The wheel deal...*lol*

About six months ago, I picked up a Microcon MC2 Steering wheel from Argos, because - as you may have noticed - I am a fan of motorsport, and that extends to the videogame world as well. So, y'know, after having half a year to get used to the nuances of my favourite gaming accessory, I've decided to give a bit of a product review on how its turned out.

Now, there are quite a few people on sites like F1 Fanatic and The hardcore motorsport gaming sites insist that the only gaming wheels anyone should ever use are the likes of the £295 Logitech G27 and should only play a "proper racing simulator" like Rfactor.

Those are the same people who don't get that games like F1 2010 have to appear to a wider audience than the hardcore simulation crowd, and in fact have to work to appeal to the widest fanbase of F1 to recoup the money spent on the game in the first place.

I play games because I want to enjoy them. And that's precisely what I've been doing with the MC2. So, Thinking about it recently, I've subjected the MC2 to what I'm calling the "Five Game Test."

In order to see how best the wheel works, I've needed to use it on a variety of games. This being me, I have a pretty decent selection of racing games, so the ones I've chosen are:

Race Driver: GRID

F1 2010

Need For Speed: Shift

Sega Rally Online Arcade

Forza Motorsport 3.

Firstly though, a bit about the wheel itself. "But Ben," I hear you say "It's a steering wheel. It goes round and a car turns. what more do I need to know?"

Well, it's never quite that simple. The Minicon wheel, as the name suggests, is built to be smaller and a bit more portable than a wheel the size of a logitech - which is generally 1:1 scale with an actual car steering wheel. it works very well for this reason: the wheel fits very easilly on your lap, and comfortably as well. The base of the MC2 has a pair of fold out struts that can wrap either side of your legs, but to be honest I've never had any use of them - they push your knees together very tightly if your sitting on a chair, and the moulded base means you don't really need them to prevent the wheel slipping. The pedals that come with have an accelerator and a brake, but no clutch as there isn't a gear handle. It also has three suction cups on the base for if you want it to stick to a table.

Now, the wheel is wired, and has about 2 metres of cable, but it wouldn't be ideal for someone who has their lounge and xbox set up for Kinect usage as you'd probably have to sit on the floor in front of the TV. The pedals have about 4 feet of cable, so have a decent amount of space for taller people - unless your planning on driving standing up, which would be silly.

The wheel itself has a good solid feel to it, with a decent amount of tension on it's steering column, with both lightness of movement and enough resistance to make action an actual physical effort. The back of the wheel has two paddles within easy reach, and these are primarily there if you're into manual shifting. for the purposes of this review, I'll be doing just that.

Onto the games!

---F2 2010---

Car: Mclaren MP4-25

Track: Istanbul Park.

Lap Time: 1:26.733

It took a me a good while to get back into the swing of F1 2010 when I plugged the wheel in I haven't played it in quite a while and I'd completely forgotten that driving an F1 car around the track is completely different to any other kind of racing game. For a while I found myself pretty much missing every single apex on the track, and given it was my first time using a manual shift I hate to think just how many times I would have blown up a £100,000 F1 engine. When I did finally hook together a lap though, I felt absolutely brilliant. Using the wheel was intuitive and fun. Flat out through Istanbul's infamous Turn 8, I had no problem holding the wheel to the racing line and shifting up at the same time. One worry I did have was that, given the options like wing angle and engine setting are selected from the D-Pad in the centre of the wheel, it would be difficult to do all those things at once, but once I'd gotten into the habit, I selected a higher engine setting without any great difficulty. While I doubt I'm ever going to be a great threat to Seb Vettel (lets face it, who is these days), I was able to bring home a pretty decent lap time in the end.

---Need For Speed: Shift---

Car: BMW M3 GT2

Track: Brands Hatch GP

Lap Time: 1:39.099

Now, this one was certainly a bit more... Interesting. Given that it's intended as a more arcadey game anyways, NFS:Shift's cars come with a handfull of oversteer that it takes a while to get used to. I know the Brands Hatch Circuit pretty well, but it took me quite a while to hook up a half-decent lap, as I was too busy trying not to bin it into the gravel. I started with a Nissan GT-R, but it was so slidey that I decided to try with the M3 instead, and found it much better. to be honest, I've always struggled to find Grip in shift, and using the wheel didn't help much as the inherent nature of the game meant the wheel felt very sensitive. Once I'd adapted to that, however, it was pretty good - I was nailing the corners pretty well, if a little bit driftily. The earlier twitchiness did mean that out of habit I found myself shifting down a gear too far on the high speed corners, which probably accounts for my fairly slow lap time. The once fault I had with the wheel is that the Brake pedal seemed to switch suddenly between very light and very heavy with no inbetween, but again, this might just have been my heavy left foot. Once I'd gotten used to the game mechenics, it was decent fun. thank god for the runoff areas though!

