F1 shouldn't be fun damn it.

The game does seem to recommend 3 stop strategies far more than I would have thought likely. Its also a shit strategy because the AI tend to do one less stop than the one you get recommended, which always leads to you losing about 5 or 6 places.

Bob wrote:

I can’t remember anyone doing a scheduled three stop this year. Mostly everyone one stops and the only strategy calls are the under cut or going long,

It’s a bit too many dnfs this season has seen very few, 

I mean it’s all a bit how I remember Codie’s f1 game. It’s like they’ve got no idea how the season is going to pan out despite launching halfway through the season.

The dnf's were probably down to engine parts, it's a balancing act of deciding what engine parts to use at what circuit without incurring penalties. Making a gearbox last for 6 races is harder than it sounds. I went full new parts for Canada which helped alot, but I'm gonna pay for that down the line.

Austria. Upgrades for the car delivered. Aero, Chassis and Engine upgrades. We are now joint top of the midfield teams with Haas according to the comparision charts. Austria, is like a giant go-kart track, which is good for me as i do well on those type of tracks. Engineer pointed out before FP1 that the race was expected to start wet and gradually dryout. He suggested we compromise the setup for race day rather than qually. I didnt listen, this would come back to haunt me.

FP1 was going well, i was hitting all the team targets. However on turn 3 i lost the rear end and smashed the front of the car into a wall. End of FP1.

FP2 & FP3 passed without incident. However my qually practice run was showing that i was very quick, very.

Qually was wet and everyone went out on inters. Apart from me. A leak meant i lost 10 mins of qually time. When i did get out for my flying lap, Perez screwed up my run on his outlap. That meant i was 16th when i came back in the pits. Just managed one more awful qually run and got to Q2 in 15th position. Just.

The weather improved for Q2 and i made the top ten shootout comfortably. Q3, was wet again, i was down in tenth. I thought id try one more run at the end of Q3. Just before i crossed the start line for the lap with less than 30 seconds to go, DRS was re-enabled. I was the last car to start my run and now i had DRS. So i ended up P1. Yep pole position.

The race start was on full wets, it was pouring down. Bottas who started P2, got the better of me going into turn 1, i outbraked myself and damaged my front wing on the back of his car. Feck. Hamilton and Vettel got past on the first lap as well, when i had a massive tankslapper in turn 3 again. The damage to the front wing meant the car was understeering. Also a few laps in, i realised why i got P1 in qually (other than getting DRS). The other drivers in the top ten had compromised their cars in qually for race pace. They were much quicker than me in the wet. However i had become a mobile cork in the bottle and was holding up alot of cars. The guys in front of me just shot off into the distance.

My engineer suggested that i come in for Inters, i jumped at the chance, but i decided not to replace the front wing at the stop.

TBC........

Cliffhanger!

Austria continued...

I came out of the pits just ahead of alonso, unfortunately he'd stopped the lap before so his tyres were up to race temperature, mine were unfortunately not. My favourite corner coming up fast, turn 3. I outbraked myself and missed the apex completely, alonso sailed past. Bollocks. I wasn't doing too bad as i was in 5th, but there was a gaggle of cars behind me wanting to get past. In my exuberance, i tangled with Sainz and broke part of the right side of the front wing. Fuck. Well at least i had symmetry now right? Also i got given a 3 second penalty to be applied post race. Double fuck. My understeer now turned into a lack of downforce and the inevitable surge of cars passing me.

I radioed the engineer to ask about the weather. The rain would break in 10 minutes. I decided to try to extend the stint and hold out for dry tyres. Some of the other cars did not, so i found myself back in 5th again. The car was awful to drive, even though both sides of the front wing were damaged, i calculated that a new wing would definitely put me out of the points position. So i decided to ask for the downforce to be cranked up on my next stop by two notches. It couldnt make the car any worse to handle right?

Lap 25 and engineer said to come in at end of this lap for dry tyres. They were recommending a set of new SuperSofts. I had a pair of used Ultrasofts that i toyed with using, but in the end decided to listen to the teams advice.

Came in put on the SuperSofts, had the two notches of downforce added and off i went. I'd dropped to 8th. However the track was drying out fast and my dry setup was coming back into play all be it with a damaged front wing.

Whilst it had been raining heavily, I'd been running a lean fuel mix, that meant i had 3 laps + of extra fuel to burn off. I decided not to waste it straight away. Magnessen in 7th was my target. However Sainz was behind me in 9th, gunning for payback, we tangled again, he went spinning off the track, i some how kept it on the straight and narrow. Then boom Saftey Car was called (for Sainz). Great i thought, i might have a chance of a decent haul of points on the restart.

The safety car chain was a mess of cars out of sequence, due to backmarkers and drivers switching out Inters for dry tyres. When it was annouced that the saftey car was coming in, i switched fuel mix to rich, time to burn it off. The saftey car came in with 3 laps to go, lights went green and it was carnage. I jumped two cars into the braking zone, however it was the braking zone for turn 3, and once again i got a tankslapper on when i applied the power alittle too eagerly. I dropped back to 9th. fuck fuck fuck. Whats worse was that i noticed the cars that went past had UltraSoft tyres on. Balls, i should have gone Ultrasofts on my stop as well. I tried in vain to catch the cars infront, but to no avail. Well until magnesson drove into a backmarker when trying an overtake. Taking him and the backmarker out of play. Perez got caught out as he was chasing magnesson. I inherited 7th place on the last lap. Unfortunately as i crossed the line, I'd forgotten about my 3 second penalty. The final race result had me in 11th. Balls, after all that, no points.

I leave Austrian empty handed. A weekend of promise thrown away. On sliver lining is that i have parts upgrades coming for Silverstone in the next race.

Good stuff. You tried any MP?

Can imagine there'd be a pile up on the first corner of every race.

If it’s anything like gt sport probably not

Usually you can choose a certain amount of laps

Gonna up load some in game pics, hope they work. Bear with me.

The practise programme

The tyres for the weekend

The gearbox page

The contract page, where bonus perks are negotiated and you can see your value to the team

Mclaren R&D page