling. That wasn’t so much psychological as skeletomechanical.

I’ve digressed a fair bit in this post …

Romain Grosjean, haven’t liked him as a driver (too crashy!) but it was a massive relief to see him in the medical car looking shaken but otherwise ok.

The coverage was great. After the initial incident, nothing was shown of the accident or aftermath until it was absolute confirmed that everyone was ok. It was and will be tough to watch the accident through again in future. This is in direct contrast to other sports, which have allowed high levels of injury detail to be shown in continued replays after the incident. And yes, I’m looking at my beloved cricket there, where replays of incidents like what happened to Steve Smith last year (hit in head, concussion bad enough to take him out of the next game) were shown repeatedly, despite the incident with Philip Hughes (Aussie cricketer) who sadly got the other end of the 1% and died instantly after being hit on the head despite wearing a helmet.

We don’t need in depth public analysis of incidents like that. We need to figure out what happened so that we can insure it doesn’t happen again and doesn’t happen worse. But that doesn’t need to be public or subject to speculation. We don’t need injury to be the subject of sensationalism.

Especially when bringing out all the horrific detail opens up half healed trauma in our friends, acquaintances and neighbours.

And I include me in that as well. With my second cricket head injury, I turned my head away and caught it on the grille over my ear instead. I dread to think what might have happened if both incidents had gone slightly the other way :

Nose Job – my glasses survived intact and probably saved my right eye.

Helmet – if I’d had time to turn my head more, it might have missed the helmet and I’d have been in hospital again.

I still sometimes see a flash of a cricket ball about to hit me in the eye. It didn’t affect me when playing but I think it happens when the sun glare or shadows change. And no one will ever see me do it but I do flinch.

Trauma is very real. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is very real. (I don’t think I have PTSD, or at least it’s very minor if I do)

Discussions of incidents like the one at the racing today could easily open up those psychological wounds again. So my plea is to have respect for the subject matter, those who you’re discussing it with and who could potentially read what you’re talking about.

(that’s why I’m not adding in Artist Lady’s name, that would be cruel making her live through her accident again).

If you’ve gotten to this point, thank you for reading. I’ve let a few bits of myself out here that haven’t been seen outside my head before or I’ve only talked about them with a handful of people, although I hope that none of it is of any surprise to anyone.

Feels weird not playing the Fun Thumbnail game. Be safe, be well, see you for advent.