AutoSimSport Magazine - Volume 1, Issue 6 by lou magyar

C REDITS :

C ONTENTS

Concept, Layout & HeadASS: Lx Martini

Turn One

Special Projects & GTR HeadASS: Smokin Bob News & FeaturesASS Jon Denton Military Affairs Editor…. Steve Smith F1ChampASS: Paul Nortness TutorURASS/rFactor: Lou Magyar Race & FeaturesASS Mike Tyler ItalianASS Alessandro Pollini AussieAss Mike Crick

F1 Championship Manager Preview ......19 Turn Two ....................................................32 Broadcasting Live ROC ..........................32 Turn Three..................................................38 The Trackstar 6000 USB Wheel Rev. ....38 The FrontStraight .......................................42 Five Years of Team Redline ...................42 Turn Four....................................................56 NR2003 Interview ...................................56 The BackStraight........................................61 Race Sim Central....................................61

FILSCA Christoph Schirmer

The Fifth Column........................................65

FrenchASS: Christophe Galleron

The Death of the PC? .............................65

Design, Logo, Website Stan - Web Designer FFSCA http://www.ffsca.org

FILSCA RACE RESULTS ..........................69

Production/Advertising Bruce Saltzman

AutoSimSport Italia.....................................75

LFS HeadASS: Position Available

All the Stats, Results of FILSCA Series..69 Brought To You By M4Driving.it .............75

ON THE 13th OF EVERY MONTH MAKE A DATE … with… YOUR A.S.S! All opinions expressed in AutoSimSport are not necessarily those of FILSCA or of its members. FILSCA and AutoSimSport are free – do what you want with the contents (with the exception of everything that does not belong to A.S.S.) but please credit the source. All pics and texts are used by permission; if you feel your rights have been violated, please contact AutoSimSport, through its website. We welcome all submissions and feedback at http://www.autosimsport.com For 1000s of stats, race results, etc., goto http://FILSCA.com

H EAD O P E D On Hong Kong Where this ezine was written – this month’s a rush-job, kinda like a take-out which should not be attempted when all you can read are the pictures on the menu – but, we do what we can … On Going Pro Seems our little niche community is going pro – Tim Wheatley (RSC) and Mikkel (dE) have all been either bought out or are now working for FIRST – Red Bull is sponsoring a LAN event at the USGP – and modders are being (apparently) approached to begin modding for a developer professionally -but your ASS remains free and independent – and long live the spirit of the privateers – say what you want about real-life motorsports but, when all is said and judged, the sport was a helluva lot better for the fans before the money came in … On This Issue Paul, Lou and the Mike have all been otherwise involved this month but will return for next month’s bumper edition – in the meantime, enjoy our half-a-year issue with a world exclusive preview and, if you’re like me (and why wouldn’t you aim for perfection!) you’ll be chomping at the bit (because, like me, you’d be working on a ten year old laptop to create this month’s issue and would be now stark-raving mad) for the release of this new F1 Sim. In The Meantime Enjoy your regular ASS – we’re free and easy and we won’t sell your ASS to no-one – unless the price is good, in which case we’d pimp our ASS loooong time! So, sit back and enjoy and special thanks to those that gave that freak espresso and cigarettes at 3:00am in the lobby to the Mandarin Oriental; and also special thanks to Andrew, whose wireless connection was mooched in order to create this month’s ASS! Lx Martini

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The Tim Wheatley Saga Part One – The End. Jon Denton caught up with Tim Wheatley to find out why he had quit sim-racing and asked why he had lost respect for the community he has served for almost a decade … Jon Denton: What steps did RSC take to "protect its own interests/existence" which seemed to have caused abuse to fly Tim’s way? Tim Wheatley: All we did was stopped people linking to the unallowed mods, like the GTP 1.0 mod. People however got angry at anyone who didn't let them get what they want and because I was the admin online at the time, I posted about it and I've been involved from that point on. Back in 2000 the whole site (at that point totally my site, and named Legends Central) was deleted as someone used an upload script I had setup to upload warez. We have had a non-posting stance on illegal or 'ethically wrong' content ever since. We always tried to stay legal and we tried to continue this through all issues, usually having to follow what developers told us to. Unless they ever got beaten in court, we had to. JD: What is it that has caused you to lose respect for the community? TW: Mental exhaustion due to repeating myself and RSC's legal stance, mainly. For a year we were attacked by a site which chose to post images which were unsuitable and made most of us who had to remove them feel

physically sick (pictures of corpses, children, etc) after we banned a member of that site from RSC for a simple rule infrigement. This is what the unpaid moderators and administrators at RSC have to deal with, I think that's forgotten. We've had to do a lot of work to try to keep RSC a nice place, we've had to set down a lot of rules and ask people to abide by them while visiting. I feel that the community doesn't realise the work involved to keep the site a nice place to visit, to put it simply. There's a lot of websites out there people can visit and do whatever they want, but people want RSC to conform to fit their rules, not the other way around. I feel that the visitors should be the ones who try to fit into the rules set by the site they're visiting, if they can't do that, they should go elsewhere. But most of them choose not to, and instead attack RSC and it's staff for enforcing it's own rules. That gets pretty annoying after a few years, so does being called a Nazi for telling someone they can't link to a site they shouldn't be. JD: You say that this loss of respect occurred "some time ago", what has been the main motivation behind your loss of "passion?" TW: I lost respect for parts of the community, when the community in parts lost respect for RSC's need to keep itself legal, when people went away and decided to call us Nazi's. I have a few really good friends in the community and I thoroughly respect them, even some of those banned

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from RSC I really quite like personally, but if I was the only owner of RSC and the only person paying the bills as I used to be, I would have closed the site by now, because it's no fun anymore. The main reason for my loss of passion has been that I have spent the last few years telling people off. That's not what I started the site for back in 1999, that's not what I spent thousands of pounds on the site and it's software for in those early days. JD: What can the community do to heal the rift and potentially make itself more respectable to you and to others which may have turned their backs? TW: For me personally? Not a lot. I've moved onto different communities within sim racing and outside it. I'd simply ask that those few choose not to ruin the community for everyone. Like I said if RSC was still 100% mine, it would have been dead by now along with my passion for it. The Time Wheatley Saga – Part Deux – The Return. Jon Denton Interviews Tim Wheatley, now in his capacity as FIRSTRacing.net’s Communication’s Manager … JD: What will your new duties at FIRST be, and what made them choose you for the role? TW: The duties are varied and unfortunately I can't expand without giving something away that I shouldn't. I am involved in generating ideas and putting forward what the community wants, so I hope when some information is released 3

we get some healthy debate on it. The whole team debates and argues their ideals for the product, it's really enjoyable to be involved at this stage and see so much experience coming out. I have absolutely NO idea but I'm certainly not going to argue the decision! I hope the main thing is that I'm full of ideas, I spent a lot of time reading posts from the community on RSC every time a sim came to release, the community would be asking if the new sim would contain whatever feature and most times it didn't. I'm trying to carry a lot of those ideals forwards into this new thing and really am hoping I can make a difference. JD: What is it that FIRST did to convince you to come out of "retirement"? TW: It didn't take long to make up my mind and I guess my main thing was to consider who I'd be working with. The roster is like a who's who of Papyrus products over the past ten years, the decision was easy. One thing I had no worries about is the physics, these people have been getting that right since 1998. It's now just important those physics are honed and the features the community has been screaming for finally become available. JD: What does your (and Mikkel's) employment with FIRST mean for RSC? For me, not a lot. I've only been posting occasional news and looking after the subsites for months, I've not

been a part of the sites operations. I'm still looking after RSC's subsites even while I work for FIRST, because I'm the only one with server access. JD: What does the takeover of de.net mean for de.net? TW: I was never involved in dE, so all I can say is what I know. Mikkel and Randall were having a hard time with it, both financially and in terms of keeping orders on time, in the future they don't think they'll have those issues anymore. JD: Does your new position now prevent you from being truly objective when it comes to casting your eye over other sims in the market? TW: Strangely because I obviously can't discuss the new product without permission, it's only other sims I'll be able to talk about! I have been in similar situations during beta testing of other sims though and I'm sure looking forward to a lot of the simulations coming on the market, this is still my hobby and other sims are really important to that. I have friends in a lot of production teams, they're still important too. JD: You mention in a post on RSC that you want to help FIRST with their communication with the community, does this mean that the development process from FIRST will be a more involved process for the community, who have often felt left out of any information or involvement with previous David Kaemmer products? TW: Lack of communication can be a real problem, but so can too much of

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it. I've seen developers make mistakes on both sides of that fine line and as time goes on I hope my experience of that proves useful. Shouldn't be forgotten though how effective simplicity can be, but I guess this is going to be a lot of fun, I'm really looking forward to the reaction from the community when they find out more about the product. JD: Does this mean you can give up your "day job"? TW: Yep! JD: Will FIRST allow you to operate from your current base or will you be needing to move? TW: I work from home right now, but I'd like to move within the next year or so. JD: Thanks a lot Tim and congratulations on your new position, the FIRST product truly looks to be something special and to be involved with that must be an honour. TW: It is, more than you would think …

KING OF OVALS ADDON By Smokin Bob The King of Ovals add on for GTR has caused quite a stir in the community, a division, if you will. A lot of the dissatisfaction stems from the fact that many feel GTR needs some ‘repair work’ in several crucial areas (most notably the over hyped and over hobbled net code) as opposed to add ons dealing with oval racing—the folks want the bugs in 4

MP fixed, and some other niggling issues such as the ‘sometimes insane AI’ taken care of so they can play the original game as they see fit. I tend to agree. But I do not fully agree— I had to dig deep to find some type of ‘justification’ for the King of Ovals, considering the amount of work that remains to be done with the original sim. And, if the rumors are ‘true’, the work done on the King of Ovals add on in no way detracted from GTR. Or GT Legends. Or whatever is next on SimBin’s plate for the community to dig into. Ultimately, when all taken in—a free add on regarding ‘ovals’ is not such a bad idea, at least in concept. I seem to remember a certain Jimmy Clark, of F1 fame, paying a few visits to the Indy oval. That Andretti guy also…. Face it—real racers will go at it in a kiddie pool, riding 2 wheeled tricycles, for the grand prize of a loaf of bread if that is what the event is. Racing is racing, and racers race. Sure, it is a bit odd running the nGT or GT cars on an oval—on the other hand, I find it interesting simply because of its uniqueness. If SimBin was ‘asked’ to create the add on for the North American GTR release then I am glad they went ahead and created it—GTR, in many, many ways, is the class of the field at the moment as far as an offline PC racing simulator goes and anything to get it into more hands is a good thing— even if it is based on a ‘questionable’ stereotype of ‘Americans Love Ovals’.

It comes down to ‘shifting copies’ and at the end of the day, the bottom line is the only thing illuminated in the minds of those at the top…or whoever it is that controls these decisions. Personally, I would have insisted on some bugs being taken care of, bugs that even with the KOO add on are going to make the GTR experience less than it could be, less than it should be. Regardless, when all is said and done—no one is going to die, and it is free after all. If we don’t like it, we simply don’t have to download it. That is the nice feature of free content—take it or leave it.

the KOO add-on more than justifies at least taking a peek and finding out a bit more. After downloading the installer (about 15 MB) file, I double clicked and let the program take over. I immediately hopped into my beloved Lister and took a few ‘spins’ around the Motec Mile track. Right away, you notice the track detail—SimBin has in its employ some incredible track artists, and the work is not wasted on KOO. The road surface, grandstands, sponsor billboards, and the very cool airstrip in the middle of the oval, with its blinking lights, creates quite an arena for driving.

Chased into the corner under a beautiful full moon, the care and attention that went into the track creation is evident—textures are crisp and clear, and carry on the tradition of track modeling quality that started with GTR.

So what is the verdict here? Does the KOO add-on increase, detract, or leave alone the delicate uniqueness that is GTR? In my case—in my opinion, the strange uniqueness of

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And then I noticed something very strange—the oval was flooded!!! Why am I racing on a flooded oval? It is one thing to stereotype the Americans and our ‘undying love of 5

ovals’, it is quite another to overlook one of the most fundamental facts of oval track racing—it is never done in the rain, or with a wet track!! Ok Smokin Bob, you are nitpicking here, you can very easily select ‘DRY’ or ‘CLOUDY’ conditions, and this problem goes away. But that is not the point—you simply don’t race in the rain or wet on ovals, and I would have expected at least a modicum of research into oval racing in this country and an application of such research to the KOO addon, but it is not to be—so make sure to set the weather to ‘SOMETHING THAT ISN’T RAINING OR WET’ and you should be fine. This may be a game engine limitation, and while it would no doubt make for ‘good TV’, it is just this side of ludicrous to even consider the wet track options. Moving along now.

So how does the thing drive? Quite well—provided you have taken care to bias the setup for a left turn only oval, the experience is very convincing. You can feel the tires ‘dig’ into the corner as you fight for grip at the limit. Very much like the Papyrus NASCAR sims, the suspension is very lively as you go over the well modeled bumps in the track. Drafting is modeled, and you will feel yourself being ‘pulled along’ as you capture the draft of the car in front. When all is said and done, the physics are very well done, and the driving believable. So how does it race? That is another matter altogether…. First things first—make sure that when you do setup a race, that the class is one and the same for all cars. If you have a mix of nGT and GT

The view out of the car is great, and the high level of graphical detail, a GTR trademark, is well preserved in the King of Ovals add—on.

cars, the GT cars overtake at such tremendous rates that the racing becomes ‘dangerous’. But this is in line with most oval racing as the cars are ‘roughly’ of the same ability, usually separated by driving talent, team competence, or money. Anyway, make sure the classes are the same or there will most likely be some carnage on the roadway. I setup a 30 minute race at the Motec mile, using fuel and tire wear acceleration settings so as to ‘force’ a pit stop—I wanted to see how well they were done, and how the AI driver performed if you let him take over for you at that pit stop. Qualifying, as usual, is taken from session two and resembles an FIA GT qualifying round—any car on the track, at any time vs. the ‘one car at a time’ qualifying of the majority of oval racing I have ever heard of. Regardless, I took to the Lister and blistered to a 27th place, well down on the grid, if not last. I was new, so I did not beat myself up too bad. I went ahead and let the session finish, then advanced to the race. Formation lap? What is that? Oh, that would be the pace lap..hmm, that is a critical part of the ‘oval experience’ and perhaps the game engine will not allow it. Since this is a bit strange, I am going to press the spacebar, and begin the race. The race got off to a fairly good start, and since I was way back in the grid, had ample opportunity to react to any turn one ‘festivities’. Surprisingly, 30+ cars going into the first turn on that oval was not too

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bad—the AI seemed able to negotiate to ‘funnel effect’ of a lot of cars going for one spot at the same time, and I believe every single one of us made it through unscathed. Perhaps they worked on the AI some, or the single class nature of the race prevented crashes due to speed differences, or maybe it was the beautifully rendered full moon—whatever it was, it was beginning to feel like ‘fun’. And then it all fell apart, at least for me, in terms of ‘true oval racing’— you see, there are no yellow flags after an accident!!! I got a bump from a faster car behind me and lost control coming out of turn four, and hit the wall, stopping dead on the front straight. No yellow flag. No pace car. And cars were stopping on the front stretch-they would not maneuver around me! Nothing that would even hint you were in a race with others—what started as a race now felt like practice, and I began to understand that KOO is, at this point, little more than a diversion for those who may be bored (read—bored nearly to death) with the original tracks—if you are looking for a ‘NASCAR like’ experience, you need to look elsewhere.

uses an amalgam of oval rules and FIA-GT rules. Perhaps that would be appropriate if the FIA 2003 GT cars ever decide to race on ovals, but for a NASCAR fan who wants to try a new type of car on a familiar type of venue…there will be some disappointment. But I continued on—I wanted to see how the pit stops were handled, and how Kinch would do when I let him take over the driving duties. I pulled into the pits, selected the tires, and had them repair what damage they could and threw Kinch into the car. He did pretty well, but we ended up

finishing 27th. So what do we have here, ultimately? We have a free add-on that, in my opinion, while fun to drive, in no way shape or form does anything for GTR in terms of ‘making a sale’. I fear that if folks are going to get GTR in hopes of some ‘real oval action’ with the KOO add—on, they are going to be sadly disappointed, as the King of Ovals appears to be an answer to a question nobody asked. At least nobody in the community—last I checked we are all begging for the ‘Ring. The twisty one, not the Motec Mile.

The racing can be quite close and exciting, as seen in this shot. Give and take is not only a nice thing to do—it becomes a necessity as the racing gets close, and the tires get old.

‘There is a yellow flag in sector two’, my spotter would say. I wondered what Darrell Waltrip would say…’Boogity boogity boogity, lets go racin’ boys—and watch out for that yellow flag in sector two!!!’ Or words to that effect. So it would appear that KOO AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

New Releases for GTR. Smokin Bob Reviews The Latest Add-ons for GTR Speedwerx keeps churning out the goodness, and have now released a Corvette and Lamborghini add-on for GTR. The Speedwerx Lambo Challenge, and the Corvette Challenge provide for some very interesting single car make racing. Beautifully done, they further continue the tradition of quality and professionalism that is the hallmark of Speedwerx—the guys know what the heck their doing and it shows. Although both in ‘beta’ at this time, simply extracting the download to the proper directory will get the user up and running in no time. Both add—ons are a pleasure to drive, and the car models are spectacular. I am beginning to really enjoy the single make races and these add—ons really add to the initial value of GTR, in my opinion. They definitely feel as if the ‘belong’ as part of the GTR package, a testament to the hard work Speedwerx puts into their mods. Hats Off to Speedwerx for their continued efforts with GTR.

Speedwerx’s Editor’s Choice – Corvette (above) and Lamborghini (left): The work by Speedwerx on the Lamborghini models is very well done; even in the beta stage, the cars definitely look ‘finished’.

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GTR Racing HFR has released one of the most interesting and fun add-ons for GTR, the Vertigo Cup. Consisting of beautifully skinned Vertigos, this add-on presents the Streiff in all of its ‘easily drivable’ glory. Offering 25 cars and great on track racing, this is one of the finest add-ons I have used so far. The guys did a great job with the artwork all around, and this one is well worth the download. Delivered in a ‘one click’ install,

getting setup for this one is painless. One of the easiest, and most enjoyable cars to drive, the Vertigo as the focus of this add-on is a great example of perfection in the single class—easy enough for the rookies to get the hang of, and with just enough ‘goods under the hood’ to keep the veterans in action.

FR_GTR_Fan, Seba, and the boys have released the highly anticipated FIA GT 2005 mod. Promising a new entry to the car list, the Maserati MC12 with modified physics to boot, this one is worth taking a look at. We interviewed Seba of the team in last month’s issue, and now the goods are finally on the street. Promising all the cars that were present up to Monza, this should give the user a ‘fresh look’ at GTR in terms of season presentation. Be warned, however— the install is far from straightforward, and after downloading it is HIGHLY recommended you read the read me file—failure to do so will prevent the add-on from functioning. Although not as nice as the simple ‘one click’ install, the effort that has gone into the mod should make up for it. Note: At the time of this writing, successful installation will require Skypats GTManager (actually, you really need the ‘Locutus editor’ portion of it, and also you must have the Framework.NET installed which is not listed in the read me file) program for install purposes. Install with caution.

“…beautifully skinned Vertigos, this add-on presents the Streiff in all of its ‘easily drivable’ glory. Offering 25 cars and great on track racing, this is one of the finest addons I have used …”

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SALEEN SHOT: The gorgeous 2005 Saleen, complete with GTR numberplate logo. From the FIA add-on website, renders section. (Below) Speedwerx’s Corvette …

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FANATEC WHEEL REVIEW Smokin Bob reviews the wheel that finally brings the Xbox up-to-par with the needs of the sim-racer …

software for the showcase hardware. So how is it? Surprisingly good.

I was extremely reluctant, at first, to pick up Forza Motorsports for the XBOX. I finally gave in, and decided to give it a try and was pleasantly surprised at the quality, production values, and physics of the thing—but something was holding the ‘true potential’ back, and of course it was the game pad. True, many can race just as fast or faster with the game pad as a wheel, but not me—I need all the help I can get. But XBOX wheels, at least the ones I have used, have been very disappointing in quality and design. If anything, they made every driving game worse. But Fanatec, with their Speedster3 ForceShock wheel is offering to the market a wheel of high quality, great ‘feedback’ and extreme adjustability and programmability. In fact, the wheel has been strongly aimed at Forza, much like the Logitech DFP is geared directly at Gran Turismo 4—the showcase

parameters, the Speedster 3 sounded quite a bit more advanced than other wheels I have tried that use only a spring return, or ‘friction

—THE GAMES: Running the gamut from flat out oval racing to insane speeds around the Ring, I decided to throw these at the Speedster 3 and let the chips fall where they may.

I picked up the Speedster3 ForceShock at Gamestop for 149.95. And yes, I was cringing at the amount due to the fact that the XBOX never has, and never will, support force feedback, in its ‘licensed’ form. But the Speedster 3 wheel is more than just a ‘vibration feedback amplifier’, so I was hoping for a decent driving experience. Claiming adjustability of 7 different wheel

THE BOX: Sporting plenty of green, there could have been a loaf of moldy bread in there, and I would have ended up with it. Instead, the box contained what is possibly the best wheel to date for the XBOX.

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mechanisms’ to duplicate the feel of the road. Both approaches, in my opinion, are selling the XBOX short. But with only ‘vibration feedback’ available, what can a wheel possibly offer anyway? According to Fanatec, quite a bit. The wheel has three independent motors, two supporting the vibration output of the XBOX, and another to ‘force’ the wheel to turn (read—react) if you hit a bump, or get to near the curbs, for example. Both effects are adjustable, but at their maximum levels can be a bit overwhelming. It is not the type of force that could rip your hands apart, but can be on the strong side for some preferences. This configuration is also the most convincing representation of what is happening on the road in the game in terms of tactile feedback that I have yet to use for the XBOX. When properly tuned to my tastes, I was able to get an amazing sense of what 11

the car was doing—in control or out, the wheel response was very believable. It was quite interesting to finally feel what it feels like in Forza when the tires on the Viper go too far beyond the region of grip—you could literally feel the transition from controlled forward motion, to the immediate need for wheel input. And even though the wheel was designed with Forza in mind--much like the DFP was Logitech’s contribution to the beauty of Gran Turismo 4—what I was feeling from it was still difficult to believe. But there was no question—Forza became a completely new game, and with its accurate physics, erratic wheel inputs will quickly lead to disaster. So far, so good. I unpacked the wheel, and began to examine the goods, so to speak. The wheel itself is well designed, and has a good feel to it. All of the XBOX controller buttons are represented, with the exception of the analog sticks. The analog stick buttons are present, however. The pedal unit is a nice surprise—I have yet to have the

—REFERENCE CARD. The documentation package includes a well produced reference card, detailing each setting and its function. The reverse side of the card explains how to alter each parameter of the wheel to the users’ preference. There are also four preset wheel configurations—many more can be found at Fanatec’s web site.

unit slip around, and the brake pedal has a spring that feels about twice as strong as the spring in the gas pedal, a nice touch and further along toward the goal of ‘believability’. A decent manual, detailing the important features of the wheel is also included. In a nice gesture by Fanatec, the manual can be freely downloaded at their site (http://www.fanatec.com/) for those interested may take a look for themselves without parting with a single dime. —FANATEC BUTTONS. The game pad is well represented, albeit without the analog capability of the L and R sticks. The ‘stick buttons’ are there as well as some very nice F1 style shifter paddles.

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Plugging everything in was a snap— the wheel connects to the XBOX controller port, the pedals connect to the wheel, and the included power supply must also be plugged into the wheel. During power up, the wheel will automatically self calibrate by turning itself to the left and right extremes of motion. The wheel offers lap mount or table mount use options, and I opted for the table mount—I just don’t have a lot of lap to spare… Since I had been playing Forza quite a bit, I naturally started there. I selected the S3 default wheel setup as it has been specifically programmed for the game. In my opinion, it was the best driving experience I have had to date on the XBOX—with a transformation just this side of miraculous, the Speedster 3 is the answer to the prayers of those who have dreamed of a decent wheel solution for the XBOX, at least as far as Forza is concerned. As I switched cars in the game, the differing physics 12

for them were competently relayed to me through the wheel, based on my track activities. It was a great experience, and is difficult to imagine playing Forza now with the game pad—it was that much better. After a while of playing, I found that the ‘return force’ was too weak, and with the Speedster 3, changing just that option alone was a simple matter that took a few seconds. So far, the wheel was very impressive, and did a great job. It does not offer the full 900 degree rotation that the DFP does, nor is it outputting true force feedback, but it is leaps and bounds above any XBOX wheel I have used before, and I had yet to run it through the rest of the games… I eventually

tore myself away from Forza and moved on to my ‘other’ favorite racing game for the XBOX—IndyCar Series 2005 published by CodeMasters. Forza was a nice surprise…IndyCar knocked me on the floor. I have been a fan of ‘Indy’ type car sims since IndyCar Racing all those years ago, and felt that Brain in a Jars IndyCar Series simulator for the PC was a great sim, regardless of the reviews. For some reason, I just liked it. But I was disappointed to discover that the next installment was console only, and I nearly gave up on the series—with the game pad, I just was not enjoying the game to its full extent. I had hopes that Fanatec was the solution.

Using the same default settings as for Forza, I quickly fell back in love with the IndyCars—the driving experience felt believable, and the wheel allowed for much more ‘realistic’ driving on my part, and qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 was an extremely rewarding experience. It required a bit of dead zone adjustment, but soon the car was driving exactly how I wanted it to, and I could not have been happier. In fact, as I was heading into the corners, I could feel the tires ‘dig into’ the pavement as the grip threshold was approached— something a game pad could never duplicate, and the increase in immersion was palpable. What a great day so far--two outstanding

FANATEC RECOMMENDED SETTINGS. Conveniently located on the Fanatec website, the recommended wheel settings for many popular games are listed. Although they will not suit all users, the settings are great places to start, and the ease of programming the wheel allow the user to quickly experiment with different settings. AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

XBOX games got a whole lot better with the Speedster 3 wheel. I next moved on to the NASCAR series of games, and here is where some issues began to crop up. Again, I used the Forza default settings for both of these games as a starting point. Once on the track, the cars were extremely difficult to drive as they would not turn, and the only real ‘feedback’ was when a wall was hit. Some extreme dead zone and sensitivity adjustments dramatically improved the steering response, but the road travel still felt wrong somehow. There just was not much response to speak of. As a test, I reattached the game pad and discovered the same thing. There simply is not a lot of output to the controller with either of these games, so the Speedster 3 did not shine so brightly here—but it did not make the experience worse, and the lack of feedback would appear to be more related to the actual game code than anything else. To sum up, the Fanatec Speedster 3 ForceShock, featuring ‘Germaneering’ is without a doubt the best XBOX wheel I have ever used. I do find the price to be a bit high, and the lack of true ‘force feedback’ prevents it from being as ‘technically correct’ as the DFP— through no fault of its own—but if you are serious about your XBOX driving games, the Speedster 3 is a must have.

VROC Gets All Dirty Marcel Offermans confirmed to AutoSimSport that, “RBR is officially the second supported simulation now. In fact this plugin was done by Donny Tytgat and demonstrates the extensibility of the VROC framework. “Still in the works,” promises the hard-working Marcel, “is the NR2003 (and standard mods) support, which was delayed a bit by the fact that both Herko and me have been on a short holiday the last weeks. But it should be finished somewhere next month.” rFactor’s Unoffocial Release Scheduled for USGP? Rumours are hotting up as rFactor Fever hits simdom – what most believe will be the next generation

sim from ISI seems set for an early test-drive at the USGP and your ASS wil be there – if it all happens as scheduled, ASS will have a special review for July or even earlier! And in yet another sign of simracing's growing professionalism, the unofficial unveiling of rFactor, at a private LAN party in an undisclosed location is not only sponsored, in part, by rFactor developers ISI, but also by Red Bull – a good idea, that, because if rFactor is half the sim it promises to be, no-one's gonna be getting much sleep as die-hard simracers descend on rural Indiana to LAN-it-out over rFactor for the very first time!