---Race Driver: GRID---

Car: Chevrolet Lacetti Touring Car

Track: Donington Park National

Lap Time: None Set

Oh Dear. Oh Very Dear. The game and wheel both fell down very hard on this one. I've enjoyed GRID a lot over the year since I got it (I've only had the Xbox about 14 months) and both offline and occasionally online its been a good, punchy Arcade racer. But not with this wheel. If NFS:Shift came with a handfull of Oversteer, GRID came with both hands, legs and it's mouth full of it. I tried playing with the settings for the wheel in the games menu, I tried being less sharp with the wheel, but a typical corner went "slight turn, slight turn, slight turn, MASSIVE OVERSTEER, Spin." No matter what I did, the car simply wouldn't turn in properly to a corner, as even on front wheel drive cars like the Lacetti, the rear would step out and I'd spin the bastard. I didn't even get around a full lap of Donington before I gave up and Rage Quit. Very dissapointing.

---Forza Motorsport 3---

Car: Ford Focus ST

Track: New York Circuit

Lap Time: 1:33.771

The wheel definitely took a round back with Forza. I picked the Focus as a baseline car, and it worked pretty well, although since it wasn't race tuned, the steering felt very heavy at times, and I ran out of pedal lift before being able to brake at some of the sharper turns. The steering was still quite responsive and the gearshifts felt realistic without being clunky, and I was able to access the telemetry screen using the D-pad without any major dramas. I do have to say though, for anything like livery design and storefront on Forza, stick to the joypad - the wheel is not suited to it.

---Sega Rally Online Arcade---

Car: Skoda Fabia RS

Track: Alpine Circuit

Lap Time: 1:12:38

The wheel works, to be frank, pretty damn awesomely with this game, but to be fair, it is a very forgiving game - except when you clip a wall. Manual shifting worked as close to perfectly as you can ask, and the steering had just the right balance of sensitivity and rallying-oversteer to allow me to flick the car into the corners. I had the accelerator buried to the floor most of the time, and the brake pedal barely needed more than a dab, but I've been using the wheel both offline and online and it's won me victories in and of itself by giving me the chance to be smoother through the corners and sharper on the gearshifts. One weird bug though is that the force feedback locked on after the race and turned the wheel into a constantly vibrating presence in my lap, and I had to exit the game before it stopped.

OVERALL SCORE

4/5 games. A good score, but given that one of the games it's said to be ideal for on the box is one of the ones that let it down, make sure that you're not buying the MC2 specifically for one game, becuase if it turns out not to suit it, you're going to have a large £35 paperweight. I'd still have it over a £295 logitech paperweight any day though!

I like to Plan my Procrastination.

I'm determined to get writing done this weekend. I Need to get writing done this weekend. I need to finish of chapter three of Time and Tide and I pretty much should do a chapter of Critical Situation before the three people who are reading it decide to kick me square in the nuts for yet again not sticking to my promises in relation to chapter updates.

Of course, that isn't gonna be easy. I'm planning on having something resembling a lie-in tomorrow - although given that all last week when I was off I only managed to sleep past 7:30am once and that was when I'd drunk myself into something resembling a catatonic state the night previously. The problem is, I've got far too much going on this weekend.

Now, I'm most definitely not a social animal, so you can assume from the tone of my previous entries that this is gonna involve me watching cars going round a track at high speeds.

and goddamn but theres a lot of good action on this weekend. The Turkish Grand Prix is looking like a scorcher - although if it turns out to be a wet race it's definitely gonna be intriguing since Seb Vettel decided to park his RB7 in the wall at the exit of Turn Eight. Last I checked they were still rebuilding it, so the world champion is losing a lot of very necessary practice and setup time.

On top of that, theirs the 1000km's of Spa in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. I'm starting to really get into Endurance racing because I just love the design of the cars, and with the Audi R18 and Peugeot 908 getting their first racing runs in the race thats essentially a dress rehearsal for the 24 hours of Le Mans next month. I was actually slightly tempted by the idea of watching the whole 24 hours this year, then I realised that during the night bugger all happens .