Brother Glade, dE skinner and car artist, prepares Jon Denton’s RBR Lancer.

184 Smokes out of a Carton (92%).

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F3 Euroseries mod for rFactor. By M4Driving.It F3 has always been a very competitive and challenging series. This is exactly what could be a definition of a good online multiplayer racing serie, and this is what this mod is intended to be. It is based on the 2005 Euroseries series, world's best F3 championship, but as all the F3 series uses almost the same chassis, it could be easily changed in British or Australian F3 with new car paintings. This mod may be a perfect base for

online open wheels leagues, as in reality, a monotype serie with limited setup parameters means close racing and good fights. Concerning the physics, this mod will be as realistic as possible, trying to give the feeling of this light weight car, with a very good chassis and average engine power, allowing very agressive driving, taking advantage of all rFactor's features. Italian NASCAR Championship The CIN (Italian Nascar Championship) is a community based on online racing that counts over 150 active drivers and almost

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700 recorded affiliates to the site www.cin.cc . The CIN has arrived at the end of its third edition and in these years it has captured the appreciation of many virtual drivers. Every year the organization invite to race as special guest the strongest european drivers, like Huttu, Hackmann, Torvinen, Towler, who never allow the opportunity to put on a good show in front of the italian public to escape. The season starts in September and finishes in June with the multiplayer of NR2003 that consist in a simulation of the real Nascar season with tight

FILSCA GTR World Ranking Top 25: Week 22/2005 1 Roland Ehnström 2 Christian Waltgård 3 Thomas Heineman 4 Johan Meissner 5 Petter Edin 6 Mattias Holkedahl 7 Kjetil Moe 8 Mats Karlsson 9 Sami Silventoinen 10 Ove Wadman 11 Jan Bergwall 12 Tommy Wernberg 13 Roger Jonsson 14 Niclas Norenheim 15 Staffan Slörner duels at 200mph and much frantic action. Fun and adrenaline assured by 2 very powerful servers, able to quietly entertain over 30 drivers for each competition and by a serious and efficient organization. Besides the CIN, there are other championships like the RTC (Road Track Challenge), road tracks competition with the Trans Am Mod (for the next seasons it will adopt as simulator the GTP mod of the Team Redline), the LTC (Legend Track Challenge), endurance championship with over 2 hours competitions ,

raced on the most beautiful tracks realized by the online community. For the next season the organization has been kept in consideration the hypothesis to also realize a championship with GTR that, day after day, is getting more and more praise in the panorama of the simulations. The CIN is a reality of the European online racing and awaits you in September for the beginning of the season 2005/2006 with so many new initiatives.

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16 Thomas Granbacka 17 Greger Huttu 18 Joakim Janas 19 Robin Bergh 20 Peter Axelsson 21 Staffan Synnergren green 22 Mats Linden 23 Per Gassne 24 John Sjöstrand 25 Tobias Härnvi 17

Six Of The Very Best For ASS! This is AutoSimSport’s sixth edition – half a year, who’d believe it … and so, with this in mind, we thought we’d give ourselves a little boost and offer some of the best feedback we’ve received … death threats, though, have been edited, to protect the guilty … and with our new design coming in July (hopefully), we will also use this opportunity of highlighting the design catastrophe that has defined our little ezine – enjoy the chaos!

"It's a great pleasure to read it" Sim-racing legend Greger Huttu.

“Resign before you destroy even more Kind Regards” KM

"I was trawling some forum or other yesterday, and came across this excellent online magazine thingy, all about racing sims and the community we race in, and thought ‘Well, if Lou's not going to pimp it here, then I will’. Damned fine read. Nice one Lou, and everyone else involved.” Spadge Fromley

"I must congratulate everyone on AutoSimSport, it's a very nice read. It's about the only place where proper editorials on the state of sim racing can be read, which is very refreshing." Gregor Veble, West Racing.

“Top-number. Getting better and better. I almost prefer AutoSimSport over Autosport... Well, a bit improved layout would be nice. But content is brilliant!” - Frederik Nornemark (co-maker of GPL tracks Anderstorp and Falkenberg).

"Autosimsport rocks! It's what Rolling Stone used to be. " Secret Agent 1 (Team lead from RSR) “What a lameass peace of reading that. … come on!! The 6 year old living next door could have done better.” KM

“The magazine is great!” Stefano Casillo, netKar creator

“Hi Bob, I just have to gratulate you to your curage to write this honest article about the GTR-netcode and all its flaws. Great writing, and putting the problems to a point. Especially where Modders become businessmen and their clients still expect a similar threatment as before. Keep on writing that good stuff!” Joachim Fiess aka Vykos “Great issue once again! Keep it up - most sim newsletters/ ezines have failed after a number of issues (including ours), due to various reasons. Make sure it doesn't happen to AutoSimSport.” Ivan Spruit - BHMotorsports AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

T URN O NE Formula 1 Championship Manager Exclusive It’s been almost six years since the last incarnation of an F1 Management Sim – but the long-wait is soon to come to an end with AzTech Games’ upcoming Formula 1 Championship Manager. The project, six years in the making, promises not only a return to the unique joys of managing a 500 million dollar F1 team – but to redefine the very genre itself. Stuart Currall reveals all … The Design Management sims have been synonymous with PC gaming – they are a staple of the PC market, and encompass everything from the fiendishly successful Championship Manager footie sims to The Sims and passing through Sim City and Singles along the way … but whereas managing little footie players or trying to entice a big-boobed polygon into some questionable sex-act or subjecting an entire city to the horrors of an unleashed Godzilla has always been geekishly exciting, management sims based around motorsports have traditionally been … inadequate. After all, whodya really really wanna be? Ayrton Senna, or … Ron Dennis? F1 management sims have never quite captured the imagination which is odd, really, considering that the F1 team principal’s job is far more involved than that of the footie coach. And yet every year sees yet another update to the litany of footie management sims, and they fly off the shelves faster than John Newhouse … What is missing? Is it the actual nature of F1 management that fails to ignite the spark of interest – or has

there been something lacking in the way it has been habitually simulated? That is the question that any developer needs to ask before attempting, yet again, to succeed in a genre that has seen some laudable (and otherwise) failures over the years. Sports management sims based around motor racing have always been, at best, a frustrating affair. Sitting on the pit-wall, developers have discovered, is not quite the same as sitting in the dugout … or is it? It all started so promisingly as well – way back in the day, in 1988, with Electronic Arts’ Ferrari Formula One. This was not only the first management sim, it was also (and remains about the only) attempt at bridging the gap between racing and management (not only did you get to drive, but you had to be the engineer and the test-driver, and the mechanic, and every change to the car had to be checked against the clock) … After that, there came, in the mid 90s, the first real attempts at simulating the management of F1. Foremost were the Grand Prix Manager sims - Microprose’s 1995 Grand Prix Manager by Edward Grabowski– and its sequel, Grand Prix Manager 2 (1996). Microprose, at the time, were also publishing Crammond’s Grand Prix series, and the two came in boxes not too dissimilar – leading some to conclude (fantasise) that they would, one day, merge into one super-sim.

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… a wonderful concept, but one that was never to see the light of day. The management and racing sim, combined, remains the holy grail of sim-racing, and Ferrari Formula One remains, to this day, the only valid attempt at what appears, at least superficially, to be the solution to sim-racing’s woes. Racing Legends, being worked on somewhere in the genteel English countryside, promises much in this regard … but we digress … after the GP Manager series came F1 Manager Professional, a “German” sim released in 1997 that remains an undiscovered classic of the genre. It was then another 3 years before Grabowski, the mind that had created the platform for the genre, came back with Grand Prix World, undisputedly the King of F1 Management Sims. But GPW suffered, like all the F1 management sims before it, of a simple problem – it simulated allright, but it was also … boring. Sure, the first couple of seasons were fun but – it was somehow shallow repetitive. And managed to translate a sport rich in fascinating nuance into a sim poor of excitement. It is the nature of games though; after all, what makes GPL so much more ‘exciting’ that GTR? It is that unquantifiable ‘something’ that has always been missing from F1 management sims – and it is that something that is found, in abundance, in its cousins, the footie management sims which are – and will remain – the template for sports management sims. 19

The ‘racing’ in all these previous F1 management sims have also been notoriously – disappointing. So much so that most punters, after the first season or so, wouldn’t even bother with the race itself, just clicking on the simulate race option. And here, indeed, is where all F1 management sims have suffered; outside the track, things were relatively interesting (though tediously cyclical) but come the race weekend (which is where, after all, an F1 Sim should shine), there remained, always, that sense of disillusionment …

On paper, though, F1 management seems to contain far more interesting sub-plots than footie management – so much so that, when all is said and done and the cows have come home to roost, it is probably very possible to assert that what has been a fault is not the actual ‘sport’ of F1 management (testified, perhaps, by the gazillion or so fantasy F1 leagues successfully {and profitably} run by newspapers and websites around the world) – but, rather, in the way the developers have undertaken its simulation. At least, this would have

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to be the thinking of anyone who would attempt to breathe fresh life into the F1 Management sim that has been dead and buried for half a decade … F1 management sims have never found that ‘element’, that magic formula that has been part and parcel of footie management sims for decades. And that formula, of course, like many of the formulas that have seen genres succeed for decades, was moulded in the days of lore on the Commodore and other Basic

machines … a time of no-graphics and great Ideas … there was, in short, never a Kevin Toms in F1 Management. So what has been missing? What is the magic element that’ll see the F1 Management Sim match the addictive quality of its footie equivalent? The guys over at Aztech Games think they have the solution. And before the end of the year, we’re about to find out if they’re right. The Test Who are AzTech? AutoSimSport caught up with Stuart Currall, head of the development team responsible for the upcoming F1 Championship Manager sim, to find out. “We are a group of F1 enthusiasts,” Currall begins, “who share the common dream and goal to create and play the best F1 manager sim ever created.” That’s the thing that becomes evident with Currall from the get-go – he feels he knows why F1 management sims have failed in the past, and he is absolutely convinced he’s onto the (uhm) … winning formula And why AzTech?

are all very bright and are exceptionally talented within their own sphere of expertise. We have some of the brightest stars of the future in the programming and graphical areas, and I consider myself very fortunate to have this team around me.” Well there it is then; an F1 sim created by guys named after a people who never actually used the wheel. … I ask Currall to explain the process that lurks behind creating such an ambitious project with a crew of unpaid guys dotted around the world (including a guy called ‘Simke’ who was kind enough to give me the screenies that appear in this article, and is based in a small town somewhere in Serbia). “My team are not paid by the hour,” Currall confirms, “but they do stand to earn substantially from the success of the game. I believe that keeps them sharp and the prospect enables a certain discipline and a certain motivation that would be missing if this was not a commercial project. I realised that my vision {on which he has been working since the early 90s} could not be created on the sweat of one man alone. I was lucky enough to access the majority of my present team, some of whom were working on an aborted F1 management game. The remainder of my team actually came from the www.f1cm.co.uk forum. Where I was able to identify a special talent that I did not already have within the team I approached them and signed them up for the inhouse development team.”

“We had to christen our organisation and used a play on Aztec and Technical to end up with AzTech. We feel that we are a creative pioneering bunch in common with those guys that dominated the Valley of Mexico in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who did a pretty good job as pioneers with their creative aspirations - so the name sounded pretty apt. In terms of the skills inside the team, I have to say that my team AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

Never before in history has something like this been possible – a group of independents, strewn across the continents, all working on one project ... I ask Currall if he can explain the concept, and how it differs from the other attempts - like Grand Prix Manager 2 & GP World. It is, after all, pretty clear to anyone who has played F1 sims that something is missing … Currall is convinced he knows what it is – and how to solve it. “All previous attempts to produce a F1 Manager game started as a honest attempt by the producer to recreate the atmosphere of F1 management in an entertaining way. What does become obvious quite quickly,” he adds, “is that something went wrong between the functional game specification and the finished article. Compromises have been made and many of the compromises were done as technical work-arounds by technical programmers. Some of these 'techys' clearly had little knowledge of F1 as some of the workarounds left the game player feeling at least disappointed and at worst cheated.” Always a good sign, this, when a developer understands the perspective of the punter. And this, I think, is one of the, uhm, driving forces behind AzTech – the fact that these guys are not just developers – they’re fellow enthusiasts. I ask him for some examples of where previous management sims fell short ... “A classic example,” replies Currall, “is where techys encounter problems with weather and atmospherics and 21

rather than taking the time to re-spec the issue, they have chosen to either take the weather simulation completely out of the game or have simplified it to the point where the gameplay becomes farcical in relation to that area.” Those who earned their team principal stripes know precisely where Currall is coming from. GPW suffered from a similar problem. I ask Currall what the solution could be.

“We have re-written our weather model three times,” he tells me, “in an attempt to impact in an entertaining and real meaningful way that game players can appreciate and enjoy the challenges that the weather brings. I will not,” he continues, “build you a list of problems that we see in other games {because} we started with a blank sheet of paper and have attempted to conquer each aspect in order to bring the best possible experience to the game

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player. I believe this approach in itself is rare and the carries one huge downside which is the delay to the release timescales.” Now there’s a rarity indeed; a developer that actually focus on getting the sim right before releasing what is nothing more than a glorified beta-patch … as for release timescales … for those that are eagerly waiting, the sim is now in Alpha 3. Which is, in tech-speak, maybe a version or two away from going beta. The FAQ over 22

at F1CM’s website suggests the sim is in version 3.6.6.. I ask Currall about the genre itself; what is it that he believes is the attraction? “We suspect that the thing that attracts most people to the F1 manager genre is the glamour of the sport and the concept of organising and directing from the Pit wall making superb tactical decisions that result in your car taking the chequered flag then having champagne splashed on you on the winners podium.” It really is that easy eh! Just like a footie sim, the attraction is winning – so simple … and yet, why the hell has no-one been able to simulate this in a way that is both addictive and challenging? “Well, simulating all of this is not at all easy,” replies Currall. “You end up with something completely different from your objectives and you then have to take some big steps backwards to re-engineer the game. Someone playing a F1 manager for the first time is unlikely to feel the way they thought they would after playing the game. This used to be true in the football management genre. In their infancy you opened your first football manager game expecting to feel like Brian Clough or Alex Ferguson shouting abuse at the ref and your players from the dug out. Eventually the footy manager sim settled into a pattern and little has changed to that standard formula in 15 years.”

More like 20 years, for those of us who steered little-known Colchester to the FA Cup in 1984 … “The current variety,” continues Currall on footie sims, “is accepted by the gaming community as the norm and that success can be replicated with 1 million copies being sold. Those Footy games have a common theme and winning formula accepted by the gaming community. “However,” Currall notes, “F1 has not yet achieved that winning formula concept. Our aim is to set the first real benchmark and the new 'norm'.” Manna for those of us who have played all the F1 management sims – it’s like a genre novel, this simulation gig – no-one was really reading detective fiction before Sherlock Holmes even if the idea of the deductive detective had been around since the days of Edgar Allan Poe; and detecting, of course, has been part of humanity since the first time a caveman inspected a piece of shit and deduced from it that an animal was somewhere close … it is not the reality simulated that makes a great sim, it is in the way it is simulated. “I read about how the Sports Interactive team {storied and legendary creators of the incredibly successful Championship Manager Franchise} struggled to get their game published because games publishers scoffed at the concept of playing a footy manager game on a PC. How wrong they were!!” Indeed; the franchise continues to be a best seller with its every incarnation

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and is something of a cultural phenomenon … “Some of the previous F1 management games were released by the publishers hoping that the gaming community would warm to that format of F1 Management and create the same success that football had,” explains Currall. “In a leap of blind faith they went ahead with their F1 titles. Unfortunately, the games lacked the feeling and depth to establish a cult following from which to launch a new and accepted format of F1 manager game and they were rejected in the main by the gaming community in exactly the way that the publishers had feared football management sims would have been rejected by the gaming community.” In explaining how the F1 sims of the past were … lacking … Currall insinuates the way forward … “The feedback I read from users was that the Car development programs were not interesting and rewarding, the race was pretty boring and overall users did not feel any wow factor.” Currall is exactly on the mark here. Though how AzTech will cure the ‘wow’ factor, I imagine, is something we’ll all have to wait and see – there is no word, no explanation, no hype for the ‘wow’ factor. It’s just something that happens – like the Matrix. As opposed to the sequels … “We aim to remedy all of these or, at the very least, set new standards which far exceed anything that has gone before,” Currall insists. “For instance, we are taking a bit of a gamble on the car development 23

program which the user will 'learn' in 3 stages.” And these stages are? “Stage 1 is - wow this is hard but by playing and experimenting will get them to a second phase where they think they have 'cracked it' only to discover that they need to go through a third phase of understanding and learning to produce top quality results.”

And in this, already, can be seen the depth that was missing from the previous F1 Management Sims that, once you’d ‘cracked’ it, winning the championship with Minardi became a matter of duplicating the six or seven ‘moves’ needed for success. But what about that crucial factor, the actual race weekend? “The race weekend is much more user interactive,” Currall says. “You will be constantly making little changes to strategy. F1,” he explains,

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“is a highly technical sport and leading edge. The performance levels necessary to win is constantly in a forward motion, like a conveyor belt, and teams attempt to make jumps along the conveyor belts in an attempt to catch their rivals. To do this you need a high level of confidence and warmth in your factory. We use your press predictions through press statements to add pressure to the qualifying and then to the race performances. Your 24

staff take consolation or criticism from poor outcomes whilst they become enthused and motivated from success which will in turn impact the performance relativity of their position on the conveyor belt. All in all we are looking to manipulate the stages that exist in reality to give the user a much more fulfilling interactive experience.” Those familiar with Championship Manager footie sims will see some resonance here; one of the challenges to the footie sim is in deciding whether to play your out-of-form and demoralized $100,000 a week striker – or your superbly motivated $500 a week journeyman. Currall believes that the genre itself – the F1 management genre – is one that is rich in possibility; it is a goldmine waiting for the midas touch. Its interpretation is all that has precluded F1 Management sims from taking its rightful place beside its more illustrious cousins, the footie management sim. I go back to what he was saying about the race weekend - one of the most disappointing aspects of all previous incarnations has been the actual ‘racing’: how, I ask, will AzTech go about 'spicing' this aspect up without it being nothing more than what it was in most other sims, a glorified spectator run? “In football manager games the central game focus point is on match days,” explains Currall. “It therefore follows that in F1 the focus is on the race weekend. Everything centres on the race {and} we are attempting to make each GP weekend a unique

event where there are few constants and many variable factors to offer interesting challenges to players. If we achieve our goal to make all the development and financial areas of the game enjoyable and rewarding to play, then we will overcome the potential weakness that all management sims have as a pitfall.” Point taken; those of us who are happily addicted to sigames’ offerings are usually at a loss to explain their entrancing faculty – to those who don’t share the fixation, and to those who do. Usually an attempted explanation to the addiction lands up in a half-shake of the head and a nervous giggle, like fellow fetishists explaining the appeal of a well-worn eel (eh?). One of the innovative features of the Championship Manager footie sims was the introduction, not so long ago, of a pitch on which the little fellas do their work – it brought a whole new ‘feel’ to the sim, a whole new level of immersion opening up as one was suddenly able to see the ‘tactics’ employed on an actual field – so, what will F1CM 'look' like considering AzTech have decided not to use what their FAQ describes as ‘3D TV Style interface with high resolution’. And how important does he consider this aspect of the sim i.e., the eye-candy aspect? “We certainly intend to add as much eye candy as we can to try and make the game as appealing to as many people as possible,” Currall replies. “This does not have to be using the latest 3d modelling and 20 million polygon motion models. We want it

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to look and feel clean and modern. We recognise that, despite how good the actual game engine is, it is often the eye candy that sells games. But, we must first concentrate on the quality of the game and in particular in the game engine.” Reassuring words these. Those of us steeped in the wizadry of old-time ‘games’ have long since bemoaned the lack of ‘game’ behind the visceral marvels. “As it is,” continues Currall, “the engine of the game {is what} defines the ultimate success or failure. We want to make a great game that looks as good as possible but the looks will come second to the playability if that choice has to be made.” The Race There are three levels to this sim will the advanced level require the player, as Technical Director, to begin at one of the minnow teams and work their way up? Or can one start at Ferrari, be fired, and never be hired again? “There are two difficulty level settings,” corrects Currall. “One is how good the opponents are and the other is how difficult it is for you to progress. Each has 3 possible settings hence there are in fact 3 x 3 settings = 9 different game play settings. It is only at the highest levels when you will not be able to manage the top teams.” A campaign can run up to 50 seasons ... I ask Currall to explain how this will work - does every season's new car begin with 'flaws' that need to be fixed ala GPW? 25

direction of the car? I.e., as Tech Director, is the job one of overseeing - or are there aspects where the TD can influence direction outside from giving orders?

“With a renewable source of names it would be possible to have an infinite game life,” says Currall. “Whilst this is not realistic it is what many people prefer and it then leaves the decision of when to stop and start again to the user. This is a matter that could be impacted by the requirements of a license which may restrict the number of maximum seasons. We will confirm this when we can.” The reason for the hesitancy is that, as of this moment, F1CM have not announced a publisher. But, in keeping with its ethos, it is probable that AzTech Games will first create the sim – and then worry about the publisher. A nice old-fashioned

touch, and one that should be welcomed in a time of excess hype and half-finished sims that get patched (sometimes) months after release … Another element that previous sims have suffered in is in the area of techie advancements – generally, every season brought the same process with the same outcomes … I ask Currall to explain the various techie elements relating to the R&D, Design - what type of input would the player have, say, on Design - does he just control the time and money and personnel employed on the design of the new car (or re-design of current car) or can he influence the

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“As a Technical Director,” explains Currall, “you direct your work force. There are a number of decisions that you can be responsible for that do not fall within the remit of a real life F1 TD, but in order to make sure the game covers all the vital nontechnical areas - driver selection, funding, etc. - your Team Owner will assign many of his duties to you.” It is part of this sim that you, as Technical Director, are hired by the Team Owner – who will, at the onset of your contract, set parameters that you will have to meet – or face the boot. “The format of processing actions in F1CM is founded from the premise that you are presented with a variety of options and there will be some logical input and data available from your team that will influence the 26

decisions that you take. There is sometimes a correct and a wrong option but usually there is no absolutely correct answer that will make you successful. You need to take a series of consistent decisions to make the car go faster rather than simply outweighing good decisions over bad ones.” What, I ask him, are the parameters, generally, that make one team faster than another? Is it simply a matter of

getting money (sponsorship) that you can throw at technical solutions - or are there ways in which money itself won't guarantee success, as has happened to Toyota over the last few years. “The Toyota and BAR over-spend vs under-performance scenarios of real life F1 are possible in F1CM,” Currall confirms. “At the end of the day, you are responsible for the entire operation as the TD in F1CM and you

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will fall into one of 3 categories - par perform, under perform or over perform. Clearly if you have a large budget you will have the opportunity to do much better than you could with a low budget, but the actual outcome depends on how well you manage your operations and your staff. “Taking consideration of real F1 - at the time of writing this, Toyota appear to be making much bigger 27

steps than any other team in real F1 and hence there must be a correlation between funding and expertise employed. If you have a lot of money you will have the scope to make much bigger steps than if you do not. That said,” adds Currall, “the development of all parts and the chassis has a finite target of perfection that everyone is trying to hit. This target is constantly moving away from the current level, hence standing still on the development treadmill will result in you falling behind on the grid. The progress of your car component part development is dependant upon the expertise on your team and also the amount of time and resources you assign to the project, but the actual size of the improvement you can make is relevant to the distance from perfection of your current component. So, even with a relatively small budget, it is possible to make big steps forward if the components you develop are poor and have a big development target window to aim for. If there is only a very small gain to be had you will need to spend a huge amount of money to make a tiny gain and the time will come when there are few gains to be had. The impact then is often that the rule stability can bunch up the field and make the grid much closer. What then happens is that the rules are changed in the name of safety and suddenly the targets become much larger and the top teams start to pull away from the mid-field. Does this sound familiar?” asks Currall smiling.

Behind the scenes of any F1 sim is the technical department where the science (wizadry) is employed in the discovery of time – Currall has spoken of a ‘repetitive gamble’ of the parts being developed – and I ask him whether he can explain a little more on this strange term using an example. “Developing parts is a constant gamble in F1CM,” explains Currall. “Our testers are infuriated when they spend large amounts of their budget on developing a new part only to find {that} 3 months later the car goes slower with the new part than the old. They ask, ‘How can a development of a current concept be slower’? The thing is, they missed all the signs that were warning them of this problem during the 3 months of development. Had they noticed that, say, the reliability of the part was incredibly poor during early testing, they could have binned that project and started a new more efficient project much sooner, saving money and bringing speed to the car quicker in other areas of component development.” Again I can’t but be impressed by the depth that is promised with F1CM – blind techie turns are a staple of F1 (Williams’ Twin-Tusk design of last season being a case in point) and is as much part of F1 as Flavio’s emaciated girlfriends. I ask how many 'parts' will formulate the basics of the car? I.e., wings, diffuser, and what else? “We currently stipulate 25 parts on the car that require selection and or development. We have left space in the game engine for 5 more just in

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case we need to integrate more before finally moving out of beta testing.” Telemetry is another aspect of F1CM that is set to create a new benchmark in F1 sims – telemetry, for an F1 sim, is about as crucial as tactics are to footie management sims, and yet they have been all-but-missing in previous sims. I ask Currall how advanced this telemetry is, and on what will it be based - and, also, whether he can explain a little of the way in which the car simulates what happens in the garage/windtunnel/design studio – in other words, how articulate or accurate are the cars and will telemetry help with setup - or will it help decide which way to go with the design/improvement to the car during the season? “We are currently upgrading the basic feedback data from the cars on track,” says Currall. “This will show data at each corner of the circuit for any given lap. This will allow comparisons to be made by overlaying graph data for different laps using different setups, etc. We are deliberately making this data easy to understand {in order} to make data analysis as simple as possible. Where it is not necessary to use data to display performance, etc., we will use a graphical display in order to simplify. Wind tunnel data will be very simple - drag vs downforce data.” I ask about the commentary in the game - and also driver input - could he elaborate further? Is the commentary to be F1 style

commentary independent of driver input? “Commentary will be visual,” confirms Currall, “with ticker-tape style updates streaming down compiling a list of events that can be scrolled by the player. Drivers will also have a comments window to advise you when they have issues or problems and there is a specific inrace driver commentary area. Drivers will also feedback when testing parts on performance and feel levels. Whether we add audio commentary prior to final publication,” he adds, “is a matter that we have not yet considered.” Feel level? A sim that simulates the ‘feel’ of the driver is one that will massage the anticipation of any F1 management geek – and speaking of which (driver, not geek!), each driver comes, using the tried-and-tested formula of every sports sim in earth, with a set of stats - will all these be available, I ask, or will the TD need to offer any prospective driver a testrun? “All stats are available in lower difficulty levels of gameplay but,” Currall adds, “are hidden until investigated on harder levels.” In F1CM, marques will go bankrupt – including the ones that the TD drives into liquidation and financial ruin. In their place are other ‘teams’ that will take over – I ask whether we’ll be seeing, then, legendary marques like Lotus or Alfa Romeo … “My artists and researchers are currently producing the spare teams,” says Currall and leaves it at that.

The TD in F1CM will be able to force changes to the chassis in the design process, thereby making the chassis visibly longer/shorter – I ask Currall whether there will be a technical advantage/dis-advantage to taking such a step or whether this is merely aesthetic based? “The visuals,” he tells me, “{are an} attempt to give a very basic perspective on any changes you make, but they are all there for a real purpose and their impacts are outlined at design phase.” And what, I wonder, would the design phase be without the quintessential windtunnel – will there be one and, if so, will it be in any way interactive? “Wind tunnel usage and data is available,” confirms Currall, “but you do not enter and view the wind tunnel in action.” So, the car is created in the windtunnel and design phase, after which, I assume, it will be tested – could he explain how testing works? In GPW, of course, testing would give 'points' that could be used for making the car better for the race weekend – F1CM does away with this system entirely so ... what is the advantage of testing? “Testing is necessary to give your technicians and designers the opportunity to fine tune and optimise reliability on each component prior to converting the prototype into becoming your team's current 'production' unit,” Currall explains. “It is also necessary to provide the performance data you need to

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identify the success of each component.” Another new area that F1CM introduces is the aspect of the ‘press’ – I ask Currall if he can give a little background to this aspect of the sim? “We use Press statements in F1CM to distribute praise and criticism in a very public way,” says Currall. “You have an obligation to interact with the press - after all, they are bringing you and the sport the publicity you need to sell space on your cars for $$millions - hence we have combined the press section with a reward and discipline mechanism that has an impact on the performance and confidence of the subject to your comments.” Another element of F1 Management sms of the past that were always a let-down are the tracks – F1CM have ‘data mapped’ all the tracks and I wonder whether this means that a track, as in real-life, like Imola, will be more mechanically-grip based while, say, Bahrain, will emphasise the aero of the cars – and thus favour one team over another. “The datamapping refers to what is commonly termed as the invisible 'rails' we have around the race track surface for the overhead track radar screen to host the small car position identifiers,” says Currall. “We have given each track unique ratings at every corner.” It’s pretty clear that F1CM is entering uncharted territory here in terms of depth - and, speaking of which, I ask Currall about the 'special' concepts that are waiting to be discovered could he maybe give an example? 29

“When you task your Technical team with a set of project plans to improve the component in certain areas,” replies Currall, “the Engineers are looking for improvements using the current production unit as the base from which the new prototype component will evolve. The Design phase will go through one cycle and the Designer's findings and estimated performance data will be displayed. You then have the option to ask the Designer to go through a second design cycle - this cycle is looking at identifying new concepts that can

give a substantial performance boost based upon new ground-breaking concepts. Unfortunately, most of the time, the Designer will not find anything new from this second phase, but you need to take the decision whether or not to do this.” Your stint as TD will begin, in F1CM, in the 2003 season – does this mean, I ask, that we will be seeing the one lap qual’ rule? Or does the sim allow for changes in the rules? Also, will we be doing every session - or can we choose which sessions to take part in?

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“You can choose to opt out of all Free sessions and just go into qualifying followed by the race,” says Currall. “The One-Lap qualifying rules will apply. We have the 12 lap 1 hour free session code in the background of the game and this could be switched on through rule changes, but we have not (as yet) integrated this into the game.” One hopes this will be – in the game and in real life … In-race, how much control does the TD have over the driver – that is, I ask, how many 'controls' does the 30

player have, i.e., over the driver. And, does the driver always respond, or can he do an Alesi and race until he runs out of fuel? Or can he do a Trulli and let someone pass on the last corner even when told to block? “There are potentially 10 instructions you can give to your drivers,” says Currall. “These can be given for as little as one lap sector or can be switched on until further notice and can be issued as often as you like.” A key element that really was missing from all the incarnations of F1 Management sims was in the arena of setups - how much control over setup does the TD have, I wonder, and is it merely a question of letting the driver/engineers get on with it - or can the TD actually fiddle with the setup? How involved, if this is the case, are the setups? And how tolerant is the sim's 'engine' regarding playing with setup? “You can take control of the most of the car set up. However,” Currall adds, “we have no intention to force players to micro-manage bumpsettings, gear ratios and the likes. You set the stiffness of the front/rear suspension, control front/rear wing settings, tyre pressures front/rear and ride height front/rear. Those are the major factors and those are the settings you can (if you wish) control. Your Engineers back at the factory will have a base setting which will be put on the cars for you to tinker with.”

“Yes, but,” Currall adds, “they also may have some comments to make which you can act upon or ignore.” This, of course, has never before been seen in any F1 management sim; the input from the driver, the actual ‘human’ component – can this be what has been lacking from all previous sims? Do drivers need different setups, I ask? Or do they all respond to a 'magical' perfect setup? “There is a magical perfect set up,” Currall informs me, “but this is varied by every driver's unique dial in code which is based on their preference to understeer/oversteer.” Being a thorough tifoso through-andthrough, I ask Currall whether there is any way in which a team can, uhm, manipulate the rules, using, for instance, banned compounds, weight? “You can cheat in any way you like,” Currall tells me, “however, if you achieve a points finish, your car will be inspected and weighed and the probability is very high that you will be found out.” And can the player spy on other teams? “We have an on-track 'spotter' option whereby you can have your team boffins inspect other team designs, etc., based on trackside visuals and 'acquired' photographic evidence,” Currall explains.

“Your Designers,” he continues, “will periodically come to you with new concept revolutionary ideas for certain components that you can choose to run with or to ignore. These AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6 And will the driver always accept the TD’s setup changes?

can be based off 'gathered' information from the spotters or sometimes just spur of the moment thoughts from your team.” This is, I believe, what all other F1 management sims have lacked – that human factor that makes F1 racing what it is. That ‘something’ that translates a series of numbers that make an individual’s simulated personality into a ‘living’, thinking creature. Where F1 management sims of the past slipped, perhaps, was in that, translating what is the most technological and science-based sport ever known, they forgot the human element. F1 is about the 500 million dollars that propelled Kimi to his unassailable lead at the Ring – but more than that, it is about the hopeless humanity that saw his finallap shunt … it is ultimately about the people in the sport and it has been this, surely, that has been lacking from all previous incarnations of the F1 management genre. So what’s left? Release date! “We expect to have the game complete and ready for release by the end of 2005,” Currall promises. “The rest is down to negotiations as we have a number of routes that we are currently pursuing with regards to a publisher, and I am sure that you can appreciate that we can not discuss any more details at this stage.” From the details that Currall was willing to discuss, though, it seems pretty obvious he’s onto something here – will this finally be the F1 management sim that creates the mould for the genre’s success? I for one cannot wait to find out. 31

T URN T WO Broadcasting Live ROC Smokin Bob takes a front-seat and watches the action live and wonders – is Live Race Broadcasting The Future of Sim-Racing? We are beginning to see a new trend in the sim racing community following on the heels of the groundbreaking and standard setting work done at SRN, or Sim Racing Network. I recently had the opportunity to go very far behind the scenes at just what is involved in bringing a true to life race broadcast to the internet browser, but on a ‘grass roots’ level. In other words--for the simple enjoyment of it. What can one expect? Well, at the ROC (Racing Online Community) TV site, you can expect the following on live broadcast night—live video and audio feeds, constantly updating track position, times, laps left, and, as a really cool bonus—interviews with drivers during yellow flags, just like ‘Ol DW would do!!!

All of this for a paltry 10 USD per season!!! Unbelievable? Perhaps, but keep reading, and find out just a little bit more…. At the Sim Racing Network, the business of PC simulator race broadcasting is serious—the broadcast schedule is extensive, and the coverage is said to be top notch, but there is a catch--the cost to the end user is quite high—some feel it is perhaps a bit too high, and definitely out of the reach of many online racers. Enter Racing Online Community, or ROC, and you have a true to life grass roots effort at the creation and support of a live broadcast feature for league members at a tremendous cost savings—10 bucks for the entire season, more than reasonable. And with the ‘trend’ in the industry of late towards ‘one stop solutions for all of your racing needs’ it is nice to see members of the community sticking to the adage—‘All of our

race belong to us’, and then giving up some blood and sweat to offer the members of the league a very exclusive, very impressive option. This community never ceases to amaze me, and I wonder, in terms of dollars and cents, how many copies of all the ‘big boys sims’ have been sold simply due to community efforts. Tonight, as I write this, I am in great anticipation of something I have never seen before—a true to life race broadcast of a PC simulator racing program. In this case, the Craftsman Truck Series Texas Race at ROC Racin, one of the amazing sites that is offering to its members the opportunity to be a part of a race that, literally, anyone with an internet connection and a speaker can enjoy. If you are like me, you like to watch racing almost as much as race racing and my anticipation level is quite high.

-The SRN live broadcast interface sets the standard for functionality and presentation. The ROC league live broadcast interface, although a bit different in layout, nevertheless offers all the content required to provide for the viewer’s enjoyment of the race.

The ROC Racin site is a beautifully designed webpage, and offers so much racing goodness, it is easy to get lost—kind of like a kid in a candy store sort of thing. Fortunately, one of my good online racing buddies AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

from years back, George Baker, was kind enough to give me a behind the scenes look at this incredible new technology. He also put me in touch with Chris Abbott (aka ‘ozzy’) and Daryl Davidson (dbd), creators and maintainers of the live broadcasts found at ROC every Thursday night. Now, this is not just some guy with NASCAR Racing 2003, a chair and a radio—this involves two separate computers, one for the video and one for the audio, special pre race camera positioning, a TeamSpeak room for the broadcasting duties, and no less than four guys in the booth!! Beside Chris and Daryl, there is Deryl Morley, of Milford New Hampshire, and Ron Ceci, from West Hills California, the two weekly regular broadcasters.

With this kind of preparation, the viewer is in for an exciting time. Chris Abbott, one of the ‘gurus behind the scenes’, got his start years ago, when NR2002 was around, “…working at the OnlineRacingRadio program at onlineracing.com. I also owned a racing radio show called SimsRacinRadio.” But what about First.NET? What if they spot something they are not ‘comfortable with’ such as an independent league offering what ROC does, in terms of live broadcasts, stats tracking and display, and what if this league ‘dares’ to run a race with a ‘non approved’ addition to NR2003…even one that has been used for quite a long time before the ‘ban’ went into

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effect? Is this a concern, I asked Chris? “I don’t think so, no, there would be too much money involved for them to go around suing everybody, so I don’t worry about that too much. Also, until something better than NR2003 comes along, I have no plans on ‘moving’ to the new product—whatever it may be. First seems to be concentrated on the ‘money side of things’ and there does not seem to be much ‘community’ involved there.” I tend to agree—with the live broadcast feature at ROC, for example, ‘all your racing needs’ can continue to be what they always have been, just at another level. And at YOUR site—not some other site that you have absolutely no control over—for all you know, the server is

in Elbonia or something… Again, we have the community to thank for this. But what about the costs for those who wish to advertise during the broadcast? Surely, that is the ‘gotcha’ that will crank up the ‘real cost’ significantly higher. But according to Chris, “For a minute spot, produced and broadcast by us, you are looking at about 10 USD.”

online for the first time, and took several hours just to prepare for the broadcast. Now, it is about 2 hours for the camera and broadcast system setup. It is pretty much plug and play now, but some of the needs, such as the video capture, were difficult to work out initially.” He continues; “We have yet to be approached by other leagues in terms of the setup of the live broadcast for

them, but I suppose it is something we may need to discuss sometime.” So what, really, does all this ‘live broadcast’ stuff really mean? To a sim racing fan, it means a great deal-broken leg and can’t race—just watch it. MOMO got you down—just watch it. Collapsed lung and more tubes in your chest than an alien abduction would result in—just watch it!! The possibilities are

Ok, so there is no ‘catch’….Just a very reasonable advertising PICTURE 2: LIVE BROADCAST SHOT—SCORING FEED: The non—video portion opportunity that will not cost of the broadcast is a stats bonanza, and keeps the viewer constantly updated as an arm and a leg. to what is happening on the track. The actual video feed is in a smaller window that ‘exists’ on this page when the feed is active. As a separate window, you can I then spoke with Daryl move it around the page for easier viewing as you see fit. Davidson, aka ‘dbd’, the owner of ROC-Racin and ROC TV, and, obviously--one of the main contributors and administrators of the system and he gave me the lowdown on getting ROC setup for the live broadcasts—remember, there is no application, to my knowledge, that you can double click on and have a ready to go live simulator race broadcast system. Daryl explains; “It is a bit more difficult than just an audio broadcast, as you need one computer for the audio, and one computer for the video portion. We also have a TeamSpeak room setup, with me and the three broadcasters. However, the broadcast system is separate from the race server, so if the broadcast goes down, the race continues on. At the beginning, it was quite a lot of work to get the system AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

endless, and as I type this, already a few drivers have hit the track and are turning some very nice laps at Texas.

you might hear a spotter every now and again saying his piece. Clicking on a drivers name brings up the information in the right side window.

LIVE INCAR. The incar shots provide for exciting glimpses into the race that is currently being run. I can’t wait for the real deal!! Although the practices are without video feed, they retain every other pertinent detail about the race. Here, we see a few drivers, their best times, and if the sound could play in this magazine— AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

The interface for the broadcast is slick and attractive—no doubt a reflection of the hard work that went into creating it. Again, we have a reason to rejoice in the sim racing community. Oh yeah—they have commercials also!! Folks, it’s the whole package, and it is great. The race has started, and about 12 laps in we have a yellow flag. During the yellow flag laps, their was an interview with one of the drivers involved!! It doesn’t get much more interactive than that, and no longer do you have to be ‘driving’ to be able to enjoy the sport of PC simulator racing. And I must say—the broadcasters are doing a fantastic job, right on top of the action, with smooth segues into and out of the very well done advertisements. The professionalism of ROC Racin is immediately evident, and I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before this feature is found at every league, SHOT LIVE YELLOW. During the yellow flag periods, the viewer will see the flagman, and a notification overlay of the fact, as dbd rewinds the tape ‘in the booth’ for a replay of the incident. Each incident is shown in replay so the viewer will know exactly why the race is under yellow, and who was at fault. In the background, the top notch broadcasting crew will be describing the incident, and perhaps interviewing one of the driver’s involved.should the driver not be too upset!

and not just a few. Across the top of the video feed window (a smaller, ‘live’ window with video) we have the drivers, their numbers, and their positions. Lady23, a fantastic driver on any track, is giving the leader a run for his money as she is holding fast to second. Wait a minute—she has taken the lead!!! The audio is going on in the background, and it is, in my opinion, every bit as good as the ‘real deal’ you might find on one of the major networks on TV. But what makes it better? The blood, sweat, and tears of the community, and the common bond of PC racing that ties us all together, at least on that level. Honestly, I have never seen anything quite like this, and it is impressive, to say the least— an absolute must see for those who

haven’t, and an absolute ‘must have’ for those with an interest. And, the broadcast booth is able to look at the replay, and as another yellow has happened, we are treated to a very detailed description of what happened. The guys in the booth are making this extremely enjoyable, and there is also a pit road reporter!! They have it all covered, and covered well. Why yes—there is the in car camera shot!! With 37 laps to go, I find myself still in front of the computer, with the Pistons playing on TV in the other room—to say this is ‘amazing’ would be the understatement of the decade. The broadcasters have made the race exciting and fun to watch, the pit lane coverage is fantastic, the driver

interviews are an excellent example of the kind of sportsmanship found at ROC, and really—there is simply too much to list. If you like racing, you will like this, no questions asked. But I was in the race, so what then? As a member of ROC, you would be able to download the race replay, and enjoy your fame and fortune on the track. Revolution. And the winner? !!!Lady!! in the #23 car. One of the most exciting race finishes I have ever seen, real life or simulator. As of late, we are seeing what I feel is a disturbing trend in the industry— developers and publishers are making it well known that they can offer everything that ‘you will ever need’ in order to race online and have

SHOT FIELD. Typical for an NR2003 online event, the field was quite large, but the feed was smooth as silk, and not a single ‘lag event’ was noticed on my side.

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a good time doing it. But do they, really, offer anything above and beyond what the community can offer? At this point, in my opinion, not a chance. The SimBin creation, RaceMore, though still in it’s infancy (or Phase I), does not strike me as offering anything you cannot already get at many other places, and while they

especially considering the very recent, and very odd, ‘flip flop’ of their stance on modding. Apparently, the rules have changed, or they simply realized how many copies have been sold, and will continue to be sold, of out of print products due solely to community efforts. It is refreshing to see that the

slowly now, but no doubt will pick up steam before long, proving yet again that the members of our beloved know more about what they want for themselves than all the developers in the world put together. A.S.S. wishes to again extend sincere thanks to George Baker (aka GT_Baker aka tazjr8), Chris Abbott (aka ozzy), and Daryl Davidson (aka

SHOT OF !!!LADY!!’S WINNING TRUCK AFTER THE RACE: After one of the most exciting ‘shootouts’ on the track I have seen, real or virtual, !!!Lady!! took the checkers while holding off a lot of closely following hard chargers. All in all, a spectacular event, and well worth the viewing time.

have live timing and scoring, there is nothing even close to resembling the true broadcast with video feed that we are seeing on the sites of some independent leagues, and if not there, we have the SRN and their top shelf offerings. Time will tell what First.NET’s vision is for the PC simulator racing community,

community can ‘survive just fine’ through their own efforts, regardless of what developers would have us believe are ‘better ways’. If you have the time, you really owe it to yourself, and your league if you belong to one, to take a look at this very new, very cool, feature for online racing—the train is moving

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dbd) of ROC for this exclusive, and important, glimpse into the future of online racing simulation features, and to all the others who toil endlessly ‘behind the scenes’ that I have failed to mention.

T URN T HREE The Trackstar 6000 USB Wheel Reviewed Jon Denton Tests The ECCI Trackstar 6000 USB Wheel. I was mildly excited (That’s probably as excited as I get!) when I heard I was to be getting hold of an ECCI Trackstar 6000 wheel for review. Being a user of the “lower” end of the wheel market for some time I was very intrigued to know what a wheel that retailed at $1200 would feel like.

finding the right driving position, with allen keys provided for adjustment. When you have found the right position it is time to start driving in Earnest, and the first thing to get used to is the phenomenal size of the wheel.

piloting a single seater, that the sheer size of the wheel meant getting it from one side to the other quickly enough was quite difficult. Aside from this, when driving a Formula 3000 car a driver feels somewhat like they should be holding a steering wheel not much bigger than a saucer, able to fling it from side to side with

What mainly interested me was whether a wheel that did not feature any groundbreaking technology and no magical exclusive features could justify a price-tag as high as this. The wheel, kindly on loan from PC Gamer UK, took me by some surprise when I picked it up. It weighs something like the equivalent of a baby elephant, being a construct of steel and seemingly lead bar, lugging it into the boot of my car was a taller order than I had imagined. Upon getting the unit home it became apparent that not only was this device very heavy, it is also very big. Measuring 12” across the wheel itself if larger than the steering wheel in my real car, and nearly as large as the 13” wheel in my wife’s Peugeot 206. The unit’s size and weight mean that it is not particularly portable, and as such ideally wherever you bolt it into place should really be where you plan for it to stay, as unbolting and manoeuvring the device is impractical to say the least! The wheel and pedals are adjustable in just about every direction possible to achieve optimum comfort and the first hour or so of use is a case of

This was an issue to a greater and lesser extent depending on the sim in question. The precision of the wheel could not be called into question, and the smooth motion told a story of some very high quality bearings going into the production of this unit but there were times, especially when

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the flick of the wrist, as opposed to holding a full sized wheel and finding elbows flailing as you wrestle the car under control. This contrives in single seater sims to a failure of suspension of disbelief which in turn led this reviewer to be disappointed. 38

However, this disappointment did not translate to the relative tug boats of NASCAR 2003, where the precision and balance of the wheel meant a feeling of near perfection when it came to precisely placing the car on the track, and the bigger machines in GTR also felt sweetly precise on turn in with the wheel. Precision and speed of response cannot be doubted as a sheer benefit when it comes to controllers. We all get used to the controller we have and it’s potential lack of responses, and in the lower end of the market there can be no doubt that this is an area that suffers. We can all dispute it, and before I plugged this ECCI wheel in I would have too, but the fact is we all grow so comfortable with what we have that without a direct comparison it is difficult to know where you are.

the twistiest tarmac sections becoming all too easy. This level of precision carries on to the pedals, which allows for fantastic use of throttle as a steering device and the sturdy steel design allows for the use of any footwear you may desire. Whilst I tested the pedals using my MOMO racing boots I feel this is something I will not be doing too often, though the feel and grip afforded by proper race boots can bring its own reward with these pedals. Of course, this can bring additional embarrassment when having to answer the front door mid session! The brake pedal is withheld by a sturdy spring that can withstand

quite some push, in fact to push it to the stop requires a phenomenal effort, and given that the device was at a desk and not bracketed into a race frame I had to calibrate the pedal to not quite go to the bottom of its travel. The pedal itself gives back excellent feel, and the way in which more pressure works for more brake makes the pedal feel very natural indeed. Allowing for tiny increments it becomes readily possible to perform cadence braking and prevent undue lockups. So, it would seem after my initial period of adaptation I seem to be falling for this ECCI setup, with each passing lap or stage the driving

Whilst I was sure my ACT Labs Force RS wheel was one of the more accomplished wheels in the lower end of the market, it has been put to shame in this area by the ECCI. The sheer feel of precision coupled with the smooth constant feel of the wheel allows corners to be dispatched with aplomb, and opposite lock becomes a complete second nature. The link between the driver’s brain and the front wheels of the car becomes so complete that the only direct comparison I can make is real life, where, for me anyway, opposite lock and steering feel comes not from thought but from feel. This makes the ECCI a stupendous tool for stages with keen switchbacks in “Richard Burns Rally”, with even AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

experience becomes more natural and provided I am not driving single seaters the size of the wheel does not even affect my progress. But one thing about this wheel bugs me, about realism and about what driving a car in real life is all about. When I drive my car (non power steered, mid engined sports car) I can feel the road, every bit of it, bumps, cambers, potholes the lot, as well as this I can ascertain the available grip levels from the feel of the front tyres through the steering wheel.

Now, as we all know this is something that developers of Force Feedback have worked long and hard to replicate in a simracing environment for years now. With early Force Feedback wheels being fairly poor efforts, more recent devices have offered more and coupled with faster processing, USB and developments in sims there is now some very convincing force feedback available, especially in RBR or GTR. I know that this is a dispute that

rages through the community like a spurned Wyvern, but I personally feel that what Force Feedback has to offer simracing is a lot more than can be achieved without it, fundamentally when I turn the wheel in a real racing car I am not met with a constant response, I may find it harder to turn the where here or there, I may even not be able to turn the wheel to exactly where I want it, or a bump might force me into a small wheel movement I did not desire. Either way, this is realism, the reason I drive sims and not arcade racers is for realism. In this sense I do not disagree with ECCIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stance per se, that Force Feedback is not mature enough as a technology to be used in their devices, it is a fair claim. But I do feel that as one of the market leaders in the higher end of the wheel market ECCI should be making some steps towards developing a Force Feedback system that they feel happy with. An attitude that just dismisses the technology as irrelevant, I believe is akin to cutting your nose off to spite your face. For simracing hardware to move forward developments in technology need to do the same, both software and hardware wise, and the sad feeling I get from this ECCI wheel is that it is a peak of technology that is nearing 10 years old. Not since my Thrustmaster Formula T2

AUTOSIMSPORT â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Volume 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Number 6

GameBoy!

For those that like to lose time on long-hauls, the GameBoty Advance is surprisingly good – best of all the racing games tried by ASS this month (GT Racing, F12002, GT Racing 2 and many many others) the best of the crop was V Rally 3 – featuring not only onboard racing with tiny hands on a tiny wheel (but no arms, weird!), but rallies from around the world in all types of conditions and a whole host of setup options – start your career in a FWD car (even a VW) and advance upwards to the powerful 4WD beasts of the world rally circuit – very engaging, and quite demanding, and a great game! ASS gives V Rally 3 a very big Lou Magyar’s ASS award – and if you ain’t seen it, you haven’t lived baby! have I driven a sim without Force feedback, and whilst (after a period of re-adaptation) this did not affect my laptimes it did affect my immersion and suspension of disbelief. The ECCI Trackstar 6000 is a fine wheel, and a fine pedal set, the placement of the buttons on the wheel is not ideal as they are set a little too far back for easy thumb reaching and for the price I feel a leather clad wheel may have been in order, but in the long and short it is a magnificently engineered piece of equipment that provides a wonderfully satisfying driving experience to the end user with a

level of build quality that suggests it will go on forever. Is it worth the $1200 price tag? Well, it depends what you want, personally if I had paid for it now I would be feeling a little disappointed. Mainly because of my penchant for Force Feedback and my general leaning towards single seater sims. If you drive NASCAR sims regularly this wheel is without doubt a fine companion and the build quality itself could justify the price, I don’t see you would be spending much more on simracing hardware for the foreseeable ten years.

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

ECCI TrackStar 6000 USB Wheel Performance

Ease of Setup

Adjustability

Build Quality

Ease of Use

Force Feedback 0 GPL

N2003

RBR

GTR

Total Score:

72/100

T HE F RONT S TRAIGHT Five Years of Team Redline Semi-pro, sponsored, and legendary, Team Redline have been the team to beat in sim-racing for five long years – with many of sim-racing’s legends in their buffed-up line-up, there are not many teams that can boast TR’s impressive pedigree. On their fifth anniversary, AutoSimSport spent an afternoon with some of the bigwigs from Team Redline – Dom Duhan (Team Principal), Greger Huttu (sim-legend and TR manager), Andy Wilke (GPL God), Richard Towler (One of TR's brightest talents) and RickOsborn (GPL and Nascar 2003 Maestro) … the conversation started on Redline and, as usual, soon turned to all things sim-racing and … Greger Huttu on Playgirl?!

as he wanted to create a team for sim racers; we primarily were created from a few of us who played TOCA 2 - we all had some success in it. F12000 then came out and we started submitting times to Blackhole - I saw some upstart called Greger Huttu who seemed to be quite fast (at that time I didn’t know about his GPL pedigree but I soon did!). I gave Greger a shout, he looked quite good - I realised that I would have to train him up … no seriously, I asked him to join , and he said yes! Through Greger, Andy Wilke was brought in, he was current GPL world champion? What was it again guys? HELP ME SUCKAS … Greger Huttu {GH}: I can't remember so far back ...

On Team Redline ASS: When was Team Redline Formed and by whom? Dom Duhan {DD}: It was formed in May 2000 originally by George Duff,

Richard Towler {RT}: Sorry but what is GPL? Andreas Wilke {AW}: I'm old, I can’t remember exactly, only thing is I know that Greger asked …

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

DD: Anyway Andy was the nuts at the time … AW: pah DD: From there we haven’t recruited that many drivers; keeping the same core has been good for us. ASS: Why a team? DD: Sim racing has progressed to the point where most championships are contested by teams rather than individuals, there is strength in numbers as well - God that sounds crap – lol … RT: So it wasn't because you liked the A TEAM? DD: Ah yeah Greger is known as Mr. G - G A Barraccus AW: LOL

GH: "haha" DD: Also the comradery we have is good - we can focus on setups and improve ourselves by running together … That is why we have been 42

AW: We can improve Rich's undrivable setups, too bad it takes that long …

ASS: So are you guys ranked internally, as in best to worst (fast to slow)? - and do you have "specialty" racers - as In Greger in everything, Andy in GPL, Dom in ... uhm ...?

RT: lol

DD: Ahhh nice lol

ASS: So who were the original guys?

RT: Burn

DD: Well originally there were Andreas Wilke, Aubrey Magill, Dom Duhan, Frankie Carbone, George Duff, Greger Huttu , Miguel Romao, Richard Morgan … over the years we have added Brad McGiveron aka tridon who came to light after caning the F12001 hotlaps, Risto Junnilainen came to the team after his incredible driving in ESCORS and GPL, Rick Osborn joined as we needed more strength in GPL and NASCAR and Richard Towler joined us because we needed someone to get the bananas from the tree …

DD: Well yes to a certain degree we have our specialties … I would break it down like this …

a strong force in sim racing for a long time …

RT: Dom makes good coffee … DD: Greger=anything with wheels AW: Papy Sims and Mods basically here …

DD: including shopping trolleys Richard Towler = mainly Papy atm ? Richard enlighten … RT: Yeah, anything Papy, but I would drive other stuff if someone actually made something worth driving … DD: Also good at ISI stuff - yes Rich mainly does GTP and NASCAR atm Risto, for instance, is leader in RBR rank and has put in some huge benchmark times … RT: I have a secret obsession with RH2004 mod for F1c though, but that’s a dirty secret …

AW: Hehe RT: Yeah someone that actually did something … DD: WHATEVA … So in essence we rarely recruit because it’s a fine balance between the number of drivers and the team spirit … RT: Here we are now, entertain us … DD: Some teams have too many drivers … RT: You mean like dE? That have about 50? DD: Which makes it hard to focus dE? Who are they? RT: Drivers Emporium - cough DD: - well done! 10 points

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

On Sims GH: I know Rich is really looking forward to rFactor … DD: Frankie Carbone, for instance, also is #1 ranked in TRD2, so we have a wide variety, though we don’t mention TRD in public … GH: But we don't have any ranking from fast to slow or anything like that.