But I digress: In the vague hope I wake up at 8am-9am tomorrow, I'm gonna try and start writing straight away.

Wait a damn minute. Free practice 3 starts at 9am, and runs till 10:55.

qualifying coverage for Turkey starts 11am. It runs till 1pm. At approximately 1pm the coverage at Spa begins on Eurosport. Of course, I can write after that race ends.

At about 6pm.

Oh Shit. Doctor Who starts at 6pm. It has pirates. I can't miss Doctor Who with Pirates!

Okay, so 7pm. I can write from 7pm.

But it's the weekend. I put off playing videogames through the week to write. And Saturday night is the best time for Multiplayer shenanigans. So that makes Saturaday night a write off, realisitically.

Okay, so, Sunday. I'll try on Sunday.

Dammit, GP2 is on Eurosport as well. After my blog entry about single seater feeder series earlier in the year theres no way I can justify not watching the start of the GP2 series this year. Otherwise I'll just look even more like a bell-end who doesn't know what he's talking about. More so than usual.

Okay, I'll write after the GP2 raaaaaaaagoddammit the Grand Prix starts after the GP2 race. And after the Race, I'll have to watch the F1 Forum. Because it's awesome.

right. okay. We're encroaching on, like, 3pm at this time. Half of my Sunday writing time is gone. Better get down to ooooh videogame time. Gotta get in my Videogame time. Not gonna get it during the week. I've gotta devote that time to writing. I APPRECIATE THE IRONY.

Well, Sunday night, right, Sunday night, I can get my writing done.

Aw, hell, Richard Hammond's engineering connections starts at 7:10pm. Then it's Britain's Secret Seas, which looks awesome. Then Lord Sugar is investigating football at 9pm. That looks awesome too. Okay, so I generally go to bed around 11pm on a night before work unless it's my extra long shift on mon... and goddammit it's my extra long shift on Monday. 10:30 to eleven Bed time.

So. I've got half an hour to write in between ten and ten-thirty. But my Awesome wife will want me to pay attention to her at some point this weekend. Better pencil her in for here.

I give up. This weekend is far to awesome to be conductive to a good writing atmosphere.

The Rickety Ladder to Formula One.

A couple of months back, I wrote an entry about how Paul Di Resta was coming into Formula One from a different route by joining from the DTM ranks. Recently, I've been thinking about the various different rookies who'd entered the series from the more traditional single seater ladder. I have to admit, part of this line of thought has come because a couple of Formula 3 Drivers have suddenly started following me on Twitter.

It got me thinking about how the single seater feeder series, from Formula Ford right up to GP2 are bringing through some rookie drivers who never seem quite prepared for Formula One. Now, there is a very distinct ladder to the single seater pantheon, and at each stage, supposedly it is the drivers talent and ability that allows them to attract sponsors and ascend to the next level. It's like a pyramid of drivers, with the number of available seats decreasing at each level. This is, to be fair, the natural way of dispersing a limited amount of seats to the drivers who deserve them - HRT's policy of 'the guy with the most money drives' Non-withstanding.

So, with this filtering process and the amount of seats available, why does it seem that so many rookies coming through struggle quite so badly with the leap to Formula One? We've seen proof that these guys are talented. Nico Hulkenberg was unassailable in GP2, Before last year Bruno Senna's reputation as a race driver was excellent (And was still good enough to get him a test role at Lotus-Renault), Lucas di Grassi was a Macau Grand Prix winner and Karun Chandok had visited podiums in GP2. Yet of all of the 2010 only rookies - Kamui Kobayashi having debuted in 2009 - only Vitaly Petrov has managed to hold onto his race seat for the 2011 season. All of them have credibility, so why did they struggle so much when they stepped up that final rung on the ladder into F1?

As we've established, these are credible drivers - and Kobayashi also had a hell of a year and was probably the most sensational rookie of all, despite being an also-ran in GP2, with his biggest prize in the feeder series being a GP2 Asia championship.

So, realistically, one has to point the finger of blame at the cars. We know there are talented drivers, championship-capable drivers, coming up the ladder, but the problem is that the ladder is composed entirely of single-make series.

Formula Ford uses the same specification of Chassis, although Mygale, Spectrum and Van Diemen all manufacture them. These Chassis are virtually identical in terms of design:



Formula 3 overwhelmingly uses the Dallara F3 chassis for all the various series, although again there is a small output from some other manufacturers.