DD: Imo rFactor will rock … ASS: Indeed - crap products eh! Speaking of which - do we talk about GTP or is that a dirty secret best kept to yourselves? DD: What, laptimes or replays? RT: GTP, never heard of it

DD: No, very good Greger, I am Montoya to Greger's Kimi

DD: We’re different to Redline Development - we are the race team and Redline Dev’ is the development side, they are separate to a certain degree …

GH Don't talk about F1 please!

RT: But we do race it? I think …

DD: Lol

DD: The team is solely focused on racing atm, the last few months, etc., have been taxing, but we’re through and done now... we do race GTP as Rich said - Greger, Rich and I are in some leagues, we just had a 13 lap race at the Nurburgring.

RT: Dom is good at removing other cars for other members of the team … DD: Deary me actually AW: LOL ASS: Yes I've seen this tactic on Comet sadly ... DD: 1 fps BUG! RT: GTR has no bugs DD: Information minister ASS: Yes or aka sit on corner for three laps slowing down the field ... mmmmm? DD: Hehehe, well I don’t what happened there, but someone said I was on the track for 2 laps? RT: That’s more than most races AW: LOL DD: Anyway, let’s hope something comes out soon which we will all want to drive because sim racing is so fragmented with crap products … RT: is this where you start plugging rfactor?

RT: If you add all the laps we did, it ads up to about 13 lol … DD: Qualified 1-2-3, Greger did a 6.26 which is nuts … AW Only 1 GTP league here, everything else is GPL/Nascar … GH: Driving GTP at the Ring has been one of the best sim experiences for me in the last couple of years … lot of fun … DD: Yes it was great fun for me, that 1 lap lol … GH: Things happen so fast in a GTP car that you just have to hang on! AW: Yeah, specially at the Ring … DD: Yeah we need GTP for another sim … GH: Indeed …

DD: Let’s hope rfactor or FIRST do something … ASS: So do you think the fact you guys developed GTP and now race it has given you an advantage over the rest of the field? RT: I thought we couldn't mention them? AW: No, other guys can drive/race too … DD: Hmmm, maybe some of us had more practice, but the physics changed from week to week! ASS: Yes but you guys had 1000 of laps testing and beta testing right? GH: I don't think there's any kind of advantage, especially at this point. DD: At the end of the day, practice makes perfect, but the advantage is minimal. GH: And like Dom says, the physics kept changing all the time. ASS: So did you guys finally decide on a final version of GTP that was, in its physics, the best for Dom?! DD: Yes. RT: I wouldn't say it was an advantage, maybe the first couple of weeks, but it changed so much we where driving new stuff every week DD: As long as there was a button so I got turbo boost I was happy. GH: And at the moment I only drive GTP once a week or so... DD Greger is GTR boy: I was too until my sim death at Magny … RT: I'm so glad I left you two playing GTR … DD: Hehe …

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

RT: I would have had a heart attack by now … GH Yeah, well there's nothing really much better at the moment … DD: Well hopefully the bugs will be ironed out for GT Legends … Yeah sim racing isn’t great atm ASS: Okay - so you guys seem to be involved in most sims - any plans to do some RBR online? DD : – maybe I think Risto will … he would probably cane it because he’s a skandi …

ASS: As if you would know eh! DD: Yeah I know I’m usually out front … GH: It's {RBR} really about the best sim in the last couple of years. ASS: Agreed Greger DD: Yeah ASS:, Okay so where are we in Simracing - is GTR the last of the generation, and rFactor the new of the new? DD: I think so myself.

AW: I’m not interested in Rally. RT: Andy is a member of the tree protection society, and hates rallying.

GH: I like rallying and RBR is bloody great, but I prefer circuit racing online … DD: Same here GH: But RBR is a great pleasure to just drive every now and then. AW: Yep, exactly Greger. DD: There’s nothing more exciting than following someone for 50 laps then passing them near the end …

AW: On ISI sims I mean DD: Yeah - sim racing needs a massive step forward, not just a commercial step but something different .. something like RL … GH: Day/night changes, and everything looks great in rFactor … DD: Yeah RT: Racing Legends is the concept that needs to be actually done … ASS: I'm with Greger on this one – but yes, Racing Legends or something conceptually similar is the next step for sure …

RT: In RBR you can't ram anyone which is kinda a big let down …

DD: I had a couple of records in RBR until I was taken down HARD by Risto ...

sim racing needs to take a big step, compared to FPS its still quake 1 era.

RT: Imo, rFactor won't change anything, its still old generation. DD: But even rFactor I’m sure will have the same ISI bugs. I hope not things like the worst replays of any sim lol!

GH: If the multiplayer {in rFactor} has been improved, and it doesn't suffer from weird bugs, then I think it will be a success. RT: But even so ,I don't think that’s a big step - should have been done years ago …

GH: I'm really looking forward to it, but it's difficult to say...

GH: In the rFactor multi demo, the online code seems quite good …

AW: You forgot MP too

AW: PCs weren’t ready for that at that time though Rich …

Rick Osborn enters stage right … RT: ISI always promise a huge new development and come out with the same engine, which is a shame, but

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

DD: We need something new - can anyone deliver? We hope so! ASS: Is rfactor something 'new' though? 45

RT: Problem is, sims are using tech that’s been around since the Stone Age …

game with great physics, but if you can't feel it, what’s the point?

DD: Yeah nothing new …

DD: GTR does it better than F1C mods, I think.

ASS: But what how 'new' is new anyway - I mean, a car handles the way it handles, right? So all sims will, at some stage, become identical.

ASS: And GTR?

ASS: But better than Papy? DD: But not as good as Papy

DD: Hmm, I hope rfactor will be an evolution, we have driven ISI for ages, all the F1 series, SCGT etc. We know the limitations of the engine and just hope it moves forward a lot more - I would say rFactor feels more on track than previous ISI – ultimately, they should yes, but

ASS: Where is the difference?

interpretation of car feeling is most crucial and is, for me, something that Papyrus got dead right dead.

flaws imo …

RT: But it’s not just the physics … DD: Feeling on track … RT: It’s how the developer transfers feeling to the player - you can have a

GH: GTR feels a bit weird, and dead, sometimes, at low speed … DD: But I think that’s the limit of the engine, nothing to do with them. RT: Papy's engine was more all around, but still some pretty big

DD: Yeah RT: The NASCAR side of things is way off any form of realism. DD: At the end of the day, companies should hire us to do their testing lol. RT: instead of 20 RSC moderators? DD: Well done!

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

RT: But always in sim racing, everyone has a different idea of what is real. ASS: There does seem to be a strange aversion from development companies to associate with the common garden variety sim-racer, which is odd considering we're their only customers ... is team redline ready to become pro beta-testers? DD: We could if need be, but beta testing is quite boring. RT: But could they handle the feedback? DD: Especially troubleshooting

RT: I think it works both ways, you need to have good testers + people that will listen. ASS: Would it be an idea to create such a body within sim-racing though? DD: Hmm, maybe a good idea, then things would hopefully get done properly, however companies are 46

under huge pressure to pump out sims before they are ready. RT: Also include crappy expansion packs and stuff - hi GTR … ASS: So if there is one difference that distinguishes Papy from ISI-based engines, what would it be - an answer from each of you please - and also, can you all add whether you prefer ISI or Papy-based 'engines' in your response? AW: Online code would come to my mind very quick, and because of that I prefer Papy based sims. DD: I've always been ISI based in the F1 series, but I have done a lot of Papy and would say it has better on track feeling, but rFactor is much better … Papy net code is much better due to the functionality of it. AW: I like the feeling of GTR though. RT: Papy feels more connected with what are you doing, ISI is mixed

because there's so many variations, I think RH2004 has done a great job, if I'm honest, because its one of the few where you can slide and work with it. GH: For me, the biggest difference in physics is the low speed handling. RT: Both have good & bad points, I'm not happy with either, but Papy works online with no issues, ISI's doesn’t. DD: ISI functionality compared to Papy is clumsy at best in menus, etc., watching replays on the fly … GH: Sometimes it just feels weird in ISI stuff, including GTR. DD: Yeah Greger, hard to find the grip. RT: GTR is very edgy. Rick Osborn {RO}: I've always felt more connected to the Papyrus engine and being able to relate to the car, which is obviously a vital thing when your only input is

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

through a set of wheels and pedals. RT: It’s fine for anyone driving, until you get close to the limit, and it’s either on/off. GH: I don't have any preference at the moment, GTR is really good when everything works and you don't experience the bugs. RO: ISI has always pretty jittery and on edge... hard to get a feel for. GH: The racing feeling is great in GTR. DD: But I think its horses for courses. RT: The sound and cockpit stuff in GTR really makes GTR great. GH: Yeah DD: Yeah, I like the racing feeling in GTR, however it doesn’t have as much atmosphere for some reason compared to GPL for instance. RT: Without that, it wouldn't be as special.

DD: Yeah the sounds and tracks in GTR are excellent best around. ASS: Yes Dom I feel the same - the race in GTR is always a let-down for some reason, no idea why. Maybe it's the start that seems to always be so adrenaline-lacking?

ASS: Ookay - so - looking forward then. Is it FIRST or rFactor or one of the Indy’s that'll bring us together one more time like the GPL days? Or none ...? RT: We need to go further away from GPL days rather than back there …

2005

GH: Who knows :)

RIW GTP champion - Greger Huttu RIW GTP runner up - Dom Duhan RIW GTP Constructors champions -Team Redline ESCORS daytona 4 hours - Richard Towler RBR Rank Leader - Risto Junnilainen ESCORS All Star Challenge champion – R. Towler

DD: We need the community to drive 1 sim … RT: GPL just has this cool factor in the sim racing scene because it’s based on old stuff.

DD: But it has atmosphere, more than other sims. DD: I also think the physics are probably the most realistic apart from the low speed stuff … RO: I can't really comment as I've not raced ISI engine games half as much as Papy ones, but in terms of general engine I took to the Papy one quicker than the ISI one. RT: NR2003 is way too easy though imo. DD Yep, not a lot of atmosphere, I mean did you see that Gran Turismo 5 pre render ? AW: Me too Rick, excepting GTR, that one felt "right" to me. RT the throttle/brake is just a piece of cake DD: That was atmosphere RT: The only time you get wheel spin in Papy stuff is when the tire model goes nuts and screws the tires up.

RT: It was the first 'sim' to have a decent physics engine, so that set it apart. DD: err Revs? AW: I doubt there will every be days like with GPL, because GPL was more or less the only sim when it was released, today you've much more you can choose from.

ASS: I mean, modern F1 cars are great - but are they conducive to fun, close racing? DD: Hmmm more than on TV, yes. RT: I think there has been a lot of fun stuff released, 360c rocked, if anyone remembers that. DD: Yeah, SimBin's best ever release imo. GH: I think driving F1 in a proper sim would be great. AW: Even if u can’t pass! GH: They're so quick and you have to be on the limit all the time even though the real races are boring most of the time. DD: Yeah, I would love to try a Papy based F1 sim to see what its like … RO: It depends what's fun... as long as the driving experience in itself is fun, the other stuff will tend to follow, such as close racing, tweaking of the cars for the ultimate hot lap, etc. DD: I want to see 70-80 F1 and Group C.

ASS: It is also good racing, with the 'right' formula, no? Big engines, low grip, fun tracks = good racing.

GH: But for close racing... I think F1 is too "difficult".

DD: I have preferences - no slow boring cars as in LFS – lol - that will win me 10 000 fans - I would love to see GTP cars in LFS.

RT: I would love a 70s lemans sim or something like that.

ASS: Is it possible that what we're missing in sim-racing is the crucial aspect of - what's 'fun' to race? GH: yeah, GPL was just about pure racing.

DD: like Kimi? AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

DD: Yeah too much aero 70s F1!

DD: Yeah! RT: They had some weird ass cars back then. DD: Or in modern times DTM - or JGTC. RT: Ummm DD: Which is coming for rFactor. 48

ASS: Yes, well rfactor and LFS2 are promising open wheelers - and rFactor have a bit of inside knowledge of F1 from the F1C days, right? And we're promised F1 mods pretty soon after release (couple of months) so ... are Team Redline involved in any beta testing? On Beta-Testing DD: Yes, some of are, but we would be under NDA – lol - nice try. ASS: NDA means you can’t discuss it - but you can tell me who and which sim! 2004 (Rich had a great season!) VR GGPLC champion - Andreas Wilke BRSC CUp Champion - Richard Towler

GH: I'm not testing rFactor.

On Fame, Success and Nekkid Girls

DD: But yes, Papy and ISI have merged and are creating 10 years of F1 72-82!

ASS: Have you guys been in any magazines like, uhm - what did Dom just tell me over skype? Evo? And Greger's in national newspapers now? Tell me all!

ASS: Oh would it only be so - so rFactor comes out in a month - any news on FIRST that anyone would like to relate? Anyone know anything 'juicy'? DD: I have no idea what FIRST are doing atm. RT: Racing Legends is out tomorrow … ASS: 5 years of Team Redline! So, I assume you've all done the research - how many wins, how many championships?

BRSC Trucks Champion -RrichardTtowler FFRL Full Fat Cup Champion – R. Towler VR Transam Champion - Andreas Wilke FFRL Big Mack Champion season 2 -Richard Towler FFRL Big Mack Champion season 1 -Greger Huttu GOLIATH winter trucks champion - Richard Towler BRSC transam champion season 2 - Richard Towler Boomtown winter trucks champion - Richard Towler ESCORS Mindware Shootout champion Richard Towler ESCORS Daytona 4 hours -Team Redline VR DOM Nascar runner up - Andreas Wilke ESCORS Ball Racing Cup runner up - Andreas Wilke VR CTS runner up - Andreas Wilke VR DOM GPL runner up - Andreas Wilke

DD: Well I can guess … GH: We're still counting … DD: In ESCORS, for instance, we have just celebrated 50 wins in the top division. ASS Who is your "winningest" driver? DD: Well Andy was the most prolific. RT: I've been racing since mid ‘03 online, so not as long as the rest of them - that’s my excuse. DD: Greger probably has most wins per race entered. AW: Yup, I would think so too. DD: Richard has been very prolific from when he’s joined, which is great …

DD: Rick and Greger were featured in Evo along with another GPL driver - it was an article on GPL. RO: Eh? Oh yes, yes we were … DD: I have it somewhere Greger has had some press as well … GH: Yeah, and I've been on a Finnish and a Swedish newspaper too … DD: And also Playgirl! Double page spread! AW: With Richelia, Dom? ASS: Greger, why were u on the newspaper? GH: Lol ASS: Were u involved in a riot or ...? DD: Greger 'Rocco' Huttu as he’s known … GH: Aggh! - I can't remember anymore! I'd have to look at the newspapers … there has been an article about Keimola too, a track which we made for GPL - the articles were from the GPL times … ASS: Yes, and what were they about? You as a driver? GH: Yeah, if I remember right … ASS: Oh come on Greger! You look like a Satanist in that pic from last month's ASS! No-one imagines you as being the shy withdrawn type man! Stop doing the Kimi impersonation and talk! DD: DAMIEN!

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

RT: Watch it, he'll murder you next!

…

when you go all silent on me?

GH: I really can't remember the details you know, I don't like reading articles about myself …

ASS: Did he lose the key to the toilet Dom?

GH: The Ganassi engineer

ASS: Okay - what about Montoya's mechanic - wanna tell me about that!?

DD: !

GH: First of all, it wasn't his mechanic …

GH: Basically I just got an email from a Ganassi engineer one day... few years ago, he said they - they've been watching my replays in the team and using my setups (GPL) and also he said that Montoya is a big fan of GPL as well …

DD: Basically Montoya sent Greger an email asking for my email address

DD: Yeah and dirtbikes - or is it tennis?

GH: Ohh … that one … ASS: Yes that one!

2003 ESCORS European cup champion – A. Wilke ERSL NGT CUP champion – D. Duhan V8 Thunder ASCAR Champion – rRick Osborn VR GGPLC champion – A. Wilke GTR2002 Rank champions - Team Redline GTR2002 Rank 1st place - Greger Huttu GTR2002 Rank 3rd place – D. Duhan FFRL Full Fat cup champion season 4- G. Huttu UP Pits Bullrun Champions – Team Redline FFRL Full Fat Cup champion season 3 – G.Huttu VR Nascar champion – A. Wilke CAR lan GPL champion – A. Wilke Swedish M3 Cup champion - dom duhan f1 racing champion 3rd place in minardi - Brad Mcgiveron 2002 ESCORS European cup champion – G. Huttu ESCORS European cup runner up – A. Wilke ESCORS European Cup Constructors champions – Team Redline CAR lan GPL champion – A. Wilke VR GGPLC champion – A. Wilke

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

ASS: When was this, early 2000 I imagine? GH: That was a few years ago obviously yeah, something like that I guess … ASS: Did u answer the email Greger? GH: And we've been emailing back and forth about sim racing and real racing, etc. of course … DD Straight in the spam box … GH: lol ASS: So you're in contact with Ganassi or Montoya or both? Or is this

DD: Monty often asks us for help … RT: The big secret is, Dom is actually JPM, but don't tell anyone … ASS: Does he give you advice? Or the other way around? GH: Not for a couple of months now though, they're kinda busy during the racing season for some reason. … RO: A friend of mine who races in FIA GT racing now but used to do NASCAR and test F1 cars, also used to give some feedback on how he enjoyed his simracing but he's not a chubby little Columbian … DD: Lol GH: Well, we've just talked about racing in general really. ASS: So does Montoya still play GPL that you know of Greger? GH: I don't know, he obviously isn't at Ganassi anymore so it's hard to say - and I haven't talked with the guy about him ... I'm sure they're in contact sometimes though … ASS: Okay - so you're in contact with race engineers, you’re in newspapers, magazines ... not bad for a sim-racer eh! So what’s left? DD: Where’s the money! GH: Yeah, indeed! let's see the money! DD: I think sim racing will evolve … and real drivers will start to use it :) RT: Fame sucks, but the money would be nice. 50

On Sponsorship & $$$ ASS: Sponsorship … DD: Fame does suck with your face Rich! ASS: I believe Team Redline are sponsored already, right? DD: Yes - we have a few sponsors or should I say partners - our main sponsor is BRD. GH: And we're really lucky to have them as partners! DD: Yes. DD: The equipment we have has helped incredibly. ASS: Yes-yes, punt away guys … GH: They're really good guys as well, I'm sure Dom can tell more … DD: Yeah, they are very nice people , they are always looking to the future of sim racing - they want to help push it forward, but it’s difficult without

advancements from software developers. Their main business focus is providing complete F1 simulators for several teams; in fact, every team on the grid has worked with them and they also do any kind of racing , i.e., having RBR inside a real Impreza, TOCA inside a BTCC car etc. … the support has been huge for us, and the equipment we have had for nigh on 4 years now is still perfect. ASS: So exactly how does this 'partnership' work - what do they give, and what do you give them? DD: Well, we obviously advise on products, what we would like to see from a wheel, etc., what advancements we hope to see in sim racing, etc., also we advertise their products through running our cars which usually do well in races … so it is mutual …

2001 ESCORS European cup champion - Greger Huttu ESCORS European cup runner up - Andreas Wilke ESCORS European Cup Constructors champions - Team Redline ESCORS Thrustmaster Cup Champion - Risto Junnilainen F12001 Lap ranking champions - Team Redline F12001 Lpa ranking 1st - Brad Mcgiveron F12001 Lap ranking 2nd - Greger Huttu F12001 Lap ranking 3rd - Dom Duhan FFRL Full Fat Cup champion - Greger Huttu CAR Lan GPL Champion - Andreas Wilke UKGPL Runner Up - Rick Osborn FESTIVAL GPL F2 runner up - Rick Osborn

ASS: Yes but what do they give you? DD: We get EQUIPMENTP! GH: And we test their products, like the Speed 7s … ASS: All of you have BRD wheels? DD: Most of us, yes, but not the new wheel yet … ASS: The new wheel looks bloody fabulous

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

- we'll have a review on it for July, I think … DD: I imagine we will do some heavy testing with it, this wheel will revolutionize sim racing wheels. ASS: Will these new ones have FF? DD: Yes, and the forcefeedback is HARD. ASS: But the ones u guys use now are non-ff right? DD: Yep ASS: Does it make u faster not having FF? RT: I think FF is faster. DD: Sometimes, I never used to run FF, as I found it a distraction. RT: Because FF wheels are usually more accurate. DD: But the more games develop the more it’s needed. ASS: So how was this partnership forged? Who approached whom? DD: Well I heard of BRD from Greger actually, and gave them a call - we were then invited down to the launch of the speed 7 pedals which was impressive - then we forged out a deal … ASS: So do you still feel there is a reluctance for developers - wheels, sims, etc., - to actually get involved within the community - or do you think it is getting better? DD: I think it’s getting better, often the community thinks it knows best and it usually does! GH: I think guys like LFS, rFactor devs are doing the right thing. 51

DD: But they say things differently instead of saying, there’s a problem with the inertia physics, they will say 'THIS SUCKS!' ...its all about interpretation …I think all devs read the forums anyway … RT: But saying this sucks usually causes less problems, because if you actually say what’s wrong, there's like a 10 page debate with so called 'experts' debating every little detail and it goes nowhere … GH: Anyway, things are better now with many sims than, for example, they were with Crammond and the GP series … DD: Yeah, like online play at least lol - I remember trying to play F1RC over kali … ASS: Yes, but the community is also so much smaller now anyway with the consoles stealing all the gloryboys and wannabe F1 racers … GH: And Crammond didn't listen to the community at all it seemed … DD: Hehe no, he didn’t - and yes, community is smaller, because no one knows about sim racing - when I did the work for Toyota F1 on the simulator, people were queuing up for an hour just to have a go of F1C and this was at Goodwood, with the real cars in the background! ASS: It's odd - 1 billion F1 fans and 40,000 sim racers - something is wrong in that equation. DD: People thought it would be like PS2, and they were intrigued when it wasn’t, especially when they went off on T1 HARD.

GH: Yeah, I think simracing could be quite popular as a participator "sport". DD: Yeah it will happen, it’s just time. RT: Sim racing might be the future when motorsport is banned. DD: GTR has done well there to bridge the gap. GH: I don't think people will be interested in watching simracing... but doing it yourself is a lot of fun. AW: agreed Greger DD: I think people will always watch their heroes. ASS: Yes agreed - but watching becomes fun when you’ve done it eh! GH: Yeah exactly. DD: Yep RT: Go Schumacher! DD: I’ll never forget watching Greger in F12001 hit Eau Rouge at 200 mph with no rear wing … ASS: It's like watching porn - when you’ve done it, you can only watch in awe as these guys go for three hours! DD: hit the trees HARD … nice anal gy lol GH: Uhh, yeah something like that … ASS: Yes anal gy is indeed the case … DD: logy! ASS: And speaking of which – do you guys have any other partners? DD: Well we have small partners, such as N2003 Replay Analyzer, Blackhole Motorsports, and crusse

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

our team painter and Dave Noonan provided us with the converter… ASS: Crazy Dave Noonan! DD: We also sell goods via Driver’s Emporium - I’m just waiting to see if we have sold anything yet! On The Future of Sim-Racing ASS: The only guy ever to have made money from sim racing - bless him! And yes, ASS will have a Spread on Drivers Emporium! Have you guys ever raced for money? DD: In FSR we did pay a salary and points bonus. RT: In America it’s starting to get big GH: Yeah RT: Money racing DD: I’m pretty sure that side will grow - doesn’t MoG have a 1000 Euro first prize or something? AW: I think so Dom, at least I read so … GH: I won some money in a GPL hotlap contest as well! ASS: Oh, you did, Greger? Tell me all! RT: Several US based leagues now charge an entry fee and have some nice prize funds … RT: ESCORS has a pretty big prize too, Andy got a nice trophy there I think? DD: Yeah, seems the big leagues are starting to get big prizes … GH: It was 500 DM, something like 250 euros … AW: Yep Rich.

GH: A GPL hotlap contest at Solitude, back in the days - my biggest achievements are in the May issue of ASS! AW: Hehe yeah, against Jens Burkert, that was a close one, eh Greger?

DD: But maybe it paves the way of the future … RT: -1,000 GH: Lol, not much …

AW: Sell it on eBay! ASS: Don’t Greger! AW: Used by Greger … DD: you can find our results here:

DD: Well I won a PC …

RT: Pic please, with you wearing it …

GH: Yeah, too close …

RT: TOCA!

ASS: You guys were in an F1 league as well for money?

AW: Including cheques?

ASS: I am a red-blooded Ferrari-guy! And I have your pic!

DD: Yes, Formula Sim Racing league I think - FSR.

ASS: Yes … it is money (unless it comes from me …)

GH: Lol DD: Hahahaha GH: I know …

GH: Yeah, I was there …

GH: Well less than 1000 euros for me …

DD: We didn’t enter as a team but joined some teams for cash …

AW: Lemme think - around 3000 EUR here {5000 dollars} …

DD: Ok, I’m on it …

GH: I got a few hundred Euros racing for another team …

RT: I've not won any money, but won a couple of small prizes like sim sox and a die-cast NASCAR …

DD: Wasn’t a lot of money … ASS: How much do you guys think you’ve made from sim racing so far?

GH: Yeah, I've won a Ferrari cap unfortunately …

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

RT: Photoshop!

ASS: Okay - so you've all won money, prizes, PCs, caps - you're sponsored by partners - what's the next step? Besides featuring on ASS that is! DD: Next is too find more partners to

bring sim racing to the fore n order to get more people interested and therefore improve the game development. RT: In order for sim teams to take the next step, sims themselves need to take that step forward too, based more around the online side of things. DD: If the guys who did Gran Tursimo did a PC sim, with the budget, it would rock … AW: So waiting another 2-5 years is the next step …

DD: But sims, they will become money orientated like RaceMore and probably FIRST … ASS: Do you see a team like yours fitting into a system like RaceMore or other corporate created schedules? DD: We will go where there’s the most competition … so if it’s corporate based, I would imagine we would … GH: Yeah, why not? DD: We’re not anti-capitalists as we all need money to eat!

DD: Yes lol …

GH: So that's where all your money goes …

RT: I think that will come with the next gen consoles...ok dirty word …

DD: So far from sim racing, Greger has earned enough to buy a small

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

goat … ASS: Have you eaten that too? AW: that’s why he’s not any money left Greger … ASS: So do you think we need developers to create the platform? Or can sim-racers do it themselves? DD: Sim racers can … RT: Need to work together … DD: But it would take a few years longer, hehe … DD: Console is the future, team wise … ASS: Who is your biggest competition? Your enemies and rivals?

AW: My car’s engine … RT: Andy, so true … DD: Well I guess we would have to break it down by sim … but in general something dE doesn’t stand a chance against us - lol - I love caning them! On The Competition ASS: Then we have something in common …they are also ASS's competition! DD: Well I guess our strongest rivals are VG … ASS: who are VG? DD: Virtual Games … ASS: Oh those guys with that Swedish taxi driver? Who doubles as a philosopher! Don't worry! Greger takes him out in every race! RT: From a personal point of view, and in the racing I mostly do, Volker Hackmann, he's a dE driver, but a good one … GH yes, they {VR} have a good team in GTR for example … DD: Roland, Joao, Norbert ... pretty fast guys, but word is they like to hunt for bananas … but yeah, Volker is a nice guy, dE must have paid a lot for him … ASS: Well I watched Roland and Greger at Donington and I must say, Greger's overtake was a little, uhm 'aggressive'! DD: Ooo! GH: Which one of them? DD: lol AW: lol

ASS: The one where Roland landed up being punted off …

RT: Problem is, getting all the best drivers to race in one league.

DD: Ah yes BANG MY GRILL comes to mind, I can’t believe I sound like a John Prather groupie …

ASS:Aand the greats - like me - are getting old and bored …

GH: Oh, sorry I can't remember anything like that …guess I've learned some bad habits from my NASCAR racing days … DD: Delta used to be our main rivals when we started …but they’ve disappeared? RT: They renamed GH:I think they reached the critical mass with their number of drivers. RT: SRU they are called now … DD: But I think their team was too big lol they had around 80 drivers which is too much to handle. ASS: That was Jon Davis' team? DD: Hmm maybe at some point? GH: Yeah I think so … DD: Tbh, there are lots of quick drivers out there who will always challenge us … RT: Annoy Dom so a lot DD: Like mlod and aro from dleague - very fast. RT: mlod!!! DD: But lately Rich seems to be taking care of them …

DD "haha" ASS: So speaking of recruiting - how do you get into redline? Must you be, uhm, invited? DD: We invite, really. Though Richard spent 6 months blabbering on at us until he finally won a race RT: lol ASS: Okay - so with teams recruiting the best drivers, would it not be an idea for the big teams to create a championship of their own and include the best drivers in one super league? DD:W need a super sim first lol … GH: Are there enough big teams anyway? DD: When it comes, everyone will play … GH: I don't think there's that many … DD: And it will be tough drivers like Joe Panther that will be up there as well … GH: lol, but yeah, I think the biggest teams should work together on something like that and like Dom said, we need a great sim first... DD: I agree …

RT: lol DD: But it’s funny, in general, in every sim it’s the same drivers year upon year, which means that there isn’t a lot of new talent coming through … ASS: No there isn't …

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

T URN F OUR NR2003 Interview NR2003 INTERVIEW By Smokin Bob Previously, we interviewed some of the main players at the GT Rank and GPL Rank sites. For this month’s issue, Christoph Frick and Joachim Trensz give us the goods on the NR2003 Ranking site. Home for the oval crowd, it also provides the community with a way to track many other NASAR Racing Season 2003 ‘enhancements’ as well.

2002. We had some discussions back then about the rewrite of GPLRank in PHP and maybe doing some general ranking system. That time Uwe got into Zope and started the N2002Rank. I joined later and added the B2B and did then maintenance like using some general code to

the GPLRank for users to retrieve their password by themselves. As all the ranks share the base user data, we can handle the user-management in one place.

For the replay checking we have lots to do. As you might have seen on the news in NRank we often have to check times all over the places. There render lists in the rank, support for are lots drivers out there that run on different mods and so on. The rank modified tracks, insane low then was what it is today - after we temperatures and so on. Saying that knew, the mods are at the gates for the NR2003 players are a bunch of NR2003 we named the rank NRank. cheaters if far from true. But with all Smokin Bob: In the previous the servers out there with interviews, we have covered a JT: The Road handicaps for the modified track.inis and so on TransAm and GTP cars were driven some are just sloppy and do lot of the technical side of things as far as the ranking site by me. I did them early on after the not take care much what times is concerned, so let me ask an they actually submit. So there release of the mod, and with fairly easy one first-what type of gear is lots of work to weed out the little practice, to keep them are you guys running to serve different tracks for each sim. comparable. the NR2003 rank community? Something that often can not SB: Previously, we have heard that be done right in time. Christoph Frick: It is the very same one of the most difficult parts of the box the other ranks are running on. It The NRank admins are split in three sites to maintain are the passwords currently runs on a dual Opteron parts more or less. The developers, and replay coverage-is this case with machine Brian Wong kindly which are Carl Ribbegaardh, Uwe the NR Rank site as well? How many provides. So NRank shares the very and me. There are lots of admins that folks do you have helping you to same machine as the other ranks; it check the replays. Some admins came keep up with the no doubt massive runs in the same instance of the Zope and gone over the years. One part of demands on the site? application server as the GTR Rank the replay checkers are actually the does. The machine handles all the Joachim Trensz: We're not offering drivers, that provided the ranks. For ranks and also runs my race list any on-site replays. However, my the first oval handicap this are server for iGOR (nidhoeggr) - well AchimT site (http://AchimT.flog.com) Andreas Wilke and Andre Schmidt. the box is bored most of the time. has - on a separate page from my The handicaps for GNR and CTS are IIRC Brian said on this spot in the last own 'fast' replays - the replays of the done by Rick Boyd. Joachim Trensz issue, that 10 times the load would GTPRank default laps I did. As for did the handicaps for PTA and GTP not hurt - and I am sure he is right. how many folks we are - a lot less and the road track handicap for than you think. I'll leave it to Winston. The GPL-handicaps are SB: How long has the NR Rank site Christoph's discretion to reveal this only there for your enjoyment and been around? Who started it? or not … are the same as the ones GPLRank CF: Uwe gets the credit for starting it. uses. CF: The passwords are actually no To be honest - I can not tell, what too big problem with the NRank. SB: Just looking at your contact year this started but it must have Also since Ed added some features to address on the site, it appears that been close to the release of NASCAR AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

there is some connection to the GPL rank-if so, what is this connection? Was there a single site, years ago, that all the rest have sprung up from? Who had the idea to make a NASCAR ranking site? CF: Like stated above - the site runs on the same host and shares the same user base as the GPLRank. GPLRank was the first rank, the others followed (RTRank, NRank, GTRRank). GPLRank is still the most advanced rank. It has the most features of all the ranks, it is the most sophisticated. I initially joined the admin team back in the GPLRank-only times. I mentioned a problem with the userhandling back then and got invited to do admin jobs and eventually fix the problem. With the rewrite of GPLRank in PHP, Uwe just wanted to do his own thing again and ended up doing NRank. I joined slightly later because I primary do PHP at work and was/are rather fed up with it. I wanted to add another programming language/applications server to my list of things I worked with. SB: I have heard, over the course of my racing sim years, some less than savory comments about 'always turning left’. Is this reflected on NR Rank? That is, is the amount of members drastically lower than the other, 'proper', racing rank sites? Remember-I am a big NASCAR fan, so not trying to fan the flames here. (Laughter). JT: We are racers, that brings all of us together, and it doesn't matter which kind of vehicle you use, or which kind of track you drive on, as long as

the racing follows the basic principles. CF: I have the slight impression, that NRank is actually not to well known in the community as e.g. GPLRank. With the release of GTP (1.0) I had some discussion on RSC where actually turned out, that there where requests for a ranking site like GPLRank. I think with all the mods out there now and the huge amount of road tracks NR2003 has a lot to attract sim racers. And I bet that even the most die hard oval haters would enjoy a race on Bristol using the craftsmen trucks against a couple of friends - but they would never admit it in public.

early on after the release of the mod, and with fairly little practice, to keep them comparable. I also don't use my fastest laps (or I don't try to drive to the max) but I do try to make them fast enough for them to pose a challenge for the average driver after the mod has been out for a while. All laps are driven at 70° Clear, to avoid that the laptimes become too hotlap orientated, as in races with realistic

SB: How were the handicap base times achieved? I have done pretty well--that is, until hitting the Busch series, now my scores are not so impressive-is the same driver setting the benchmarks, and what conditions are being used? JT: The Road handicaps for the TransAm and GTP cars were driven by me. I did them

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

weather, most of the time you'll have Clear weather, not Cloudy, and I want my times to be a good target to aim for for all racers, whether they prefer the hotlapping or the racing side of it.

SB: Are there any plans to change the track lists for the Busch and Truck ranks? Some of the tracks are nearly impossible to find, and considering some events that happened earlier this year (see First.NET activities). What goes into the decision making process for determining the tracks that will compose a rank?

have to admit, that I do not follow the situation too closely.

Mentioning FIRST here reminds me, that we have added support for the P330 mod around Christmas. I sent a patched exe to the maker of the mod, that allow storing the laptimes in a format, we could parse it and may even think about a handicap for this fine mod. But I guess we will not see that coming anymore...

CF: All the handicaps are done using 70 degree. Some are done using even the default setups delivered with the JT: Can't talk about the Busch/Truck game. The handicaps are done by side, but for GTPRank, we will different people. The handicap times change the tracklist if new 'mustfor the Winston Cup are actually done for NR2002 - so most of Mentioning FIRST here reminds me, the people out there can beat these times with NR2003 with that we have added support for the closed eyes (maybe using at P330 mod around Christmas. I sent least one eye for the two road a patched exe to the maker of the tracks).

SB: Now, I have to be honestrunning 234 MPH laps at Daytona, even without restrictor plates is a dream, at best-but I have seen such mod, that allow storing the laptimes times on the site. How do you On the other hand the times deal with cases such as these? in a format, we could parse it and done by Joachim are considered may even think about a handicap for In some cases, perhaps a 'clock tough cookies by many drivers smash' or similar event this fine mod. But I guess we will out there. But using lower occurred, in others-I would temperatures and newer setups not see that coming anymore imagine there is some you will find yourself actually include' tracks are published. downright cheating going on. While with a good chance to beat them. this is very much like the real racing As for finding the tracks, we have a Also no one plays these games, sports (just don't get caught.) it must comprehensice tracklist on our server because they are easy but to have a make your job very tough to find and which should provide download challenge. And everybody, who sort out the ultra fast times. What are links to pretty much all or almost all complains about the times, should you doing to make this easier to deal of the tracks used in the Ranks. If one ask himself: how long took it yourself with on your side? is missing, please let us know and we to beat the Kyalami lap for GPLRank? JT: I don't want to go into too much will add it, or if the track is indeed no We always wanted the handicaps longer available, we might consider detail as to which examinations we done by humans which replay one undertake to determine the validity taking it out of the Rank. could use, to get a clue, where the last of replays sent in, but we do use all CF: This question is actually been darn 0.5s are lost in his lap time and available means, including asked quite some time in the past for actually maybe find himself doing plausibility checks which require the particular tracks. The admins some part of the track better than one use of hex editors. I.e., we dig deep, responsible for "their" ranks usually of the aliens. So humans make errors and even deeper if we suspect a lap is decide what tracks they want to use. and you might learn something about invalid. As a matter of fact, we So usually one will try to get the cutting this one corner a little earlier discover invalid laps all the time. tracks as close as possible to the real or later. This way the original Sometimes they are uploaded by thing. The last time we discussed the GPLRank was done. mistake, but sometimes we have problems with the tracks, there where some replacements in the make. But I AUTOSIMSPORT â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Volume 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Number 6

good reason to believe that they are uploaded intentionally. However, over the years you also develop a certain sixth sense for suspicious laps, which may be partly responsible why quite a few of the laps we check into are indeed invalid. These issues are btw not limited to the ultra-fast laps. There, rather, it is easier to determine potentially invalid laps as we know which times are possible, and we also know the people who do them (at least after a while). Among midfielders it is a lot more difficult to determine just by looking at the chart whose time might valid and should be checked. I'd like to say btw. that I think we've never been wrong so far. I.e., while we check diligently, we also put a lot of effort into basing our decisions on good facts. We don't want to delete peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; times without good reasons. CF: Usually the admins check the tracks and the mods of the handicaps the most. Then it is simply a matter of experience of the admin. If there are doubts about the time, they will request a replay of that lap. Most of the time the replays never show up because there was something wrong with the lap. But often also the driver is embarrassed about his failure and tells us, that he is sorry and the lap time was done on a server with high grip. But consider also, that there are actually darn fast laps out there done by aliens, using the lowest legal temp, using drafts of cars a friend helping out on the longest straight and even trying out different wind settings to get that sweet spot #1.

SB: How difficult was it to add the GTP ranks to the site? Can you now differentiate between Chassis A,B,C,D, or are they still considered to be 'equal' as far as rank lap submission is concerned? JT: The cars are still equal. However, this is ok for me as we're not seeing our site so much as a hotlapping chart, but rather as an orientation for racers as to where they stand with their laptimes. Although of course hotlappers are welcome! CF: In the current situation there is only support for the GTP mod in general - no difference between the cars. The simple fact, because things are like this: we had not to deal with different cars before this mod. So adding GTP with the current settings we have we either could have added four "mods" (each car of the GTP mod) or do it like we did it now. This allows us now to do an easier integration once we have support for the different cars. Adding the handling like this was actually a matter of minutes. I asked on RSC for some example files from GTP drivers - got them quite fast and added the handling. SB: What are your thoughts on the trend in the industry to the Pay to Play system? Can you think of any alternatives that would make everyone happy? CF: Well the main points of a Pay to Play system are reduced to having fair races (people who pay for attending online races will behave themselves in the race) and on the other hand the urge to build a scene

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of big time racers that nearly can work on a professional level like e.g. Quake3 or Starcraft players. Actually I know at least one German league that has a pay to play principle for quite some time. They rent servers, the members help pay for these servers and they get the password to the server. Having good races is possible since the inventions of leagues and passwords on servers. For my end I can only tell, that I hardly see a reason for me to pay for a game every month (of course if they would charge nothing for the game this is something else - but usually the games are sold full price). If you want a good race experience, ask your boss at work (maybe he is a simracer himself) to use the office on for the weekend and invite the racers of your area. There is always hope, that the community gets its stuff together and work on frameworks that allow playing the games out of the bounds of the manufacturer (see e.g. the private realms for Ultima Online). But on the other hand the industry likes to squash this efforts. See how Blizzard crushed the battle net daemon and FreeCraft. Bascially the same thing happened to GTP (1.0). I think pay to play will mean much more in the future. It is just a way to make lots more money without giving more to the customer. We will see how FIRST will handle concurrent rank sites - or if they even stick with a readable format for the laptimes? Will they send a cease and desist to us once we have reverse engineered the format? We will find 59

out - but once there is money involved all the fun is out. It is no longer a game. And if it is no longer for the fun, I am outta here. (Christoph raises a good point here— will the future pay to play schemes prevent even a simple lap upload to one of the current ranking sites, should that site offer such ability? Will the laps on new sims forever be encrypted so as to make sure all the ‘ranking’ happens on the pay to play system exclusively? It would be a shame to lose the ability but only time will tell us the full story. I hope for the best. SB: Considering the massive amount of work that must be involved in marinating the site, what kinds of costs are you running into? Have you considered a 'Pay Pal' button anywhere on the page? CF: The only real running costs are the power, the hardware and the network connection of the box NRank runs on. This is all provided by Brian Wong. If he ever decides to place ads on the site or add a Pay Pal account to cover his costs, this is more than fine with me. The last time somebody asked on the admin list of GPLRank how he can contribute with money, he got told to please give the money to charity. This is also the same answer he would get from the other ranks I guess. All the developers of the ranks have good jobs in the IT business and do all this for their sole pleasure and hopefully for the pleasure of many others. Knowing, that there is no customer giving deadlines or deciding every 5

minutes in another direction makes this all some nice free time occupation. If you create free software and a "customer" do not like it, you can simply say: ``It is free. If you do not like it, do not use it - or help make it better'' SB: What are your favorite sims? JT: Right now rFactor and GTP. CF: For my part these are the sims, that run without a problem on my Linux box. These are GPL (current and forthcoming mods) and NR 2003 (current mods). Especially to mention GPL65, where is still remember the great races we had while the game was in the make. When I visit friends with a windows box I enjoy driving RBR (I used to have the PS2 version of the game, but it got lost in mysterious way). Also cruising a Porsche around the Nordschleife in GTR I enjoy. rFactor somehow is also the first ISI game that felt right for me from the very first time. Pretty much standard simracing I would say. From my old days there are still some other sims I used to play, which are ICR 1 and 2, GP 2, SWOTL, Tornado, Gunship 2k and IL2 (not in correct historical order). SB: I should close now as I need to get some more X-Rays, but if there is anything you would like to say or comment on, about the site or anything else for that matter, please do not hesitate to do so!! JT: In general I'd like to thank all the drivers and racers who keep it alive with their contributions!

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

I'd also like to ask folks to try to avoid uploading invalid laptimes. They cost us a lot of work and time we would certainly like to put to better use elsewhere. Also, sometimes people get quite obstinent when we catch them cheating, or request replays. To these guys I'd like to say - Reality Check. N2003Rank is a service to the community, provided by a couple of enthusiasts for the community. Nobody 'has the right' to post their times here, and N2003Rank is not obliged to accept anyone's contribution. We provide this service at our cost, voluntarily and as a service to the community. Anyone not liking the rules is free to post elsewhere. I also wonder which satisfaction anyone can get out of intentional cheating. I mean, the cheater knows they are only cheating and not really fast. So, what do they get out of it? Apart from the fact that they're usually mostly unknown drivers. Most who read their names don't know who they are, so they cannot even build up a reputation with this. Strange things :) Anyway, keep the good laps coming, folks! CF: To you, Bob: Get well soon. Then a big thank you to the admins, that take all the time to check replays and weed out where it is due. Also to Uwe for starting the madness and Brian for keeping it alive. To the users: enjoy the ranks!

T HE B ACK S TRAIGHT Race Sim Central With Tim Wheatley’s departure to FIRST, and Driver’s Emporium bought out by FIRST, Jon Denton caught up with Mikkel Gram-Hansen to find out exactly what is going on with RSC …

server and bandwidth costs behind the scenes.” On the Motivation that Lurks behind the Long Hours of Dedication. “Dunno…. Really don’t know what flaw in my personality drove me to spend 5 years building and maintaining the vast “thing” that is RSC? Maybe its pride in making

of myself and my abilities… Meetings with big companies seemed frightening and intimidating years ago, now I always enter a negotiation feeling I am equal to the situation and to the other parties in the room.

“But yeah the fringe benefits you probably hint at are there as well, but they have not just popped up. Every “RSC was created during the fall and single benefit is a result of winter of 2001 by the years of hard work. None of administrators of Legends FIRST and SimBin are driven by the RSC admins have ever Central and Simracing.dk. We passion and by a true love to made a single dollar, none of at Simracing.dk had been simracing, so I salute them both for us have even had our making our small mark on the expenses paid…. So getting to community by hosting sites and daring to try and make the software beta test, getting to meet by writing some pretty good we all dream about… and I can get developers and getting to articles in English, and Legends pretty damned annoyed with the know the secrets of the scene Central was recognized as a naysayers who moan bitch and is the only benefit there is. gathering point for GPL complain about everything made by fanatics.” “I have had some fantastic On the Past

On the Present – who is now running RSC?

companies with an actual budget. They are NOT evil, they are actually tying to give us what we want so give them a chance for Christ’s sakes

“Loads and loads of people, most of the original founders are still around and we have been good at finding new talent to keep the wheels in motion. The base administrative staff is approx. 10 people who fade in and out of the workload according to their real life commitments.” On Funding simdom’s Premiere Forum.

“We hooked up with Boomtown.net early on, they were instrumental in making RSC the biggest simracing community around. They supplied us with all we needed until about a year ago when we finally parted ways. Since then we have found other sponsors and we have some pretty dedicated entities helping us with the

something work, something you helped built from scratch, maybe it’s pure dumb stubbornness, whatever it is, I just can’t help it ;) All of us who have spent so much time and energy on RSC do it for the same basic reasons, pride, friendship and a deep passion for simracing.” On the Fringe Benefits. “Sure there are fringe benefits, both in the obvious sense but also with regards to personal development. I have gained huge amounts of useful knowledge about communication, communities, leadership etc. etc. Being the admin of RSC has changed me and made me much more certain

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moments with the GTR team over most of last summer, hooking up with them at FIA GT races and being part of the whole dramatic race weekend, meeting fellow RSC members and just having some fun. Also meeting the 3 LFS devs in Denmark was something special for me and I really enjoyed the chance to get a little deeper into their vision.” On the Best & Worst Moments of RSC “Hmmm… worst moment was probably when we were haxoered and ended up spending several months offline. That one broke my spirit and my childish joy in running the site, all day every day. If you check my posting pattern after that you’ll see I never came back on the same level. It ruined so much and brought so much stress and trouble 61

that it started to seem like a punishment not a pleasure to be an RSC admin. “Also it has tired me and annoyed me immensely that the positive and creative community we created has lately taken a turn for the negative. People seem to be more interested in finding flaws and picking at each other than in enjoying the racing it is all about. The latest outburst involving SimBin and FIRST looked real petty and selfcentered seen from the sidelines. “There have been so many good moments through our development… difficult to find just a few to mention here. RSC has in all ways been my life through 5 years, how do you sum up the good moments of 5 years ? Perhaps the fact that I have met so many new friends and talked to interesting people from all over the world.” On the Sim Community – Growing or Shrinking? “Growing… of course it is growing, as the gaming market is exploding. But I also think it’s growing directly compared to other gaming genres, and when the next level of software development is reached it’s our turn to see the community grow exponentially again. By this I mean that at some point the physics are just about as spot on as they can get and then the developers have to differentiate themselves by the good old GAMEPLAY… using the “perfect” physics to create a world that is fun to inhabit and exiting to be a part of.”

On Outside Pressures – Ever Had to Pull a Mod? “Yes… but as they have found out, we can’t be bought or pressured. That’s the beauty of being completely independent, they can’t bully us as they can’t take anything away from us.” On Whether the Community will become centralized – or otherwise. “Those options don’t really exclude each other IMHO. Before RSC there were a multitude of very small sites, but no central place to gather info. The closest to a gathering point was the alt.rec.simulators newsgroup. Now RSC has in some ways become THE place where everyone who is interested in simracing becomes a member and follows the discussions, and sites like RacingItalia, BHMS and others have raised the bar as well and they do some great work. BUT… that doesn’t mean that there won’t be room for a multitude of smaller specialized sites. The more the merrier.” On How Many Sim-Racers are Active. “No clue.” On RSC’s raison d’etre. “We are a community, the forum with 65.000+ members is a living organism…We are the people.” On the Competition – Friendly or Otherwise? “Yeah I see us as friendly rivals, and we do help each other. Most of the big sites cover the same stuff in different ways and focus on different angles so we are all needed. E.g.

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BHMS weigh news from developers high and gives really good info on that, while we at RSC have always focused on internal news, stuff coming from our own family of websites and from the forum. SO much going on there that there is little need to just copy the news that BHMS etc. also do. So to keep informed you need to visit both… and I like it that way, we are stronger through diversity and it would be a sad day for simracing if either of the large sites had to close shop.” On Time & Money “No money has ever been involved… this is pure passion and stupidity. “Before I semi retired I spent 5-8 hours a day for 4+ years, completely crazy when you look at it, but it was my life and I loved it. Now I spend my time on other simracing related projects, some known and some unknown to the broad public.” On Develeopers – do they approach RSC or vice-versa? “Both… depends on who, where and what.” On Developers using RSC for promotion “I guess the first 2 developing teams to fully realize the potential of utilizing the community are LFS and SimBin… both have entered into close partnerships with RSC and both have used us for their own means. But we have been fully aware of the situation at all times and deemed it beneficial on all counts for the community. IMHO developers should use the bigger sites to reach their potential customers, but it is a 62

very dangerous route and it requires the developer to have a keen understanding of what they are getting themselves into or it will blow up in their face. The community is hard to please these days.” On the Sim-Wars “Don’t really see that war? I would assume you mean EA, FIRST and SimBin?

the developers who have turned down having their official forums at RSC, simply because they saw no reason to be bullied by the same group of haters that are becoming more and more vocal. I miss the days when we were all impressed and happy when a developer took the time to recognize our community and talk to us “face to face”, seems some people have begun taking this for granted and they show no respect

On Pay-to-Play – will it happen and is it a good thing? ” On playing a sim that never made it to release “Yes, but I still hope it will find a distributor and go gold. Damage model was out of this world.” On Sim-Racing’s new phase and RSC

“It’s always a new phase, every time “Think all three entities are we round a corner we gain smart enough to know that they “Yes we will see pay to play and yes perspective on the past and need to focus on broadening the it can be a good thing. The whole realize we are almost on the niche instead of fighting each brink of something new and mentality of some parts of the other. I don’t know much radical in our little world. about EA, they have always simracing community is that this is Most people just take it for been a blank spot on my radar, detrimental to the future of granted that stuff keeps but both FIRST and SimBin are simracing. Some people out there popping up out of nowhere. driven by passion and by a true have become used to bitching and love to simracing, so I salute ”We have always had plenty them both for daring to try and moaning about everything and they of people to keep the motor make the software we all dream refuse to understand that things are running… and somehow we about… and I can get pretty have almost always had the never black/white. damned annoyed with the RIGHT people at the right what so ever towards the companies naysayers who moan bitch and time.” and entities who visit us. complain about everything made by Will there ever by money in Sim“When I have my RSC passion companies with an actual budget. Racing? rekindled (and that will happen as it They are NOT evil, they are actually “Nobody will ever get rich from always does) then I will spend the tying to give us what we want so give running a simracing website, but majority of my time trying to sway them a chance for Christ’s sakes. there are signs in the stars that big the general mood to a more positive “We are actively alienating the bigger

developers at the moment. Who wants to get embedded and involved with a community that is so negative and so focused on always complaining. Can’t say that I blame

one, see if I can be a small part in reintroducing respect and friendliness into the hardcore section of our community. Hey I’m allowed to dream right.”

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finance is starting to see ways of using the loyalty and dedication embedded in the community. “Using” in this scenario is not a bad thing, it simply means that some of the passionate and skilled people in 63

simracing will be given a chance to make even more of our dreams come true.” On what sims we’ll be playing come Christmas “LFS S2, netKar, GT Legends, FIRST, rFactor, Auto Assault (hehe, I know it’s a bit off the mark, but it just looks so fun) … Also I still take GPL out for a spin once in a while, just for old times sake. We are in for the best fall/winter ever in simracing, SO much to drive, so little time.” On scoops “Yes, but you know how it is … I would have to kill you.” Well, the scoop, of course, was that driver’s Emporium has now been bought by FIRST – along with RSC’s founder Tim Wheatley (who hasn’t been, uhm, quite bought, but is now communications manager for FIRST); here’s how Mikkel broke the news over at RSC: As many of you might have noticed I have been less active here at RSC for a few months. There were several reasons for this temporary semi-retirement, Driver's Emporium, big real life issues and then the fact that I got myself a real job. I was offered the opportunity to revive the good old RSC dynamic duo with Tim W. at FIRST, and I accepted with no hesitation. Since the start of my work in the simracing scene years and years ago it has always been my dream to turn my one passion and hobby into a living. And getting to do it with the crew at FIRST is as good as it gets.

Like the rest of you longterm members of the community I have been part of all the ups and downs of RSC and I have been sitting at my desk dreaming about what the simracing world would look like if the guys from Papy made a new king to replace my beloved GPL... now I have the chance to be an active part in this process and make a difference where it counts. RSC and simracing has given me a solid purpose in life for 7 years now (kind of sad and geeky, I know), and I have given it my all, but it has not been without costs both financially and more importantly on a personal level. It's not always fun being the "Ace of Spades". I was beginning to fade, soon I would have burned out. Now with this new chance, I'm revitalized and ready to dream big and talk loud again I hope most of you will be happy for me, and for the fact that you now have two RSC champions fighting for you and your desires within FIRST. We know what you guys want and it's part of our job description to make certain you get as much of it as possible

All I ask is that you gimme a bit more credit than that, I honestly think I earned it... and the same goes for Tim W. We all started out way way way back when, being proud when a developer recognized us and our little hobby site, we grew and we managed to avoid going commercial and to keep the whole enormous thing moving forward through the years, always striving to do what was best for RSC as a community and simracing as a genre. Now several of us oldtimers have had all our hard work recognized by major players and I gotta admit I'm proud and happy to see the founding fathers of RSC getting what they deserve. I'll still be hanging around, looming in the corner of your eye here at RSC... business as usual on that account. Here is to the next 5 years of RSC development and simracing expansion!

This move also evens the score a bit amongst the RSC admins, now several of us are working with several different developers, and I can guarentee that no one developer will be allowed to move the objectivity or general policies of RSC. RSC is not run by one guy or even a group of guys... RSC is all of us 65.000+ members, and all that every single member contributes to the whole. I'm adressing this point because I know some of you see get your kicks from seeing conspiracies everywhere and I know that some will question my integrity and start yelling that RSC has been tainted.

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T HE F IFTH C OLUMN The Death of the PC? Will the new generation of consoles kill of PC Gaming? Jon Denton and Mike Crick argue both sides … Mike Crick: The question of wether or not the console market will destroy the PC market for video gaming has been around for a long time. So which is it? Console or PC?