And when you get above the F3 level, there is literally no diversity in the cars used: the GP3 and GP2 series, which support F1 races directly, all use exactly the same specification of Dallara Chassis:




And yet, when you get to Formula One, there is a different design of car for each team. From Red Bull to HRT, each car not only looks different, they perform differently, drive differently and react differently. From a level playing field, lower tier drivers who get the opportunity to step up to the ultimate stage are then handed a box of tools that is completely different to the team in the garage next to you. All of the drivers in the lower Formulae can change setups on their cars, but at the end of the day, it's still exactly the same car.

Furthermore, with this leap comes the extra pressure that comes from being a Formula One driver. In the lower formulae, most of the sponsors tend to be companies related to Motorsport, but F1 is big money. None of those teams can afford to have a driver who isn't performing, and consequently the rookies coming through seem to only have the one season to sink or swim. And whilst there are more rookies coming through, the transience of these drivers means that the age of the F1 field is increasing season by season.

So what's the solution? the obvious one would be to encourage competing chassis and manufacturers in the lower formulae - but the costs involved in developing the different cars, which would then be passed to the teams, prohibits this. In the current climate, keeping costs down for the different series is paramount - Formula Renault UK only had 11 drivers turn up for their pre-season test a couple of weeks ago, and there are worries that the costs of the series are starting to drive teams out of competing since Renault introduced to newer-spec car, and thats for a single-make national competition. Potentially, the way to encourage difference in driving ability is to do exactly what Force India are doing and look to different styles of series like DTM for their drivers - but this presents its own brand of problems, seeing as Touring Car racing is a completely different style to Single Seaters.

Truthfully, there is no real solution - the system we have now works, because at the end of the day teams will always need drivers. When one retires, there has to be another one to replace them. But perhaps, as a reader for Autosport suggested in a letter that we have none-championship F1 races as well as young driver tests. This could work, but would the F1 teams be willing to shoulder the costs of running their cars for very little reward?

It isn't a problem now, nor will it mean the death of Formula One - but Formula One will not benefit from an increasingly larger field of inexperienced drivers who have been unceremoniously dropped in the deep end.

Force India Take a Bold new step.

There has always been a fairly regimented path into a formula one racing seat. Traditionally, a Formula One Driver has come up through the proverbial 'Lower League' Single seater Formula. At the moment, those leagues run approximately as:

Karting
Formula Renault
Formula 3/World Series by Renault/Formula 2
GP3
GP2.

as well as a wealth of other single seater series, like Formula Superleague, Formula Ford, Formula Nippon, and the American single seater series', Indycar Indy Lights etc. Theres never really been much crossover between the different driving series.

Whilst WRC and MotoGP champions Sebastian Loeb and Valentino Rossi have flirted with F1 tests, more often than not, those tests seemed like an indulgence rather than a genuine attempt to shift disciplines - even though Rossi set decently competitive times on his Ferrari test.

So, whilst other news sites are focusing on the fact that Paul Di Resta will be the third British driver on the grid, and that he's been the test Driver for Force India for the last year, I'm choosing to lookat something that I feel is a little bit more significant:

Force India just promoted a Touring Car driver to a potentialy Front-Running F1 seat. Lets face it, Force India have come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. They came within inches of claiming thier first win at Spa in 2009, and but of Tonio Liuzzi's somewhat rusty performances in 2010, would probably have convincingly beaten Williams to 6th place in the Constructors title.

But lets be honest, Touring Car championships - even one as Aero Focussed as DTM - is a very different style of driving to Formula One. Whilst Di Resta has a good pedigree of Single Seater racing, he hasn't race a Open-Wheeled car in anger for four years.

What he has been doing is overtaking, fighting for leads and getting door to door in the kind of close racing that only a touring car driver can. Di Resta won the DTM title this year, finishing five points above fellow Brit - and Mclaren test driver - Gary Paffet. These two drivers are back by Mercedes and are learning a kind of driving that GP2 and any other single seater series simply can't teach - as David Coulthard has proven in his own DTM foray and how Johnny Herbert proved in his BTCC debut last year.