Since the Playstation was first released on shelves worldwide the console market has certainly shot off to an amazing height. For those who are ready to tell me that the N64 was the defining console, think about it really hard, what did that console offer the market in terms of advancements? Cartridges? No I’m afraid that the console market has been defined by Sony for using this

amazing technology known as CDROMs. Before the Playstation people were playing games on all different systems, however the most popular of these would have to have been the glorious home computers. The PC game industry hit it’s high with such games as Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, and

Duke Nukem 3D with their semi-3d environments. However as soon as games like Resident Evil and the beloved Crash Bandicoot hit the console market with (at the time) stunning 3D visuals, the duration of PCs being used for games was soon questioned. Jon Denton: Of course, this is all debateable history. Before the advent of the Playstation 1 the gaming

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market was clearly led by the console, with both Nintendo’s SNES and Sega’s Mega Drive selling titles in the magnitudes that PC games could not come close to. Even the relative successes of the Amiga were a damp squib compared to titles such as “Mario Kart” and “Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past”. But the PC at this

time, in the very early nineties, had no shortage of titles but these titles were all niche creations. Remakes of “Elite”, strategy games like “Lemmings” and a seemingly unending string of flight sims dominated the PC Gaming shelves, while arcade hits routinely flew off the console shelves. However the strengths of the PC market would soon be shown with 65

the release of 3D Accelerators built into Graphics cards. Games like Turok would amaze the gaming industry and show people just how more potential PCs would have over consoles. Playstation and its supposed competition (N64) would be unable to match the one thing PCs had that they didn’t, the ability to upgrade. This would keep the PC gaming industry arguably safe from their console rivals. Barely two years after the release of Sony’s revolution the PC was the most popular gaming system, with some of the greatest games being made for it (Half-Life, Unreal). This is not to say that the consoles were not competitive, quite the opposite. The consoles were pushing their technology to their very limits to create some spectacular games. Games like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 3 were bringing the much needed mature audience into Consoles. Whilst the growth of the console market can be mostly credited to the Playstation, Nintendo would try their best to create games that appealed to the more Mature PC market. Games like Concurs Bad Fur Day were their obvious attempt at this, however the N64 (for most) now sat on a shelf gathering dust along with the LONG dead Mario and Pokemon franchises.

With the PC gaming industry at a significant boom, what could possibly stop it? One word comes to mind “XBOX”. When Bill Gates himself announced that Microsoft would be getting into the console

market, people making games for the PC would have been highly concerned. Along with the XBOX, the next generation consoles from both Sony and Nintendo were also boasting fantastic graphics and games. Anyone who was around at this time would have remembered the lull in decent games being released for the PC. When XBOX, PS2 and the Gamecube were released they were given their share of positive and negative views from the public. Nintendo, once again in a quest to be different, failed. However Nintendo managed to secure some decent titles such as Resident Evil and the remake of Metal Gear Solid. XBOX would be given it’s share of bad press, mostly because of the feeling that it was killing the PC gaming industry. This was boosted by the popular (and overrated) Halo, which was a PC title until Microsoft bought it so they could release their Console with a strong title. Enraged by this many ardent PC gamers would refuse to buy the console of ‘Satan’. XBOX however sold a lot of units (even if they did sell less than intended) because of its distinct features that no other consoles featured. The addition of a Hard Drive was probably the biggest selling point for this console, period. Sony would shoot the others down once again with their PS2, after securing great titles and providing a backwards compatible system it was almost destined to do well. So where was the PC industry during this period? Well they did as they had done before and simply showed to the gaming community that PCs

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were just more powerful and capable of more sophisticated games. A war within the PC industry was even in the process (and still is) with Nvidia battling Radeon for the best Graphics cards. This would help PCs seem more impressive and eventually bring people back from all the glitz and glam of the console market. The PC market suffered more so than previously with these consoles, as they were not so far behind and managed to bring a lot of famous titles with them (MGS, Silent Hill, Resident Evil). But was gaming on PCs dead? Never, the PC was not to be shot down and has been releasing quality titles such as Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Rome: Total War, Far Cry, and many more. However the consoles have hit the younger (10-18) market much more than PCs have, because like it or not Consoles are a cheaper option, and much easier to set up within the comfort of ones own living room. So the new consoles are coming out in 2006, one year away. PS3 is showing the most promise of the consoles at the moment, however Nintendo’s Revolution and Microsoft’s XBOX 360 do look to stand up as fair competition. However what is their threat on our current PC market? Well to put it simply, I’d say it’s highly minimal and that PCs will continue their current strength in the competition. Why do I say this? Well because (for example) the PS3 is only boasting a 3.2ghz processor, a chip that has already become a common place in most gaming PCs. Along with this the Nintendo console only holds a 66

2.5ghz processor something my pitiful machine has had in it for the last 2 years (note that the Nintendo console has not been finalised so this may change). ASS: A 3.2 gig processor will set the punter back somewhere in the region of 1,000 dollars; add another 300 or so dollars for the latest graphics card and the cost is 1,500 or so bucks for a PC that will have the same (theoretical) performance as he consoles thaqt will be launching, so it is said, at about 400 dollars – and that is before the price war which will, if history is any indication, drive prices into the 200s as usual. So for a tenth of the price, and the hassle, the punter will, with nothing more taxing that sticking a plug in a wall, play the latest incarnation of an F1 sim – which will not be available to the PC gaming market at the very least until 2007 since Sony own the copyright and license.

Jon Denton: Fundamentally, clock speed cannot be compared between different platforms, a 3.2 Ghz processor in one hardware set will not perform the same as another. What of the multiple core processing? The Xbox 360 has a triple core 3.2Ghz processor, whereas the stock Pentium 4 that is provided by Intel for PC’s is merely dual core. This suggests there can be a whole additional channel of code being processed in tandem, which will bring it’s own performance gain. ASS: The Graphics cards in these consoles are also only up the common standard held in PCs at the

current moment. To say PC games are going to be killed by these new consoles is absurd, simply because the measure of how powerful a PC is compared to the consoles plus the fact that it’s simpler to make games for the PC than for any of the consoles. Jon Denton: It is more absurd to suggest that these consoles are not a match for current spec PCs, they are more than a match technically and certainly considerably cheaper than any high specification gaming machine. What is the truth is what is mentioned above, that PCs hold a key, the ability to upgrade. The fact is over time and history the PC Vs Console battle has raged and the barometer has swung both ways several times. The Consoles are released as products that are to last five years without update or improvement, whilst PCs retain the ability to continually improve. It may be the case that the next generation of consoles can offer more in terms of both number crunching and graphics processing in the short term, but over the five year lifecycle of the consoles there is no doubt that PCs will overtake this achievement. However, the vast majority of consumers do not have the time or inclination to keep up with PC upgrade cycles, and the possibility to obtain something so capable for a mere $400 is what will sell consoles. At the end of the day, it’s all about the games, and if developers are making the titles people want for consoles, and not for PC, then the PC will be dead in the water, excepting

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of course niche markets like strategy gaming, flight sims and maybe racing sims. ASS: Whilst it may be simpler to make games for the PC, it is also a fact that – the big boys are making games for the consoles since it is such a huge market. There is a reason why the Mac has never had any decent games made for that platform – when a platform becomes so small, developers run out leaving in their wake nothing but the independents and, while it is arguably true that independents will create a far more ‘definitive’ product in terms of simulation (since its audience is after precisely that) it is also an historical fact that these games will suffer in terms of graphics, etc., due to the constraints of time and money. Gran Turismo 4 cost countless of millions of dollars to make – the console market is now bigger than the movie industry, and the talents that are involved are slowly making games into works of art – argue as much as you like about the ‘feel’ of gran turismo or forza, what is definite is that you cannot find that level of beauty for any game on the pc market. And with the new gen. of consoles, the PC is looking not only dated but from a different century. Added to that is the fact that pc developers must make games that are adaptable to older machines – while console developers have not to worry about this. So console games will all be made for 3.2 gig machines. The pc developers are probably five years away from doing this, since this kind of processing power is available to maybe 5% of their entire audience.. 67

Mike Crick: The biggest key factor that Consoles suffer from (and my sole reason for buying PC games) is because the games cannot be modified like PC games can. Especially when it comes to sporting games such as racing and soccer. ASS: Modding is very much a plus; but no-one is saying that modding will be impossible in the next generation of consoles. It has only been a matter of two years since they went online and this side of the console will only get better. What is more, if recent developments are any indication, modding for the pc is not as guaranteed as it always has been; it is only a matter of time before developers from rival companies will begin closing down modding groups for license infringements. Sony did not pay countless millions of dollars to Bernie only for some modder in Alabama to mod the F1 series for a game that did not have the license.

Over and above this, there are other things that make the console far more advantageous than the PC. All new console games will be playable on hidef tvs – to have a simlar experience on the pc would cost literally in the 10s of thousands of dollars. With the console market now online and so huge, competition is fierce. Major developers will inevitably be drawn to the console market meaning the best talents will,

if they haven’t already, abandon the PC market.

released in the next few years, how can they die?

Licensing; with the money now firmly in the console market, licensing for F1 and other major series like WRC will inevitably go to the consoles leaving the PC market with fictitious marques and tracks – more than this, with the lack of funds, PC developers will be unable to do what SimBIn managed to do, and that is work with real-world series to create authentic simulators.

Jon Denton: PC gaming will not die completely, but it is possible that the amount of titles will reduce and it will become a niche market. I think for racing sims this means it will go from strength to strength. Only drivers who are serious about racing will join the PC based leagues, leaving the wreckers playing “Gran Turismo Online” on their PS3.

With the new wheels and peripherals becoming ‘standard’ to the console market, it is only a matter of time before some development house in Japan do what they did for the footie sim – a racing Pro Evo. The day that happens is the day most PC sim-racers will migrate to the console. -

Mike Crick: Consoles have the disadvantage that they cannot be fixed by the common (yet somewhat knowledgeable) person, and instead have to be sent to a shop to be fixed, which can be highly expensive. Jon Denton: Consoles also have the benefit that they mostly do not NEED to be fixed. The very unreliability of PCs hardware and software has been a bane of it’s owners lives for years. Most users would gladly replace this woe with an off the shelf box that does “what it says on the tin”.

ASS: PC gaming will become nothing more than a small niche market; yes, the sims will, perhaps, be better than the consoles since they’re not dealing with the common denominator – and that is the sole hope for PC Gaming. If the console simulator comes – and there’s no reason to believe it won’t – the PC will drift away into a business machine that it was intended to be. The only chance the PC has is to create games that are able to make use of the 64 bit processors; but this cannot and will not happen for a long time to come. In the meantime, the consoles are here already, and they are a generation ahead, like it or not. There is nothing the new gen. of consoles cannot do that the PC can.

Mike Crick: PCs are here to stay people, they will survive this new wave of consoles and possibly the next. After all with so many promising titles for the PC being

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FILSCA RACE RESULTS All the Stats, Results of FILSCA Series LFNSC ● Nextel 2005

VOR ● T/A Schedule S4

N2003 ● Richmond

N2003 TransAM ● Autodromo Brno

LFNSC ● Open 2005

May 1, 2005

May 2, 2005

N2003 BGN ● Richmond

1. Ludovic Lecoq (FRA); 2. Laurent Bertho (FRA); 3. Stéphane Gourdin (FRA); 4. Jean-Charles Dubedout (FRA); 5. Cyriaque Riotte (FRA); 6. Thomas Cazorla (FRA) — Most laps led: Eric Rawson (FRA) 144 laps — Fastest lap: Laurent Bertho (FRA) 21.642

May 4, 2005

N2003 ● TalladegaBR

1. Dan Ferguson (CAN) (Ford Mustang GTS); 2. Michael Tyler (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GTS); 3. Gary Johnson (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GTS); 4. Craig Hunter (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GTS); 5. Kevin Cinnamon (CAN) (Ford Mustang GT); 6. Terry Zorich (USA) (Ford GT) — Most laps led: Dan Ferguson (CAN) 14 laps — Fastest lap: Dan Ferguson (CAN) 1:59.112

May 1, 2005

LFNSC ● Busch 2005

N2003 ● Talladega

1. Ryan J. Steele (USA); 2. Patrick Rodgers (USA); 3. Bill Charron (USA); 4. James Hammermeister (CAN); 5. Brian Hatch (USA); 6. Jerry Wilson (USA) — Most laps led: Bill Charron (USA) 1 laps — Fastest lap: Patrick Rodgers (USA) 49.426

N2003 ● Richmond

May 4, 2005

May 3, 2005

1. Jeffrey H. Chandler (USA); 2. Ken Kalina (USA); 3. Brian Cowart (USA); 4. Bob Ostrom (USA); 5. Daniel Lewis (USA); 6. Randy Drumhiller (USA) — Most laps led: Jeffrey H. Chandler (USA) 52 laps — Fastest lap: Tim Henson (USA) 49.572

CCCRL ● CUP 2005 Season

Comet ● Season Q GTR ● Autodromo Brno May 2, 2005 1. Greger Huttu (FIN) (Lister Storm, Team Redline); 2. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Lister Storm, Virtual-Games); 3. João Vaz (PRT) (Lister Storm, Virtual-Games); 4. Thomas Heineman (SWE) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R, Get Ready Simracing); 5. Peter Oleksy (BEL) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R, New Wave Racing); 6. Trond Lilleberg (NOR) (Saleen S7-R, The Last Team) — Most laps led: Greger Huttu (FIN) 18 laps — Fastest lap: Greger Huttu (FIN) 1:53.953

1. Laurent Bertho (FRA); 2. Thierry Le vu (FRA); 3. Thomas Cazorla (FRA); 4. Yannick Hilaire (FRA); 5. Gilles Boulanger (FRA); 6. Pascal Faurite (FRA) — Most laps led: Pascal Faurite (FRA) 65 laps — Fastest lap: Laurent Bertho (FRA) 21.646

1. Yannick Hilaire (FRA); 2. Laurent Dilard (FRA); 3. Martin Mouze (FRA); 4. Franck Merlier (FRA); 5. Jean-luc Domede (FRA); 6. Jonathan Reydet (FRA) — Most laps led: Yannick Hilaire (FRA) 77 laps — Fastest lap: Laurent Dilard (FRA) 21.773 KRC ● 2005-Regular

BeRacing ● 2005

SSR ● Season 1, div 1

GTR ● Motopark Oschersleben

GTR ● Anderstorp

May 5, 2005

May 3, 2005

1. Anthony Wouters (BEL) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Team Maranello); 2. Joeri Blootacker (BEL) (Lister Storm, Team Lister); 3. Joris Thielen (BEL) (Ferrari 575 GTC, Team Ferrari 575); 4. Kevin Lauwers (BEL) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Team Maranello); 5. Didier Demessemakers (BEL) (Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT, Team Lamborghini); 6. Johan Leroy (BEL) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Team Maranello) — Most laps led: Anthony Wouters (BEL) 15 laps — Fastest lap: Anthony Wouters (BEL) 1:24.798

1. Mattias Holkedahl (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 2. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Lamborghini Murcielago RGT); 3. Robert Berggren (SWE) (Lister Storm); 4. Niclas Norenheim (SWE) (Lister Storm); 5. Roger Jonsson (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 6. Peter Axelsson (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello) — Most laps led: Mattias Holkedahl (SWE) 22 laps — Fastest lap: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 1:26.038

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

SSR ● Season 1, div 2 GTR ● Anderstorp May 5, 2005 1. Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) (Lister Storm); 2. Thomas Heineman (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 3. Ove Wadman (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 4. Lars Mossberg (SWE) (Lister Storm); 5. Per-Arne Liljedahl (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 6. Staffan Synnergren green (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello) — Most laps led: Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) 40 laps — Fastest lap: Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) 1:26.883 VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D1 GPL ● Clermont-Ferrand May 5, 2005 1. Urban G. Alsenmyr (SWE) (Honda, Sumo Knights Racing (CooHon)); 2. Steve Causley (USA) (BRM, Project 573 (Fer-BRM)); 3. Richard Yalland (UK) (Honda, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)); 4. Brent Knoll (USA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 5. Robert Harrison (USA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 6. Dale Ballweg (USA) (Honda) — Most lead laps: Urban G. Alsenmyr (SWE) 19 laps. — Fastest lap: Urban G. Alsenmyr (SWE) 3:20.007 VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D2 GPL ● Clermont-Ferrand May 5, 2005

573 (Fer-BRM)); 5. Greg Munch (USA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 6. Bob Hall (USA) (Brabham, Fabulous BBs (Bra-Bra)) — Most lead laps: Brian Hart (USA) 17 laps. — Fastest lap: Stephen King (CAN) 3:27.429 LFNSC ● Nextel 2005 N2003 ● Lowes-night May 8, 2005 1. Laurent Bertho (FRA); 2. Ludovic Lecoq (FRA); 3. Cyriaque Riotte (FRA); 4. Stéphane Gourdin (FRA); 5. Patrick Martin (FRA); 6. Jean-Charles Dubedout (FRA) — Most laps led: Ludovic Lecoq (FRA) 87 laps — Fastest lap: Sébastien Garcia (FRA) 29.065 Comet ● Season Q GTR ● Donington Park May 9, 2005 1. Greger Huttu (FIN) (Lister Storm, Team Redline); 2. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Lister Storm, Virtual-Games); 3. Dom Duhan (UK) (Lister Storm, Team Redline); 4. Mattias Holkedahl (SWE) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R, TouringCarTimes.com); 5. Peter Oleksy (BEL) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R, New Wave Racing); 6. Trond Lilleberg (NOR) (Saleen S7-R, The Last Team) — Most laps led: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 31 laps — Fastest lap: Greger Huttu (FIN) 1:26.921

1. Brian Hart (USA) (Honda, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)); 2. Bob Simpson (CAN) (Ferrari, B.O.A.R. (Lot-Fer)); 3. Michel Vignères (FRA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 4. Stephen King (CAN) (BRM, Project AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

VOR ● GTP Schedule S1 N2003 GTP ● Milano (Day) May 9, 2005 1. Dan Ferguson (CAN) (Fergitaboutit Motorsports); 2. Jim Best (CAN) (Crazy Canuks); 3. Tom Cinnamon (CAN) (Uranus Racing); 4. Dale Ballweg (USA); 5. Terry Zorich (USA) (Spy-Taz Racing); 6. Michael Tyler (USA) (Fergitaboutit Motorsports) — Most laps led: Dan Ferguson (CAN) 18 laps — Fastest lap: Steve Causley (USA) 1:52.995 LFNSC ● Busch 2005 N2003 ● Lowes-night May 10, 2005 1. Pascal Faurite (FRA); 2. Thomas Cazorla (FRA); 3. Lionel Fesselier (FRA); 4. Gilles Boulanger (FRA); 5. Julien Alavoine (FRA); 6. Laurent Dilard (FRA) — Fastest lap: () SSR ● Season 1, div 1 GTR ● Motopark Oschersleben May 10, 2005 1. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Porsche 996 GT3-RS); 2. Johan Meissner (SWE) (Porsche 996 GT3-RS); 3. Christian Waltgård (SWE) (Porsche 996 GT3-RS); 4. Roger Jonsson (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena); 5. Peter Axelsson (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena); 6. Kenneth Emanuelsson (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena) — Most laps led: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 43 laps — Fastest lap: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 1:27.254

LFNSC ● Open 2005 N2003 BGN ● Lowes-night May 11, 2005 1. Jean-luc Domede (FRA); 2. Matthieu Burlion (FRA); 3. Christian Doré (CAN); 4. Jonathan Reydet (FRA); 5. Yannick Hilaire (FRA); 6. Xavier Labrosse (FRA) — Most laps led: Matthieu Burlion (FRA) 85 laps — Fastest lap: Matthieu Burlion(FRA) 29.344

N2003 GTP ● Spa-Francorchamps GTP May 12, 2005 1. Dion Vergers (NLD); 2. Andras Kiraly (NLD); 3. Wouter d. Bruijn (NLD); 4. Marcel Thomassen (NLD); 5. Paul Westers (NLD); 6. Kimmo Eggers (NLD) — Most laps led: Andras Kiraly (NLD) 13 laps — Fastest lap: Andras Kiraly (NLD) 1:58.315

S.NL ● SNL.GTR.0

LFNSC ● Cevert 2005

GTR ● Circuit De Catalunya

N2003 GTP ● Sebring GTP

May 11, 2005

May 12, 2005

1. Jarno Bierman (NLD) (Lister Storm, Het Fabrieksteam); 2. Arno d. Rooij (NLD) (Lister Storm, Het Fabrieksteam); 3. Mark Schuttenhelm (NLD) (Lister Storm, Two Wheel Racing); 4. Hielke Kerstma (NLD) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 5. David Hagenaars (NLD) (Saleen S7-R, Hagenaars Bakker Racing); 6. Dion Vergers (NLD) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Zeemering Inc.) — Most laps led: Jarno Bierman (NLD) 17 laps — Most laps led: Bob Bakker (NLD) 17 laps — Fastest lap: Dion Vergers (NLD) 1:38.948

1. Yves Plaçais (FRA); 2. Ludovic Barrière (FRA); 3. Philippe Stano (FRA); 4. Florian Chauve (FRA); 5. Yannick Hilaire (FRA); 6. Didier Conjeaud (FRA) — Most laps led: Yves Plaçais (FRA) 22 laps — Fastest lap: Yves Plaçais (FRA) 1:48.073

KRC ● 2005-Regular N2003 ● Darlington May 11, 2005 1. Jeffrey H. Chandler (USA); 2. Jeff Winter (USA); 3. Randy Drumhiller (USA); 4. Brian Cowart (USA); 5. Ken Kalina (USA); 6. Scott Budisalich (USA) — Most laps led: Jeffrey H. Chandler (USA) 108 laps — Fastest lap: Brian Cowart (USA) 29.216

SSR ● Season 1, div 2 GTR ● Motopark Oschersleben May 12, 2005

VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D1 GPL ● Circuit de Monaco May 12, 2005 1. Steve Causley (USA) (BRM, Project 573 (Fer-BRM)); 2. Bill Mccomber (CAN) (BRM); 3. Michael Tyler (USA) (BRM); 4. Kevin Williams (USA) (BRM, Fabulous BBs (BraBra)); 5. David Killmer (USA) (BRM); 6. Joe Owens (UK) (BRM, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)) — Most lead laps: Steve Causley (USA) 47 laps. — Fastest lap: Kevin Williams (USA) 1:30.146 LFNSC ● Nextel 2005 N2003 ● Dover May 15, 2005 1. Ludovic Lecoq (FRA); 2. Patrick Martin (FRA); 3. Laurent Bertho (FRA); 4. Nicolas Faure (FRA); 5. Ludovic Barrière (FRA); 6. Yannick Cousot (FRA) — Most laps led: Ludovic Lecoq (FRA) 151 laps — Fastest lap: Nicolas Faure (FRA) 22.606

1. Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena); 2. Petter Edin (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena); 3. Thomas Heineman (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena); 4. Jonas Lindberg (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena); 5. Ove Wadman (SWE) (Porsche 996 GT3RS); 6. Thomas Granbacka (SWE) (Ferrari 360 Modena) — Most laps led: Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) 50 laps — Fastest lap: Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) 1:27.343

S.NL ● NL.GTP.1 AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

VOR ● T/A Schedule S4 N2003 TransAM ● Daytona Road Course May 16, 2005 1. Dwayne Jans (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GTS, Blowfish); 2. Michael Tyler (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GTS, Fergitaboutit Motorsports); 3. Kevin Cinnamon (CAN) (Ford Mustang GT, Uranus Racing); 4. Terry Zorich (USA) (Ford GT, SpyTaz Racing); 5. Jim Best (CAN) (Chevrolet Corvette GT, Crazy Canuks); 6. Charles Tromba Jr (USA) (Ford Mustang GT, Dont Look Now!) — Most laps led: Dwayne Jans (USA) 40 laps — Fastest lap: Gary Johnson (USA) 1:42.568

Marc Kerninon (FRA); 6. Alexandre Fornieles (FRA) — Most laps led: Laurent Bertho (FRA) 91 laps — Fastest lap: Laurent Bertho (FRA) 22.973 SSR ● Season 1, div 1 GTR ● Autodromo Do Estoril May 17, 2005

Racing); 5. Hielke Kerstma (NLD) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 6. Arnaud Paagman (NLD) (Lister Storm, Two Wheel Racing) — Most laps led: Bob Bakker (NLD) 14 laps — Fastest lap: Bob Bakker (NLD) 2:03.014 KRC ● 2005-Regular N2003 ● Richmond May 18, 2005

BeRacing ● 2005

1. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Saleen S7-R); 2. Tommy Wernberg (SWE) (Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT); 3. Roger Jonsson (SWE) (Saleen S7-R); 4. Staffan Slörner (SWE) (Saleen S7R); 5. Christian Waltgård (SWE) (Lister Storm); 6. Mikael Hasslo (SWE) (Lister Storm) — Most laps led: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 25 laps — Fastest lap: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 1:45.566

GTR ● Circuit De Catalunya

LFNSC ● Open 2005

May 19, 2005

May 16, 2005

N2003 BGN ● Dover

1. Joeri Blootacker (BEL) (Lister Storm, Team Lister); 2. Anthony Wouters (BEL) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Team Maranello); 3. Eric Munsters (BEL) (Saleen S7-R, Team Saleen); 4. Danny Munsters (BEL) (Saleen S7-R, Team Saleen); 5. Mathieu Souphy (BEL) (Saleen S7-R, Team Saleen); 6. Bert Poesen (BEL) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Team Maranello) — Most laps led: Joris Thielen (BEL) 11 laps — Fastest lap: Anthony Wouters (BEL) 1:40.362

May 18, 2005

1. Yves Plaçais (FRA); 2. Thomas Léveillé (FRA); 3. Florian Chauve (FRA); 4. Ludovic Barrière (FRA); 5. Didier Conjeaud (FRA); 6. Hervé Sabathé (FRA) — Most laps led: Yves Plaçais (FRA) 15 laps — Fastest lap: Alexandre Ledoux (FRA) 1:26.112

LFNSC ● Busch 2005 N2003 ● Dover May 17, 2005 1. Christophe Ferra (FRA); 2. Laurent Bertho (FRA); 3. Thierry Marchand (FRA); 4. Claudio Lopez (FRA); 5.

1. Laurent Dilard (FRA); 2. Thomas Cazorla (FRA); 3. Jean-luc Domede (FRA); 4. Christian Doré (CAN); 5. Jonathan Reydet (FRA); 6. Yannick Hilaire (FRA) — Most laps led: Laurent Dilard (FRA) 154 laps — Fastest lap: Laurent Dilard (FRA) 23.012 S.NL ● SNL.GTR.0 GTR ● Autodromo Brno May 18, 2005 1. Dion Vergers (NLD) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Zeemering Inc.); 2. Jarno Bierman (NLD) (Lister Storm, Het Fabrieksteam); 3. Arno d. Rooij (NLD) (Lister Storm, Het Fabrieksteam); 4. Bob Bakker (NLD) (Saleen S7-R, Hagenaars Bakker

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

1. Brian Cowart (USA); 2. Jeffrey H. Chandler (USA); 3. Ken Kalina (USA); 4. Jason Klootwyk (USA); 5. Daniel Lewis (USA); 6. Jamie E. Klootwyk (USA) — Most laps led: Ken Kalina (USA) 153 laps — Fastest lap: Jeffrey H. Chandler (USA) 21.920 LFNSC ● Cevert2 2005 N2003 F330 ● Oulton Park

SSR ● Season 1, div 2 GTR ● Autodromo Do Estoril May 19, 2005 1. Thomas Heineman (SWE) (Saleen S7-R); 2. Ove Wadman (SWE) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R); 3. Petter Edin (SWE) (Chrysler Viper GTS-R); 4. Tobias Härnvi (SWE) (Saleen S7R); 5. Mats Karlsson (SWE) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R); 6. Mickael Sällström (SWE) (Saleen S7-R) — Most laps led: Thomas Heineman (SWE) 23 laps — Fastest lap: Thomas Heineman (SWE) 1:47.375 72

VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D1 GPL ● Monza10K May 19, 2005 1. Robert Harrison (USA) (Eagle, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 2. Tom Dilibero (USA) (Eagle, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 3. Brent Knoll (USA) (Eagle, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 4. David Killmer (USA) (Cooper, Project 573 (Fer-BRM)); 5. Richard Yalland (UK) (Cooper, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)); 6. David M. Grover (USA) (Lotus, B.O.A.R. (Lot-Fer)) — Most lead laps: Robert Harrison (USA) 22 laps. — Fastest lap: Carey Barnett (UK) 2:20.150 VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D2 GPL ● Monza10K May 19, 2005 1. Michel Vignères (FRA) (Eagle, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 2. Bob Simpson (CAN) (Lotus, B.O.A.R. (Lot-Fer)); 3. Greg Munch (USA) (Eagle, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 4. Joe Owens (UK) (Cooper, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)); 5. Brian Hart (USA) (Cooper, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)); 6. Jeff Canar (USA) (Lotus, B.O.A.R. (Lot-Fer)) — Most lead laps: Bob Simpson (CAN) 13 laps. — Fastest lap: Michel Vignères (FRA) 2:19.079 LFNSC ● Cevert2 2005 N2003 F330 ● Oulton Park May 20, 2005 1. Guillaume Tissier (FRA); 2. Frédéric Hell (FRA); 3. Florian Chauve (FRA); 4. Alexandre Ledoux (FRA); 5. Didier Conjeaud (FRA); 6. Thomas Léveillé (FRA) — Most laps

led: Guillaume Tissier (FRA) 17 laps — Fastest lap: Alexandre Ledoux (FRA) 1:25.986

VOR ● GTP Schedule S1

MoG ● MoGTR 2005

May 23, 2005

GTR ● Anderstorp May 21, 2005 1. Norbi Kiss (HUN) (Lister Storm); 2. Thomas Ettig (HUN) (Lister Storm, dE Racing GTR Team); 3. Sami Silventoinen (FIN) (Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT, Team Epic Racing); 4. Peter Hum (HUN) (Chevrolet Corvette C5-R); 5. Steffen Holzhäuser (GER) (Lister Storm, dE Racing GTR Team); 6. Daniel Almeida (CHE) (Lister Storm, dE Racing GTR Team) — Most laps led: Norbi Kiss (HUN) 22 laps — Fastest lap: Norbi Kiss (HUN) 1:24.547 Comet ● Season Q GTR ● Circuit de Nevers Magny Cours May 23, 2005 1. Greger Huttu (FIN) (Ferrari 575 GTC, Team Redline); 2. Johan Meissner (SWE) (Lister Storm, TouringCarTimes.com); 3. Thomas Heineman (SWE) (Lister Storm, Get Ready Simracing); 4. Christian Waltgård (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, RossoCorsa); 5. Peter Oleksy (BEL) (Ferrari 575 GTC, New Wave Racing); 6. Max Ganholt (SWE) (Lister Storm, Get Ready Simracing) — Most laps led: Greger Huttu (FIN) 30 laps — Fastest lap: Mattias Holkedahl (SWE) 1:35.186

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

N2003 GTP ● Sunsky International Raceway

1. Jim Best (CAN) (Crazy Canuks); 2. Tom Cinnamon (CAN) (Uranus Racing); 3. Dan Ferguson (CAN) (Fergitaboutit Motorsports); 4. Gary Johnson (USA) (Blowfish); 5. Mike Smart (CAN); 6. Michael Tyler (USA) (Fergitaboutit Motorsports) — Most laps led: Dan Ferguson (CAN) 25 laps — Fastest lap: Dan Ferguson (CAN) 1:43.998 SSR ● Season 1, div 1 GTR ● Monza May 24, 2005 1. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 2. Christian Waltgård (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 3. Robin Bergh (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 4. Mattias Holkedahl (SWE) (Lamborghini Murcielago RGT); 5. Staffan Slörner (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 6. Tommy Wernberg (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello) — Most laps led: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 44 laps — Fastest lap: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 1:43.487

SSR ● Season 1, div 2 GTR ● Monza May 26, 2005 1. Ove Wadman (SWE) (Lister Storm); 2. Petter Edin (SWE) (Lister Storm); 3. Thomas Heineman (SWE) (Lister Storm); 4. Mats Linden (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 5. Mats Karlsson (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello); 6. Staffan Synnergren green (SWE) (Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT) — Most laps led: Thomas Heineman (SWE) 29 laps — Fastest lap: Thomas Heineman (SWE) 1:45.556 VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D1 GPL ● Oulton Park Circuit May 26, 2005 1. Richard Yalland (UK) (Honda, Sumo Knights Racing (Coo-Hon)); 2. Michael Tyler (USA) (Brabham, Fabulous BBs (Bra-Bra)); 3. Brent Knoll (USA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 4. Rick Nauman (USA) (Ferrari, B.O.A.R. (Lot-Fer)); 5. Robert Harrison (USA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 6. Graham Swartz (USA) (BRM, Project 573 (FerBRM)) — Most lead laps: Richard Yalland (UK) 34 laps. — Fastest lap: Graham Swartz (USA) 1:36.400 VOR ● GPL Sched -TS9— Class D2 GPL ● Oulton Park Circuit May 26, 2005 1. Stephen King (CAN) (BRM, Project 573 (Fer-BRM)); 2. Michel Vignères (FRA) (Lotus, Lady Luck Racing (Eag-Lot)); 3. Brian Hart (USA) (Honda, Sumo Knights Racing (CooHon)); 4. Bob Simpson (CAN) (Ferrari, B.O.A.R. (Lot-Fer)); 5. John

N. Sheehan (AUS) (BRM, Project 573 (Fer-BRM)); 6. Joe Owens (UK) (Honda, Sumo Knights Racing (CooHon)) — Most lead laps: Michel Vignères (FRA) 35 laps. — Fastest lap: Stephen King (CAN) 1:37.122 LFNSC ● Nextel 2005 N2003 ● Pocono May 29, 2005 1. Cyriaque Riotte (FRA); 2. Laurent Bertho (FRA); 3. Thomas Cazorla (FRA); 4. Ludovic Barrière (FRA); 5. Gilles Boulanger (FRA); 6. Nicolas Faure (FRA) — Most laps led: Laurent Bertho (FRA) 38 laps — Fastest lap: Cyriaque Riotte (FRA) 52.735 Comet ● Season Q GTR ● Monza May 30, 2005 1. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, Virtual-Games); 2. Greger Huttu (FIN) (Ferrari 575 GTC, Team Redline); 3. Sami Silventoinen (FIN) (Lister Storm, Celestial Comets); 4. Peter Oleksy (BEL) (Ferrari 575 GTC, New Wave Racing); 5. Johan Meissner (SWE) (Lister Storm, TouringCarTimes.com); 6. Christian Waltgård (SWE) (Ferrari 550 Maranello, RossoCorsa) — Most laps led: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 29 laps — Fastest lap: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 1:43.740

VOR ● T/A Schedule S4

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

N2003 TransAM ● Leipzig May 30, 2005 1. Dwayne Jans (USA) (Ford Mustang GTS, Blowfish); 2. Terry Zorich (USA) (Ford GT, Spy-Taz Racing); 3. Mike Smart (CAN) (Ford Mustang GT); 4. Tim Collier (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GT, Dont Look Now!); 5. Jim Best (CAN) (Chevrolet Corvette GT, Crazy Canuks); 6. Gary Johnson (USA) (Chevrolet Corvette GTS, Blowfish) — Most laps led: Dwayne Jans (USA) 39 laps — Fastest lap: Dan Ferguson (CAN) 1:34.613 LFNSC ● Busch 2005 N2003 ● Pocono May 31, 2005 1. Thomas Cazorla (FRA); 2. Matthieu Burlion (FRA); 3. Thierry Marchand (FRA); 4. Martin Mouze (FRA); 5. Yannick Hilaire (FRA); 6. Lionel Fesselier (FRA) — Most laps led: Maxime Trepreau (FRA) 45 laps — Fastest lap: Martin Mouze (FRA) 53.378 SSR ● Season 1, div 1 GTR ● Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps May 31, 2005 1. Johan Meissner (SWE) (Gillet Vertigo Streiff); 2. Patrik H. Gårdewall (SWE) (Gillet Vertigo Streiff); 3. Roland Ehnström (SWE) (Gillet Vertigo Streiff); 4. Petter Edin (SWE) (Gillet Vertigo Streiff); 5. Ove Wadman (SWE) (Gillet Vertigo Streiff); 6. Christian Waltgård (SWE) (Gillet Vertigo Streiff) — Most laps led: Johan Meissner (SWE) 10 laps — Fastest lap: Roland Ehnström (SWE) 2:21.798 74

A UTO S IM S PORT I TALIA Brought To You By M4Driving.it FIAv: Federazione Italiana Automobilismo Virtuale

E’ nata una nuova comunità on line per gli appassionati di automobilismo desiderosi di vivere finalmente le emozioni del loro sport preferito nel modo più realistico mai realizzato finora sul web: si chiama FIAv, e potete trovarla in rete su www.fiav.net. La comunità è stata creata dagli appassionati per gli appassionati ed ha lo scopo principale di ricreare, in modalità virtuale, l’ambiente reale della FIA. Infatti, già ad una prima occhiata al sito si può osservare come una spiccata tendenza al realismo ed all’ufficialità siano state le idee essenziali alla base di questo progetto, nato da un sogno e magnificamente realizzato come accade solo ai sogni più fortunati. La comunità FIAv segue il modello reale della FIA, sia per quanto riguarda l’organizzazione dei campionati, suddivisi regolarmente per categorie e per vari livelli di difficoltà, sia riguardo l’allestimento di un “mercato piloti”. La grossa novità apportata dagli ideatori di questa nuova comunità sta nel fatto di aver introdotto una vera e propria carriera virtuale. I piloti, quindi, non dovranno più affrontare le difficoltà di ogni singolo campionato, ma partendo dalle categorie minori, scaleranno la propria carriera fino a poter ambire al campionato mondiale della loro disciplina preferita. Tutte le gare si svolgono sui server messi a disposizione dall’amministrazione di M4driving, questo garantisce la disponibilità di un ottimo

multiplayer che può supportare il massimo numero consentito di piloti per ogni singola gara. Non ci resta che augurare buon divertimento a tutti, vi aspettiamo numerosi! Toca Race Driver TOCA Race Driver 3 messo a punto per un grado di simulazione senza precedenti! Annunciato un controllo di guida di prossima generazione, ampia gamma di campionati confermata. Nuovi dettagli sull’incredibile tecnologia audio e un motore grafico migliorato rivelato attraverso nuovi screenshots. Con oltre otto anni di esperienza nello sviluppo di giochi di corse alle spalle, TOCA Race Driver 3 ti porterà realmente sul circuito al momento del suo lancio, quest’inverno per Playstation 2, Xbox e PC Potendo avvalersi di un motore di nuova generazione di proprietà della serie, TOCA Race Driver 3 ha come obiettivo quello di toccare “il più alto grado di simulazione”. Combinando l’avanzato motore di gioco con un completo sistema di danneggiamento delle vetture e una intelligenza artificiale migliorata, il prodotto che ne uscirà promette di essere la più dettagliata e coinvolgente esperienza racing dei sistemi correnti. Comunque, TOCA Race Driver 3 non si ferma a questo. Un sostanziale livello di ulteriore profondità e realismo è dato dall’inclusione di regole di gara estremamente fedeli e dettagliate nella modalità Pro Career del gioco.

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

Potrete scegliere di attivare le qualifiche, le bandiere di gara, le soste ai box per il rifornimento e la strategia legata alle gomme da usare, tutto in maniera estremamente accurata per gli oltre 100 differenti campionati motoristici del gioco. C’è inoltre l’opzione per le sessioni di pratica, il tuning delle vetture, la lunghezza delle gare e, dove le regole di campionato lo permettono, upgrade di parti delle vetture. Il gioco offrirà la più completa gamma di customizzazioni delle opzioni di campionato sia nelle gare offline che online. E nel momento in cui vi troverete sulla griglia di partenza, vi renderete conto del magistrale lavoro fatto dagli ingegneri del suono di TOCA Race Driver 3, che hanno introdotto un nuovo sistema che cattura l’atmosfera delle reali corse motoristiche. Il nuovo sistema sonoro avrà una quantità di effetti disponibili per veicolo 40 volte superiore rispetto a TOCA 2 arrivando così ad una profondità audio mai sentita prima in un videogame. Mentre altri giochi di guida hanno più volte decantato la “registrazione” dell’audio direttamente dalle vetture, TOCA Race Driver 3 cattura realmente l’atmosfera da gara, proponendo suoni specifici come il premere l’accelleratore, il rombo del motore e mixando tutto insieme per dare il vero frastuono degli eventi racing. Utilizzando un potentissimo motore grafico, TOCA Race Driver 3 sarà inoltre molto piu ricco e dettagliato dal punto di vista visivo. Il mapping 75

standard aggiunge dettagli a macchine e ambientazioni come la superficie stradale, le barriere, segnaletica e cosi via. Le superfici multi-texture porteranno inoltre effetti spettacolari alle piste aggiungedo inoltre profondità di campo agli ambienti e motion blur. Ma, cosa più importante, l’azione racing scivolerà via ad una fluidità super di 60 frames al secondo, anche con 21 macchine su schermo nel mezzo di una competizione ad alta velocità. In TOCA Race Driver 3 potrete competere in molte più discipline motoristiche rispetto a qualsiasi altro gioco di corsa. E per i veri esperti, la modalità di gioco Pro Career offrirà la possibilità di intraprendere sette differenti percorsi di carriera inclusi GT, Off Road, macchine Touring, Storiche, a Ruote Scoperte, Rally e Ovali. In alternativa potete gettarvi subito nell’azione ad alta velocità, saltando sulle più veloci macchine del mondo e liberando la loro potenza sui circuiti nella modalità World Tour.

che consente il passaggio dalla configurazione chiusa a quella aperta elettricamente in soli 10 secondi, conferendole anche il primato di berlinetta convertibile più veloce al mondo (320 Km/h di velocità massima). La Superamerica è prodotta in serie limitata di 559 esemplari, tutti già prenotati. La presentazione alla stampa, iniziata domenica 8 maggio e che si concluderà lunedì 16 maggio, è riservata ad un selezionato numero di giornalisti internazionali.

Con macchine da corsa su licenza, ognuna delle quali rappresenta una vera icona nel mondo dei motori, TOCA Race Driver 3 è previsto per PlayStation 2, Xbox e PC quest’inverno. Presentazione stampa Ferrari Superamerica Monte Carlo, 12 maggio – Sono in corso sulle strade del Principato di Monaco le prove stampa della Superamerica, la convertibile Ferrari dotata dell’innovativo tetto Revocromico (brevetto Fioravanti) AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

FIRST notizie Mad4Games - Redazione In uno sforzo di chiarire alcune delle voci che circondano la nostra prossima release, desideriamo fornirvi i seguenti fatti. Sappiamo che finora ci sono state più domande che risposte. Apprezziamo e comprendiamo i dubbi della comunità in quanto riguardano il futuro della simulazione di corse. Il nostro scopo era, è e sempre sarà quello di realizzare un prodotto degno della dedizione che avete offerto alla Papyrus. Innanzitutto, la nostra prossima release non sarà un mod di NASCAR Racing Stagione 2003 e non abbiamo mai programmato che lo fosse. Sebbene questo titolo sia usato nella nostra attuale Beta, stiamo testando principalmente il sistema dei punteggi e i concetti comunitari. Fisiche e tecnologie non sono ancora sotto test in qualità di parte della nostra prossima release. Per quanto riguarda NR2003, nè la Vivendi nè la rete di FIRST-Racing traggono vantaggio dai maggiorati prezzi del gioco. Il titolo è stato tolto

piste che offrirà un'accuratezza millimetrica. Come abbiamo già detto in passato, offriremo molti modelli oltre che le macchine in commercio. Ci sarà un solido spazio per il modding. Sarà più facile moddare in modo che sia la Papyrus che i modder saranno finalmente ricompensati per il loro duro lavoro. Infine, la nostra prossima release conterrà le macchine dal mondo reale visualmente e fisicamente più accurate rispetto a quanto visto finora. Anche piste reali e realistiche esperienze di corsa mai prodotte in un gico di simulazione di corsa in macchina. Siamo un team appassionato al nostro hobby e al nostro lavoro e stiamo lavorando per creare una simulazione rivoluzionaria, più grande, migliore e esponenzialmente più realistica. In futuro verranno pubblicati nuovi aggiornamenti su FIRST-Racing net. Campionato Italiano NASCAR Il CIN (Campionato Italiano Nascar) è una comunità basata su dei campionati di corse online, che conta oltre 150 piloti iscritti e quasi 700

dagli scaffali alla fine del primo rimestre del 2004, quando le licenze incluse nel gioco sono scadute. Dopo quel periodo la Vivendi non ha più potuto vendere il gioco. La rete FIRST-Racing non ha MAI potuto vendere NR2003. Infine, la nostra prossima release conterrà modelli fisici mai visti prima.

utenti registrati al sito www.cin.cc . È giunto oramai al termine della sua terza edizione ed ha saputo ritagliarsi nel tempo l'apprezzamento di molti piloti virtuali. Ogni anno vengono invitati a correre come special guest i più forti piloti europei, tra i quali Huttu, Hackmann, Torvinen, Towler, che non si lasciano mai scappare l'occasione di mettersi in mostra di fronte al pubblico italiano. Si gareggia da settembre a giugno con il multiplayer NR2003 e si ripercorre la stagione del campionato Nascar reale con duelli serratissimi sul filo delle 200mph e sorpassi ad ogni giro. Divertimento e adrenalina assicurati da 2 server molto potenti, capaci di ospitare tranquillamente oltre 30 piloti per gara e da un'organizzazione seria ed efficiente. Oltre al CIN sono presenti altri campionati di contorno, come il RTC (Road Track Challenge), campionato di corse stradali basato sul Trans Am Mod e che per le future stagioni adotterà come simulatore il GTP mod del Team Redline, il LTC (Legend Track Challenge), campionato endurance con gare da oltre 2 ore, corse sui più bei circuiti mai realizzati dalla comunità online. Per le stagioni future è stata tenuta in considerazione l'ipotesi di realizzare un campionato anche per il GTR, che giorno dopo giorno sta ottenendo sempre più consensi nel panorama delle simulazioni. Il CIN è una realtà dell'online racing europeo e vi aspetta a settembre per l'inizio della stagione 2005/2006 con tante novità e numerose nuove iniziative.

Stiamo anche utilizzando una nuova tecnologia per la costruzione delle AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

The Rinspeed Porsche 997 "Gullwing" The Porsche tuner Rinspeed creates a new and exclusive look for the Porsche 911 (997). Whether Carrera or Carrera S, Coupe or Convertible: Rinspeed offers a new aerodynamics package for these models for immediate deliveries. The original front bumper is accentuated by a front spoiler lip which increases the down force. Aesthetically designed side sills let the 997 appear to be lower and more stretched. A fixed rear wing optimizes the effect of the movable factory rear spoiler and underlines the powerful and sporty looks. The rear bumper add-on lip in a diffuser design extends the bumper downwards and sets the twin angular double exhaust tips of the sport muffler effectfully in scene. The Swiss tuner also offers the well-known aluminium wheel in the "R5/1" design either in 18 inch or 19 inch. The front axle takes at most an 8.5x19" and the rear axle an 11x19" wheel. Tires of the dimensions 235/35-19 and 315/25-19 then are mounted. To complete the program for the 997 Rinspeed also

offers a wide variation of exhaust systems from angular double end tips to a flow optimized sport exhaust inclusive tubular headers, metal catalytic converters and rear muffler. A highlight is set by the gull wing doors by the Swiss customizing company. The original doors swing upwards instead of laterally. An awesome and exclusive look is guaranteed. Suspension wise Rinspeed opts for either sporty springs with a lowering of approximately 25 mm (1 inch) or alternatively an in height and stiffness adjustable coil over suspension kit which can also be used for vehicles equipped with the PASM. The interior is enhanced by full leather trims in any color and variation, carbon decor elements, air bag sport steering wheels, aluminium pedals, foot rests and shift knobs.

Cayenne and VW Touareg. Aesthetics and dynamics are defined constantly in a new way and with a new perception. Stand still is a step backwards. Following this proverb the gracefully designed wheel "C5/1" was created in a totally new and visionary style. The high quality mono block wheel in the new and pronounced Rinspeed five spoke design lets the Porsche Cayenne or VW Touareg to appear even more sporty and powerful. Five dynamically accentuated openings guide the air stream to a free flow and guarantee therefore an optimal heat dissipation of the brakes. Due to a new production procedure for low pressure castings the weight was minimized to only 18.4 kgs (40.4 lbs) and the carrying capacity extended to 950 kgs (2'090 lbs) which are very unique figures for SUV wheels. The new wheel "C5/1" - available either in crystal silver or anthracite colors - is sold in the size of 11x23" starting April 2005. The price is Euro 795.exclusive VAT.

The new Rinspeed aluminium wheel design "C5/1" The Swiss Porsche tuning company Rinspeed presents its new 23 inch wheel named "C5/1" for the Porsche

AUTOSIMSPORT â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Volume 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Number 6

AUTOMOBILI E MOTORI HIGH TECH Modena si riconferma ancora la capitale dei motori di Fabrizio Ferrari Per il 12° anno consecutivo, giovedì 26 maggio, si è rinnovata a Modena (nell'area fiere di Modena Nord), l'annuale Tavola Rotonda denominata "Automobili e Motori High Tech". L'ormai tradizionale manifestazione, patrocinata da tutte le migliori aziende motoristiche locali, dalla Ferrari alla Maserati, dalla Lamborghini alla Ducati, poi ancora VM Motori, Pagani e tanti altri, è organizzata da Democenter in collaborazione con l'Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia ed in particolare, tramite il Master in Ingegneria del Veicolo: uno dei pochi "dedicati" in Europa. Tra i principali argomenti della tradizionale Tavola Rotonda, che quest'anno ha visto come moderatrice dei lavori la nota giornalista televisiva Claudia Peroni, soprattutto il tema dei motori ecologici ad emissioni zero e la nuova pista prove di Modena, la cui realizzazione è finalmente stata approvata in via definitiva. Il primo a prendere la parola è stato il Magnifico Rettore dell'Università di Modena, Prof. Pellacani il quale, oltre a ripercorrere brevemente la storia della manifestazione (a partire dall'anno "0", il 1993), ha ricordato come il tutto sia nato grazie all'allora neonata Facoltà di Ingegneria dell'Università di Modena (1991), soprattutto per opera del Prof. Cantore, del Prof. Andrisano e del Prof. Barozzi. Già all'epoca si stava

pensando al futuro Master in Ingegneria del Veicolo e, anche se le risorse erano scarse, il patrimonio di grande competenza offerto dalle aziende locali, ne permise la nascita che fu annunciata proprio per mezzo del primo convegno (1994), organizzato da Democenter, direttamente all'interno della propria sede. In questo modo, organizzando anche corsi estivi per studenti esteri, l'Ateneo di Modena si stava attrezzando per rispondere alle esigenze delle piccole e medie imprese locali, con il sostegno immediato (inteso come patrimonio di conoscenze tecniche) di tutte le principali e più famose aziende: le stesse che ancora oggi collaborano attivamente con il Master. Subito dopo, il Presidente della Provincia di Modena, Dr. Sabattini, ha invece

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ricordato come le risorse provenienti dalla comunità europea, dopo sette anni di finanziamenti al Master, stiano ora iniziando a scarseggiare per effetto della crisi, ma ha sottolineato anche l'importanza vitale della formazione specifica offerta dall'università per lo sviluppo del territorio. Mentre il Presidente della Regione Emilia Romagna, Dr. Duccio Campagnoli, non ha invece mancato di rilevare come, in un contesto di crescita dell'economia mondiale, l'Italia sia invece in calo, ma non nel caso delle filiere tecnologiche specializzate, come quella motoristica in Emilia Romagna e di cui Modena è il principale centro. Insieme all'agroalimentare, alle costruzioni ed alla moda/abbigliamento, il settore

della meccanica è, infatti, uno dei punti di forza della regione. Ma, nel caso particolare della meccanica, si tratta anche dell'unico settore di successo veramente trasversale ed internazionale, con un futuro certo a patto di saper anticipare e reggere la trasformazione industriale ed economica in atto in questi ultimi anni. I punti di forza del prodotto italiano sono sempre stati la creatività ed il know how specifico, dato soprattutto dalle piccole e medie imprese specializzate e di nicchia della regione. A convalidare le sue argomentazioni, il Dr. Campagnoli ha poi fornito alcuni dati numerici significativi: il settore della meccanica ha visto nel 2004 un aumento del +13% in Emilia Romagna, a fronte di un calo complessivo in Italia del -2%; con l'Emilia Romagna a rappresentare, da sola, tra otto distretti motoristici italiani, un buon

37% del totale del settore meccanico in Italia, pur senza la presenza di alcun stabilimento della FIAT nel territorio. Il Prof. Cantore, VicePreside della Facoltà d'Ingegneria all'Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, ha invece ricordato come oggi si contano all'Università di Modena ben 7 Lauree Specialistiche ed altrettanti Master, tra cui quello specifico sul Veicolo, con un totale di circa 400/500 studenti l’anno impegnati nei corsi specifici, che divengono oltre 2000 nei cinque anni di corso universitario. Ricordando che il miglior patrimonio su cui investire per il futuro non possono che rimanere i giovani, il Prof. Cantore ha anche ribadito come a Modena l'unico vero patrimonio culturale nel settore della meccanica rimangano le auto sportive o ad alte prestazioni, con tutte le implicazioni di ricerca specifica nel settore, da

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intendersi non solo come tradizione tipica del territorio, ma anche quale cultura trasversale da trasmettere anche alle altre università. Dopo il Prof. Cantore, ha preso la parola l'Ing. Jean Jacques His, responsabile dei Motopropulsori alla Ferrari, il quale ha spiegato la funzione, tutt'oggi primaria, della gare al massimo livello come la F.1, per la progettazione dei motori delle auto di serie. Infatti, l'estrema semplicità e la massima funzionalità richiesta dai propulsori che spingono le moderne monoposto della massima formula, si traduce sempre in esperienza preziosa per la progettazione dei motori delle vetture di serie Ferrari, destinate a clienti che sono spesso anche dei veri intenditori. A seguire l'Ing. Andrea Forni, della Direzione Tecnica Prodotto della Ducati, il quale ha introdotto il proprio argomento spiegando brevemente la "mission" Ducati: che è sempre stata quella di produrre moto sportive, con in più l'impegno delle gare. Tra i temi tecnici fondamentali di questa "mission" Ducati: 1) la distribuzione desmodromica, 2) il telaio a traliccio tubolare, 3) la struttura dei motori bicilindrici o, analogamente quadricilindrici (2+2). L'Ing. Forni si poi soffermato sull'evoluzione futura delle moto Ducati, i cui imperativi si baseranno su una sempre maggior riduzione dei pesi e su un aumento costante della potenza. Per quanto riguarda la riduzione del peso, in Ducati contano soprattutto sull'utilizzo di nuovi materiali, come il titanio, per valvole, bielle ed impianti di scarico, oppure il magnesio per i carter motore ed 80

alcune parti della ciclistica, oppure ancora la fibra di carbonio, principalmente per la carrozzeria, ed infine anche la comune plastica per i serbatoi. Tra le evoluzioni meccaniche di un certo rilievo, è previsto anche un rifacimento del lay out dell'intera distribuzione, per rendere l'insieme ancora più compatto e funzionale.

L'Ing. Nicola Menarini della VM Motori ha invece parlato delle difficoltà specifiche d'inserimento nei vani delle diverse vetture e d'interfaccia dell'elettronica motore/veicolo, per l'installazione dei famosi propulsori diesel della nota azienda bolognese, su svariate vetture di diverse aziende nel mondo. L'Ing. Federico Trombi, Amministratore Delegato della B. Engineering, produttrice della stupefacente supercar Edonis, ha invece chiarito che non ci potrà più essere un futuro per le piccole aziende, a causa dei costi d’omologazione troppo elevati che ormai caratterizzano la nostra area.