GP2 drivers are, supposedly, the future of Formula One - yet the drivers coming through those lower formulae are not necessarily good enough for the big leagues. Hulkenburg, Hamilton, and Timo Glock have done well, But other drivers such as the GP2 front runner Romain Grosjean, Lucas Di Grassi, Nelson Piquet Jnr, Vitaly Petrov (His performance at Abu Dhabi aside) and Karun Chandok, all of whom showed promise in GP2 were barely recognisable in the top tier. Conversely, Kamui Kobayashi, who was at best an also-ran in GP2 has been probably the most exciting F1 driver of 2010.

So, when Paul Di Resta sits in that Force India car on the grid in Bahrain he isn't just representing The British or his team. he's representing a potential new route into Formula one. And lets face it - a touring car driver needs to know how to fight for a position so maybe we'll see a few more fights on the grid come 13th March.

But for now, take a look at what you've got waiting for you:

Best. Finish. Ever.

I'm on a wee bit of an indycar kick at the moment:

Indycar Just went Unique...

I like Indycar. As open-wheel race series go, its a remarkably un-pretentious league. a mix of street races and ovals, with its one big feature event, the Indy 500. I even like the design of Indycars, although, I've got to admit that they look like rejected designs for F1 cars.

That is, Until now.

You see, the IRL has been holding a competition between three design teams - Dallara, Swift, and DeltaWing Racing.

Up first in this Petrol-powered Triplethreat: Dallara

Now, Dallara have entered three designs, two of them look very Traditional Indycar:



However, their most intriguing one is this one - a much more futuristic design with what looks like a heavy wing at the back:



The front wing also looks very solid and chunky on this design, presumably to deal with paint-trading fun. The rear wheels also look to be mostly enclosed just in front of the rear wing, making the car less likely to go airborne in a wheel-to-wheel clash. a good design, and I've got a feeling this is one of the ones the IRL will look at the most.

Next up, we have Swift's design...


...Which is apparently funded by Wayne Enterprises. Its a good looker, but I'm not sure how much of it would translate to an actual car, especially that front wing. I just don't see how much aero-grip thats going to offer this car. In this design, the rear wheel is also more open, giving more risk of the cars going skywards, and as discussed in a previous entry, racecars are not meant to fly.

Finally, though, we have the most interesting, and certainly the most controversial design being pitched - and ironically, its also the one that is closest to being a working goddamn car: the DeltaWing.



That car looks epic. It's designed to be hugely low on drag, and has completely enclosed wheels to prevent any flying issues. Its also, apparently, the one most of the drivers on the grid like best.

Personally, I hink theres one, blinding obvious way to decided between the three - Race the fuckers! Three designs fighting it out for the right to be made the reigning indycar!

Do it, IRL. You know you want to.

An Electric F1 car? MADNESS.

I came up with today's rant after a talk with my Environmental-former-Greenpeace-Activist Wife. Blame her.

The Rules for Next season of Formula 1 have been announced for some time now, and key on the list is the fact that refueling has been banned for the 2010 season. Now, as seen in the previous couple of posts – and to Kimi Räikönnen's detriment – refueling can have some fairly dire results when it comes to accidents.

However, for me at least, the ban on refueling has a far more significant knock-on.

In these days of climate change, global warming and mass panic over the fact that the Earth's polar ice-caps may indeed vanish in the near future, the Ban on refueling can be taken to represent the fact that Formula 1 is finally moving towards a more environmentally friendly method of racing.

F1 has long been criticised for its environmental image. When Honda used the “EarthDreams” livery, they were criticised for 'Greenwashing' their image. Bridgestone were accused of similar crimes when they declared that the green stripes on their tires represented their support for the FIA's “Make Cars Green” campaign.

A nifty trick. In the first case, the Honda RA107 got five miles to the gallon and produced over 138 tonnes of carbon per race. In the second, Bridgestone pushed for the “two-compound” rule – forcing the cars to use multiple sets of tires per race, as opposed to 2005 when they used one set per race. The sheer amount of rubber destroyed in these tires is borderline obscene.

Although, admittedly, the RA107 livery was more of a marketing move than an attempt to make the cars more environmentally friendly, the new rules of F1 are a positive step in the right direction.

While the cars, for at least one season, may be using just as much fuel as before, the nifty trick regarding this is that, initially, the cars will have to compromise in order to carry that amount of petrol.

The knock-on effect being that the cars will have to become more fuel efficient. Through this, we could see the re-introduction of the KERS system. For those of you unfamiliar with F1, the KERS system harvested the thermal energy created by braking the car and put into a battery, this could then be used to give the car a temporary 60 BHP boost in power. Now, that system, for 2009, was abominably expensive, with all the teams dropping it for 2010. However, with fuel space at a premium – none of the teams can afford to compromise their aerodynamics for fuel – Surely it is only a matter of time until KERS makes a comeback to give those cars an edge around the track.

All of this leads to less fuel being used. Those cars have to become more fuel efficient, while staying competitive. The team that makes the most fuel-efficient car will use less fuel. That makes them able to run at lighter weights. That makes them faster.

So what we'll have is a new F1 arms war. In order to make the faster car, they have to make them better at using less fuel. So the next stage is to use less tires. The simple solution here is to go back to using only one set per race. Now the nifty thing about the slick tires the cars have gone back to using is that the pressure is more evenly distributed over their surface – meaning that they break down at a slightly slower rate than the grooved tires that were used in 2005. Of course, this all revolves around the “two-compounds” rule being revoked. Bridgestone make an awful lot of money out of that rule.

However, after 2010, Bridgestone will no longer be supplying the tires for Formula 1 Competition. So, whoever comes in has the opportunity to make a significant environmental impact.

So, what am I building up to here? Well, to illustrate, I want to introduce you to an electric car:

What...? No, not that one! That car blows!

I meant This One:

Now that Sexy beast of a car is the Lightning GT. And it is a fully electric car with a range of 188 miles. It uses KERS to keep its batteries charged up. The Lithium-Titanate batteries have a lifetime expectancy of twelve years.

Words fail to describe how much I want one. And at £120,000, its about 35 times cheaper than the average F1 car as well.

Now, This gives me hope that we will see a fully electric Formula 1 car within my lifetime. And not just an electric F1 car, a competitive electric F1 car. And the first time one of those near-silent electric F1 cars wins a race, the other teams with their Gas-Guzzling cars are going to look at it and go “wait a minute...”

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where F1 will finally make the step to not only being the worlds Premier Motorsport, but the worlds most environmentally friendly as well.

And that's just what the sport, the fans, and the world need to see.

-Bendana

A new Bendanarama feature.

Since I tend to trawl the internet for random clips, I figured I'd begin a new, and highly entertaining feature on this blog:

Things Racing Cars are NEVER meant to do!

THis week, I went on the internet and found these clips, illustrating that Racecars, deapite having wings, are NEVER meant to FLY.

Firstly, from the Formula 3 Macau Grand Prix, earlier this year, Wayne Boyd Shows his piloting skills. Unfortunately, he's still in a Hitech Racing F3 when he does:



And Our classic clip, from ten years ago, at the Le Mans 24 Hours, Peter Dumbreck decided to give his Mercedes-Benz CLR-GT1 a rather unorthodox mid-Track Aerodynamics test:



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And thus, as we can see above, Racing cars are NEVER meant to fly.

My Ultimate Racing Game.

Well, the new F1 game is out for the Wii. Seeing as I don't HAVE a Wii, I'm still playing F1 2005 (and getting absolutely trounced) on the PS2. And since I havent done a blog entry in a while - Primarily because it wasn't until earlier in the week that the Left 4 Dead 2 demo expired - I started thinking about the features I would want in my ideal racing game.

I was very Bored.

I will also note that most of these are probably impossible with todays technology. But its my fantasy, so fuck you.

---
BEN'S IDEAL RACING GAME!

1) A Race Director mode that doesnt suck.

For those of you who've played Gran Turismo 4, you'll get this one. the Race director mode is completely devoid of atmosphere, consisting of a screen with statistics. Give us an interactive pitwall. It'd be awesome! Plus, imagine the ramifications for multiplayer - You could have teams of three or four, depending on the amount of drivers, with one guy Controlling all the strategy from the pitwall, and the others driving. It would also be awesome to be able to turn around and see the pit stop go ahead in real time from the team principal's perspective. With voice comms, this would be a truly epic way to play.

2) Full race grids for online games.

Come on, this can't be that difficult, can it? I don't want to race 6 people online, I want to race 23 other cars.

3) Qualifying and practice online.

Again, while its possible to have a full enght race online - I can do it on Toca Race driver 3 - generally, there arent any qualifying or practice sessions. Why the fuck not? I guarantee you, F1 Fans dont want to be dropped on some random point on the grid, they want to try and earn pole position. Similarly, if they have to set the car up, they need to know that those settings work.

4) Fuel incidents, and realisitic damage.