Mentre, lo stesso Ing. Trombi ha invece confermato come l'unica area possibile, che ancora oggi giustifica la presenza di piccole imprese specializzate come la stessa B. Engineering, sia anch'essa legata alla trasmissione di know how specifico, di cui tutti i grandi paesi emergenti, come la Cina o l'India, hanno ora sicuramente una grande necessità. Il

Dr. Claudio Galli, Direttore Risorse umane della Lamborghini, ha invece parlato dell'integrazione in atto tra la proprietà tedesca Audi/Vw e la piccola ma caratteristica realtà prettamente emiliana della Lamborghini. Grazie alla sua lunga permanenza in Lamborghini (21 anni), il Dr. Galli ha potuto confermare lo stato di crescente difficoltà in cui le piccole realtà sono costrette a confrontarsi, rilevando proprio lo sviluppo e la crescita delle stessa Lamborghini: passata da sole 300 auto l’anno, con circa altrettanti dipendenti nel 1998 (all'epoca dell'acquisizione da parte di Audi), a circa 1600 auto prodotte nel 2004, con

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un organico di circa 700 dipendenti. L'Ing. Franco Magagni, dello Sviluppo Prodotto Maserati, ha invece spiegato il particolare momento di grande crescita della famosa Casa del Tridente, con un aumento del prodotto di circa il 60% nel 2004, dovuto all'introduzione di 4 auto fondamentali: 1) l'ottima Quattroporte, grande gradimento di pubblico (oltre 1000 auto negli USA nel 2004), 2) la fenomenale MC12, prodotto di grande fascino e prestigio per il marchio, la cui richiesta (pur essendo la produzione limitata) è stata eccezionale, 3) la Spyder 90°, 4) il nuovo Coupè Gran Sport. Dopo anni di duro lavoro ora in Maserati s'iniziano a vedere i risultati e lo stesso passaggio della Maserati da Ferrari ad AlfaRomeo, va inserito in un'ottica di creazione del famoso polo sportivo delle vetture italiane, con la Casa del Tridente al centro, Ferrari da una parte ed AlfaRomeo dall'altra, per soddisfare una richiesta quanto più ampia ed articolata possibile. A concludere la Tavola Rotonda, l'Ing. Nevio Di Giusto, ex Direttore del Centro Stile FIAT ed oggi responsabile e creatore di ELASIS, Centro Ricerche del Gruppo FIAT a Pomigliano D'Arco (NA), vicino agli stabilimenti AlfaRomeo. Dal 1998, anno di creazione del Centro, che collabora principalmente con la stessa AlfaRomeo, l'Ing. Di Giusto ha sottolineato anch'esso come il patrimonio dei giovani sia da sempre ritenuto fondamentale all'interno di ELASIS, soprattutto per l'attività di ricerca e di formazione diretta sul campo di lavoro.

CAMPIONATO ITALIANO GT TERZO WEEKEND DI GARE VALLELUNGA 28-29 MAGGIO 2005 La sfida Ferrari-Maserati si fa rovente

L'appuntamento sull'autodromo romano di Vallelunga, sabato 28 e domenica 29 maggio, rappresenta ufficialmente il 3° weekend di gare della serie 2005 del Tricolore GT. In realtà, dopo aver, in pratica, "saltato", le prime prove (sospese) ad Imola, la classifica provvisoria del Campionato italiano GT, si compone solo dei risultati delle due combattutissime ed avvincenti gare di Misano (2° appuntamento a calendario) e si appresta ora ad entrare nel vivo, con la sfida che andrà in scena questo fine settimana a Vallelunga.

Se da una parte l'ultima entrata, la velocissima Maserati MC12 del Team Megadrive, portata in gara dal duo Perazzini-Matteuzzi, si è subito dimostrata molto competitiva,

dall'altra, le Ferrari 550 Maranello della BMS Scuderia Italia, si sono

immediatamente riconfermate come le vetture da battere: sempre veloci e regolari, ma soprattutto ottimamente collaudate e molto efficienti in gara. Infatti, le Ferrari 550 Maranello, tra cui in particolare, quella gestita in pista dal Team Motor dell'Ing. Mario Vincenzi e pilotata dal velocissimo e determinato campione uscente del Ferrari Challenge, Matteo Malucelli, in coppia con il portoghese Miguel Ramos, sono state subito protagoniste in gara a Misano (nel bene e nel male). Il Campionato 2005 iniziava così, con un netto dominio della 550 Maranello di Malucelli in gara 1, condotta sempre in testa dall'inizio alla fine, con la Maserati MC12 di Perazzini-Matteuzzi costretta ad un vano inseguimento e la vettura gemella (550 Maranello) di Cappellari-Lancelotti a seguire (3° all'arrivo). Ma la gara 2 si presentava molto più

Sarà ancora lotta senza quartiere tra Ferrari e Maserati, aggiudicatesi a Misano una gara a testa. AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

"movimentata": il compagno di Malucelli, Ramos, partito alle spalle della vettura gemella del compagno di Team Lancelotti, in testa alla gara e subito inseguito dalla solita Maserati di Perazzini, seguiva il duo di testa in terza posizione, sino a che lo stesso Lancelotti non entrava in testacoda, lasciandogli via libera, insieme alla Maserati di Perazzini, che ereditava così la testa della corsa. Al momento del pit stop con cambio di pilota obbligatorio, il V12 della Maserati non voleva però saperne di riavviarsi velocemente, permettendo così alla 550 Maranello di Cappellari, che sostituiva alla guida Lancelotti, di tornare in testa alla gara, seguito come un'ombra dall'altra 550

Maranello di Malucelli il quale, analogamente, aveva sostituito Ramos; con la Maserati costretta ancora ad inseguire dalla terza posizione.

gara 2, con i due piloti delle 550 Maranello, Cappellari e Malucelli, in bagarre tra loro sino all'arrivo, dove terminavano rispettivamente in seconda e terza posizione.

Ma era proprio nell'ultima parte della corsa che i piloti della Ferrari, in lotta serrata tra loro, finivano per favorire involontariamente il definitivo recupero della Maserati. Infatti, Malucelli, visibilmente più veloce di Cappellari ed ormai sempre più pressato da dietro dalla Maserati, tentava il tutto per tutto, arrivando ad un leggero contatto con lo stesso Cappellari. Ne approfittava ancora una volta la Maserati che, riprendendo la testa della gara, andava a concludere vittoriosamente

Ora a Vallelunga è attesa un'altra sfida "rovente", non solo tra le Ferrari 550 Maranello della BMS Scuderia Italia e la Maserati MC12 della Megadrive, ma anche e soprattutto, tra gli stessi piloti delle due 550 Maranello; con la speranza che, questa volta, la lotta interna tra le due 550 Maranello, non finisca per favorire ancora la Maserati, sempre velocissima e pronta ad approfittare d’ogni minima occasione.

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in gara 1 e poi ritirato in gara 2, dopo aver fatto registrare il giro più veloce in gara); e poi, a seguire, Michele Maceratesi, del Team Motor/Malucelli, sesto in classifica, anch’esso con all’attivo due gare molto combattute, ma dove poteva anche concretizzare molto di più (un ritiro in gara 1 dopo aver fatto segnare il giro più veloce ed un 2° posto in gara 2). Nella Coppa Shell, riservata ai gentlemens drivers, la lotta per il campionato si è subito dimostrata ancor più vivace, rispetto al Trofeo Pirelli.

FERRARI CHALLENGE ANTEPRIMA 3° GARA – VALLELUNGA 28-29 MAGGIO 2005 Inizia la vera battaglia per il campionato Sabato 28 e domenica 29 maggio, sul circuito romano di Vallelunga, sono attese, per il terzo appuntamento stagionale, dopo Imola e Misano, le Ferrari 360 Modena Challenge dei vari Team che disputano la serie italiana del monomarca della Casa del Cavallino rampante. Sarà il weekend della verità dove entrerà nel vivo, dopo un primo appuntamento “virtuale”, ad Imola (gare sospese per la morte del Papa) ed una prima vera prova, molto vivace e combattuta sul circuito di Misano Adriatico, la lotta per il campionato 2005, nelle varie serie (Trofeo Pirelli e Coppa Shell). Nel Trofeo Pirelli, riservato ai piloti

professionisti, ancora una volta, saranno i driver dei vari Team controllati dalla Motor a contrastare l’attuale leader della classifica provvisoria, Niki Cadei, validamente supportato dal compagno di Team Sandro Montani, ma anche incalzato da una vera e propria schiera di piloti Motor. A partire da Domenico, “Mimmo” Schiattarella, nuovo alfiere del Team Motor di Modena, la squadra capogruppo diretta dall’Ing. Mario Vincenzi, quarto nella classifica provvisoria, grazie a due gare condotte in modo molto proficuo ed accorto, a Misano (due quarti posti finali). A seguire, nella classifica provvisoria, altri due driver facenti sempre parte dell’organizzazione che fa capo alla struttura capitanata dall’Ing. Vincenzi: Andrea Belluzzi, quinto in virtù di due gare molto aggressive, ma non prive d’alcune sbavature (2°

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In questo caso, i piloti dello squadrone Motor, si sono rivelati subito tra i migliori, con Vanni Campari, del Team Motor/Sauro, subito in testa alla classifica provvisoria, grazie a due gare condotte al massimo livello (3° in gara 1 e 2° in gara 2). Sicuramente, domenica 29 a Vallelunga ne vedremo ancora delle belle, con la lotta per il campionato che entrerà nel vivo ed i piloti dello squadrone Motor, sempre protagonisti dello spettacolo; soprattutto nel Trofeo Pirelli, dove Mimmo Schiattarella è chiamato ad una conferma dell’ottimo inizio di campionato ed il duo BelluzziMaceratesi, già impegnato nell’appassionante rimonta sul leader della classifica provvisoria Niki Cadei, della rivale storica di sempre, la Rossocorsa. Ma i piloti dello squadrone Motor hanno già dimostrato a Misano di saper andare molto forte, a suon di giri veloci in gara: ora non resta che 84

concretizzare il notevole potenziale della squadra, con risultati ancor più concreti. Le Maserati e le gondole veneziane a Pechino nella Città Proibita 2 Giugno – Pechino Nel corso dell’evento “Italia nel Parco” tenutosi a Pechino presso il Chaoyang Park, in occasione della Festa della Repubblica, la Maserati è stata scelta come portabandiera del Made in Italy. La prestigiosa Quattroporte e l’elegante Coupè sono state esposte direttamente all’ingresso del bellissimo giardino in stile italiano, che si trova all’interno del parco stesso, insieme a delle gondole veneziane come ambasciatori della

storia, della cultura e della tradizione italiana. L’esibizione “Italia nel Parco” , organizzata dal I.T.C di Pechino è parte dell’attuale progetto Marco Polo che vuole proporre e ricreare per il pubblico cinese gli autentici sapori dello stile e del modo di vita italiano. Il 2005 celebra infatti il 750° Anniversario del grande veneziano che contribuì in modo fondamentale all’avvio e all’espansione degli scambi culturali e commerciali tra Asia e Europa, e festeggia anche i 40 anni dall’ apertura del primo ufficio della ITC in Cina. L’esposizione delle gondole nei canali di Pechino di fronte alla Città Proibita,

AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

la antica reggia imperiale, e delle Maserati all’ingresso del giardino imperiale, oltre a rappresentare una sintesi dei simboli di arte, tradizione, stile e tecnologia del paese natale di Marco Polo, vogliono essere anche un simbolo di una nuova stagione di rilancio della cooperazione economica e culturale tra Cina e Italia, basata su accordi condivisi e sul profondo rispetto reciproco. Sfilate di moda, presentazioni di oggetti di gioielleria e di design insieme ai migliori prodotti alimentari, completano la presentazione organizzata dall’ ITC per avvicinare sempre più i consumatori cinesi alla passione per il Made in Italy. 85

Nathan Kinch and Andrew Kirkaldy on pole for both races at Thruxton GT2 class The no 35 Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari 360 Modena of Nathan Kinch and Andrew Kirkaldy managed the fastest laps in both qualifying sessions at Thruxton on Saturday afternoon. Kinch was behind the wheel in session one, setting a time of 1:14.278. His team-mate Kirkaldy took over for qualifying two and set an impressive time of 1:12.296, which was just over two seconds quicker than the lap record set by him in 2002. “I am very happy,” Kirkaldy said afterwards. “Thruxton is the best track for our car and we were expecting to be on the front row. To be on pole is very important from a Championship point of view and it’s now just a case of scoring some more points in the races.” The sister Ferrari no 34 had good qualifying results as well. Chris Niarchos set the sixth fastest time in the first session and his team-mate Tim Mullen was able to go even faster in qualifying two, with a time of 1:12.416, which saw him finish in second position. For a time it looked like Mullen was going to top the session, but a problem with the timing system meant a quicker lap by Kirkaldy hadn’t been registered. When the error was noticed the no 35 car claimed pole in qualifying two in the end, with Mullen having to settle for second position. After a disappointing weekend at Knockhill for LNT, the team had much better qualifying sessions today. Jonny Kane and Andrew

Thompson in the no 42 T400R finished in second and fourth position. In both sessions, the TVR had its left side tyres changed to get better lap times, with the decision proving to be the correct one. The no 43 TVR of Warren Hughes and Patrick Pearce brought home fourth and third places, with a personal best lap of 1:14.124 in session two. “The car had definitely improved from the first qualifying session,” Hughes said later. “I could have done a better time into the 1.13s but I was held up in traffic. We will never be able to match the Ferraris around here, because Thruxton is one of our weakest circuits. We are now hoping for a good race and a point finish.” The Mosler MT900R of Gavan Kershaw from Cadena GTC was third quickest, with a time of 1:15.217 in qualifying one, but team-mate Barrie Whight managed to only set the ninth quickest time in qualifying two, for the car’s first appearance in the Championship. GT3 class The GT3 class saw two varied qualifying sessions. Qualifying one saw Mark Cole of Team Parker

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finishing on pole position, with a time of 1:17.789. Ian Stinton came second in the Prosport of Rob Horsfield Racing, setting a time of 1:18.527, followed by the no 81 Marcos Mantis of Chris Beighton and Jon Finnemore. Tim Harvey, who drives alongside Andy Britnell in the Motorbase Performance no 23 Porsche, was quickest in the second qualifying session, setting a time of 1:17.517. “I was hoping that we were going to get pole,” Harvey commented. “I could have gone quicker, but it’s nice to do it in a standard car against more advanced machinery.” Piers Masarati finished in second position in the no 9 Tech 9 Porsche, after his team-mate Deverikos came fourth in the previous qualifying session. “I think, considering we are carrying 60kg ballast again we have done very well,” Masarati commented. “I hope we can win the race to score some good points and extend our Championship lead. Let’s see what happens.” The no 11 Morgan Aero of Oliver Bryant finished in third position in qualifying two, setting a time of 1:19.394. 86

Pics from Race 1 & 2 Frm Thruxton

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Milestone: mai dire mai By http://www.speedmaniacs.de Simone Bechini si esprime a proposito delle speculazioni sulla prosecuzione di una nota serie di giochi di corsa della Milestone e ci dà i primi indizi sul futuro titolo dello sviluppatore italiano. Lo sviluppo di giochi di simulazione corse presso lo studio italiano Milestone ha una radicata tradizione essendo lo stesso noto alla maggior parte dei giocatori per titoli come Bleifuss, i suoi sequel e i vari titoli Superbike. Per lo sviluppatore con sede a Milano il titolo Squadra Corse Alfa Romeo è già l'ottavo titolo sulle corse in dieci anni di esistenza dell'azienda. Dopo due giochi sulle autovetture SCAR e Racing Evoluzione - potrebbe esserci in un prossimo futuro il seguito della serie Superbike e con essa un ritorno al popolare settore delle due ruote, almeno secondo le attuali voci di corridoio. Secondo quanto confermato da Simone Bechini ad "AutoSimSport" in riguardo a tali rumour a Milano si sta realmente pensando di proseguire questa serie. "Spesso ci chiedono quando faremo un nuovo gioco con protagoniste le moto. Ebbene, mai dire mai, e sono sicuro che verrà anche il tempo per questo". Questo quanto ha dichiarato senza scoprire troppo le sue carte. E' molto più probabile che gli italiani realizzeranno prima un seguito al gioco SCAR sull'Alfa Romeo che a

questo punto vedrebbe quasi sicuramente implementato una modalità online completa. "Ci stiamo pensando e prenderemo presto una decisione" ha concluso Bechini.

"MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology 3 cambierà l'esperienza del gico multiplayer", così si è espresso il presidente della Climax Tony Beckwith.

Climax: "MotoGP 3 cambierà il gioco in multiplayer" - in più nuovi screenshot

"Mai come ora i giocatori potevano entrare con tale facilità nell'arena multiplayer e lasciarla con la stessa facilità. Siamo sicuri che in questo modo il gioco raggiungerà un target maggiore".

Con MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology 3 lo sviluppatore Climax inserisce una serie di nuove caratteristiche nella serie e allo stesso tempo promette migliorie per favorire la giocabilità. Gli sviluppatori nutrono grandi speranze soprattutto nella migliorata modalità multiplayer. Con MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology 3 la THQ ad autunno di quest'anno vi manderà di nuovo in posizione di partenza con la sua serie Moto GP e aggiunge una serie di nuove caratteristiche e migliorie. Così i possessori di PC e Xbox potranno non solo gareggiare sulle piste già note ma, grazie alla modalità Extreme, potranno lasciarle per percorre le strade di città e campagna. A un parco vettur e decente ci pensa un'estesa scelta di moto e macchine da corsa dalla classe 600cc fino alle Superbike da 1200cc. Accanto alle nuove modalità Spettatore e Commento anche quella online attende molte migliorie.

"Gli appassionati di corse motoristiche, soprattutto quelli che finora sono stati scoraggiati dalla complessa procedura del gioco online, ora saranno in grado di sfidare con un solo click i corridori con lo stesso livello di esperienza. E' davvero semplicissimo!", così Beckwith ha annunciato la semplicità di utilizzo di questa modalità. E per rendere ancora più gradevole correre con MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology 3 gli sviluppatori si sono dati da fare con tutte le segnalazioni critiche del predecessore. Per questo motivo verrà migliorata ancora la sensazione di velocità in questo terzo titolo, mentre verrà settata a un livello migliore la reazione dei veicoli. D'altra parte nulla è più frustrante che cadere dalla moto già poche centinaia di metri dal via!

Lo sviluppatore Climax si è prefissato di offrire a tutti gli acquirenti una soddisfacente esperienza di gico online.

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Live for Speed News http://www.liveforspeed.net S2 Resoconto dei progressi di giugno 2005 Salve corridori. Questo è un breve resoconto dei progressi per farvi sapere come stanno andando le cose. Il progresso è stato buono e abbiamo messo su le corse di endurance che sono in beta test due volte a settimana, per una durata da 45 minuti a 1 ora e 15 minuti. Ci hanno aiutato a migliorare l'esperienza delle corse lunghe con i pit stop, in cui l'uso del carburante, la temperatura dei pneumatici e le ruote sono un fattore importante. La fisica delle ruote è stata migliorata e una caratteristica interessante è che ora possono sporcarsi e perdono presa dopo un'escursione su sabbia o erba. Il sistema d'istruzione ai box è stato migliorato in modo da poter cambiare la vostra strategia di corsa, se necessario, prima di recarvi ai box. Eric di recente ci ha dato un aggiornamento al Kyoto Race Track. E' davvero bello e le migliorie ci piacciono molto, sia i cambiamenti grafici sia alcune sezioni migliorate della pista. Abbiamo corso con le macchine GTR sulla configurazione GP Lunga e la Formula XR sul circuito Nazionale più corto.

stata molto modificata per correre su piste sdrucciolevoli con un motore da corsa modificato da 1.4 litri che produce 180bhp. E' una scelta migliore per la classe di macchine S2 perché è una rivale per la XF GTR. Prima di questo cambiamento, la LX8 e la XF GTR erano le uniche nelle proprie classi. Abbiamo abbastanza autovetture a trazione posteriore in S2 e la vecchia LX6 è molto meglio da guidare che nella versione S1, in grado di competere con le potenti macchine da strada RA e FZ50. Per questo è bello avere un'altra macchina a trazione anteriore. Eccitante da guidare grazie alla sua leggerenza, peso anteriore e potenza. Comunicato Stampa I 40 anni della Miura festeggiati alla „Liegi-Roma-Liegi“ L’edizione 2005 dello storico Rally di vetture d’epoca Liegi-Roma-Liegi sarà un’altra occasione per festeggiare i 40 anni della mitica

Abbiamo fatto un cambiamento alla lista delle macchine da includere. La LX8 non sarà più inclusa e al posto di questa abbiamo una nuova macchina. la UF GTR. Si basa sulla UF 1000 ma è AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6

Lamborghini Miura. Gli organizzatori della manifestazione - di cui ricorre tra l’altro il 75mo anniversario - hanno infatti deciso di introdurre nella competizione uno speciale „Challenge Lamborghini“, riservato alle “classiche” della Casa del Toro. Una di queste - uno splendido esemplare di Miura SV del 1972 di proprietà di Automobili Lamborghini e iscritta al rally con il numero 90 sarà pilotata dal Responsabile del Centro Stile Lamborghini, il belga Luc Donckerwolke, un vero entusiasta di vetture classiche che utilizza questi eventi come ispirazione per il proprio lavoro. Il rally Liegi-Roma-Liegi partirà la sera del 20 giugno da Bormio (Italia) e la prima tappa prevede start e arrivo sul Passo dello Stelvio, a 2758 metri s.l.m. I concorrenti dovranno tenere una velocità media che va dai 45 ai 50 km/h su strade di montagna che attraversano le Alpi Giulie e le Dolomiti, percorrendo passi famosi a 1896, 2042 e 1970 metri. Il 21 giugno è prevista la tappa Bormio-San Martino di Castrozza. Il 22 la San Martino di CastrozzaKranjska Gora, in Slovenia e il 23 la tappa finale con arrivo a Portorose, sempre in Slovenia, dopo un viaggio di 1250 km. Sant’Agata Bolognese, 14 giugno 2005

Borse di studio Ferrari - Per realizzare le soluzioni del futuro Maranello, 9 maggio - La Ferrari attribuirà a neoingegneri ad elevato potenziale, delle Borse di Studio finalizzate allo sviluppo di progetti di innovazione in grado di individuare soluzioni tecniche di avanguardia da applicare alle sue vetture del futuro. Le Borse di studio sono state pensate per inserire nella Direzione Tecnica Ferrari, area Innovazione e Ricerca, 5 neo ingegneri provenienti dai più prestigiosi Istituti Universitari di Ingegneria italiani e internazionali. Tra gli atenei internazionali: Tong Ji University Shanghai, Tsinghua University Beijing, McGill University Montreal, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Melbourne, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. A tal fine è stata avviata una collaborazione con il MIP, la scuola di alta formazione di Ingegneria Gestionale del Politecnico di Milano. L’iniziativa è indirizzata a giovani laureati in: • Ingegneria meccanica o elettronica, con specializzazione nell’area “Interfaccia uomo-macchina” • Ingegneria meccanica o elettronica con specializzazione in “Sviluppo di sistemi complessi dell’autoveicolo” (es.sistema sospensioni / sistema elettrico del veicolo) • Ingegneria meccanica o elettronica con specializzazione in “Nanotecnologie” con una buona conoscenza di sensoristica (meccanica o biomedica)

• Ingegneria Aeronautica con specializzazione in “Sistemi di controllo” • Ingegneria dei Materiali con specializzazione nell’area dei materiali innovativi applicati alle auto e agli aeromobili Denominato “Innovation Team”, il progetto vedrà la sua fase d’avvio a fine giugno; le domande di ammissione saranno accettate infatti fino al 10 giugno 2005. Per presentare la propria candidatura dovrà essere compilato il formulario che si trova sui siti www.ferrariworld.it e www.mip.polimi.it da inviare a careerservice@mip.polimi.it Per maggiori informazioni: 0536/241044 – 0536/949084 – 0536/241224 media@ferrari.it Universum Graduate Survey 2005: Ferrari sempre al comando Maranello, 2 giugno 2005 - Secondo la ricerca Universum Graduate Survey 2005, realizzata su un campione rappresentativo di laureandi e neolaureati delle migliori università europee e divulgata oggi, la Ferrari si riconferma come l'azienda più ambita dove lavorare. L’autorevole Universum Communications di Stoccolma rivela infatti che anche quest’anno in Italia, sia per l'area business che per quella scientifica, corrispondenti rispettivamente agli studenti di economia e a quelli di Ingegneria e Scienze, la Ferrari si aggiudica il primo posto come luogo di lavoro ideale. I circa 3.900 studenti italiani interpellati hanno eletto Ferrari come

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la migliore azienda tenendo conto di diversi aspetti tra cui i livelli retributivi, le opportunità di carriera internazionale, l’offerta di ruoli sfidanti e la formazione interna offerta al dipendente. Altissima attrattività anche per i neolaureati europei in Ingegneria e Scienze dove la Ferrari, unica Azienda italiana citata tra le top 30, si posiziona anche quest’anno al 4° posto dopo BMW, IBM e Siemens. Tra gli studenti di economia delle maggiori università europee invece, l’Azienda aumenta la propria popolarità rispetto al 2004 e passa dal 26° al 18° posto essendo sempre l’unica rappresentante del nostro Paese. Questa immagine positiva non scaturisce solo dalla reputazione costruita con i successi commerciali delle vetture stradali e con quelli sportivi sulle piste. Su di essi influiscono una serie di iniziative messe in atto dalla Ferrari che vanno dalle borse di studio per giovani ingegneri specializzati nella ricerca avanzata, fino alle iniziative a favore della popolazione aziendale che conta oggi 2.700 persone con un’età media di 36 anni e una penetrazione di laureati del 51% nel settore impiegatizio. Tali attività comprendono: formazione continua personalizzata ed altamente specialistica che coinvolge ogni anno quasi il 50% dei dipendenti, iniziative dedicate al benessere, alla prevenzione ed all’area ricreativa e della cultura, fino all’informatica e alle lingue straniere.

L’ampio programma dedicato alla salute e al benessere, attuato in collaborazione con i medici del CONI, include visite specialistiche nel Centro Benessere dell’Azienda e iniziative di informazione e prevenzione medica, check up annuali e fitness con personal trainer in palestre convenzionate. Altre iniziative sono dedicate alla popolazione femminile (Formula Benessere Donna) e ai figli dei dipendenti (Formula Benessere Junior) con educational, visite specialistiche e orientamento alle attività sportive.

di lavoro, ferie scaglionate, part time). Già oggi, sotto il nome del “Nostro Grand Prix”, i dipendenti forniscono soluzioni per il miglioramento continuo, premiate periodicamente. Il contratto, frutto di una trattativa di 15 mesi senza nemmeno un’ora di sciopero, è stato approvato dall’87% dei dipendenti e i sondaggi di analisi di clima rivelano un indice di forte soddisfazione sul lavoro pari a 70 punti su 100.

Più specificamente nell’area del lavoro, la Ferrari ha varato, quattro anni fa, con la definizione di Formula Uomo, un programma per dare alle strutture aziendali e alle tecnologie quell’eccellenza capace di garantire la miglior soddisfazione e il miglior risultato dal lavoro quotidiano. Attorno a questo concetto sono sorte la Galleria del Vento, la Nuova Meccanica, la Nuova Verniciatura, la Logistica e il Centro Sviluppo Prodotto. Completa questa realtà, l’appena rinnovato Contratto Integrativo che ha confermato quanto i dipendenti credano nello sviluppo dell’Azienda e siano disposti a divenirne partecipi. Il premio di risultato massimo è infatti legato al raggiungimento dei volumi di vendita, efficienza e redditività e può arrivare, alla fine del 2008, ad un valore pari al 15% della retribuzione media annua di un operaio. Inoltre, Azienda e Sindacato hanno definito forme di flessibilità produttiva che consentono di rispondere in tempo reale alle richieste del mercato (turni AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 6