Did you watch the Brazillian Grand Prix? Did you see what happened to Kimi Raikonnen? If not, allow me to refresh your memory:



A similar incident occurred to Tony Kanaan at the Indycar race in Edmonton:



Now, given the level of today's technology, surely it cant be too difficult to create fuel incidents like that? it could even be a mini game - F1-05 already features interactive pitstops. Just imagine, trying to get the fuelhose off without burning off the drivers face. And imagine if a car had a fuel leak on track. Your chasing another car. he suddenly starts to slow down, then WOOMPH. Fireball. And then you have to avoid your face getting burnt off. Fun for the whole family.

And whilst were at it, can developers please find a balance between INVINCIBLE CAR OF ADAMANTIUM and EXPLODES IF YOU BREATHE AT IT. F1 cars may be delicate, but they can take more of a beating than Toca 3 allows. Similarly, They are not so tought that you can drive them straight into a wall witbh no damage, as F1-05 allows. Now, I've looked at the fottage of recent games, and they tend to lean towards Explodey. According to most games, bigger damage is better.

No. Just stop. Realisim, please.

5) A balance between hardcore sim and arcade racer.

Admittedly, games are getting better at this, but we do need to find that balance. It needs to have some semblance of a challenge. also, AI drivers that don't stick like glue to the racing line would be great. kthnxbai.

6) AI cars that actually retire, and Safety Cars.

Please. No more yellow flags forever and no more AI cars that react like a brick wall. Have them experience some severe damage, and occasionally bow out of the race. if theres a severe pile up on lap one, have a safety car some out while the debris is cleared in real time. In fact, animate the marshalls clearing the track - it gives the more sociopathic gamers among us something to aim for.

7) Updateable cars.

Make a game with the base model cars for that current year. Then allow people to upgrade them throughout the season. let them put different things on and see what effect it would have. it would be FUCKING AWESOME.

So yeah, thats my ideal game. Its probably not physically possible.

But I'd buy it, and I'm willing to bet, with some of these features, a good portion of you would too.

I love the 2009 formula one cars...

I'm a pretty big fan of Formula One. I'm a fan of motorsport in general, but Formula one has a special place in my heart - its one of the first sports that my wife and I truly love to watch together. We even watch the Qualifying on the Saturday before the actual race - sometimes we even find it more exciting than the actual race!

From the moment Fleetwood Mac's Bassline from The Chain starts to play, I'm hooked. I've always been a fan of Jenson Button, and the fact that his season is going so well is awesome to me.

So recently, I started following a dedicated Formula One blog, F1 Fanatic. This place seems to cotton onto a lot of the big news first, and is a lot easier to digest than my other source of F1 news, the BBC sports site.

I glanced on today, and noticed that a new article was up. The site had recently held a poll, asking what F1 cars readers felt were the best looking. I voted for the 2009 Iterations of the cars. I love the look of the new F1 cars - Unlike the technology infested things of recent years, that looked more like stubby fighter aircraft than cars, the new generation look like Racers.

Yet the fanbase have voted, overwhelmingly that the 2009 cars are the ugliest cars they've ever seen.

Seriously? I call bullshit. While I agree with a lot of what the article says - the problem of getting the cars to actually, y'know, race still hasn't been solved - I think those new cars are absolutely gorgeous. Seriously, look at the BGP-001:



Now, that is one good looking car. It looks like it can race, rather than looking like a Picasso painting has vomited all over an IndyCar. in opposition to that, the cars that were voted the best looking were the cars from the 2000's. Most notably, the cars from 2007 were prminently featured as examples:



Seriously? I mean, Jesus, nostalgia is one thing, but that car is beyond fucking ugly. I know it was an excellent piece of engineering, but aesthetically, it's far from pleasing. Even as recently as 2008, the cars were so squat and ugly that they just looked like insects to me. The latest Generation of F1 cars look like cars.

But, at the end of the day, Aesthetics isn't really the point of F1, (I really wanted to give those 2009 cars some love though) and as I said, the problems of making the cars race against each other is still there. at the highers speeds, the only place F1 seems to become a passing race sport is at the back of the grid - where the cars are so bad they have to fight for every position.

It still makes me giggle that the world Champion is in one of those poor cars. I think it will be good for Hamilton, who seemed to have the world at his feet far too quickly. In the meantime, the German Grand Prix at the Legendary Nurburgring is a week on Sunday, and once again, I'm in work for qualifying.

God... Damn.



...Tell me that shit don't look good.