Yep, that's so true. That's why I love Prost and Senna not so much. Racing isn't about being on the limit 100 % of time and throwing the car around like madman. It about pacing yourself to achieve certain goal. It is beating your opponent in the most safe and inteligent way. Winning like a boss. But driver needs to be mature and confident. Needs to be certain of his skills and how to use them to be better overall. Old formulas maybe aren't gripfest near the limit but are predictable so we can catch the slides and correct the car even before something bad happens because we sometimes know we have overdone something and because it is predictable we can do some damage limitation. Precision always, always wins.
I don't know, I think I'd still put Senna above Prost, at least when it comes to driving the car. It's true that Prost raced for 14 seasons and retired 54 times and Senna raced for 11 seasons and retired 51 times, meaning Senna retired on average once per year more often than Prost. But Senna had less retirements due to reasons other than technical failures (17, though four of them are listed as accidents or spinning off even though they were caused by, in chronological order, a wheel coming off, engine blowing up and two instances of gearbox problems, meaning they were actually technical problems foremost. They list only 3 spin outs for Senna, two of which were caused by gearbox problems), and Prost spun off vastly more during his career (Senna has 3 listed with two being due to gearbox problems, Prost has 7 spin outs, though only one had a more specific description, trying to overtake Senna and Senna not giving way). What I will admit is that Prost was definitely more mature, and more reasonable than Senna. Senna had more accidents and collisions with other cars, especially during overtaking situations, than Prost. Had Senna been a bit calmer in those situations he might have avoided something like 6 accidents. You could say that Prost was a better racer, but Senna was definitely a better driver. Even though he pushed the car farther than Prost, very rarely did he ever lose control of the car if he didn't have a mechanical issue. No matter what the reasons were in the end, Prost spun out more than twice as often as Senna.
Gave it a quick try after reading your post. Three laps total, counting the untimed out lap from the pits. For reference the Malaysia track, especially the full layout, is the track I'm least familiar with in rF2. First lap I was all over the place on the part not in the short version, and actually came in a bit too fast into the last right hander before the two final straight, ended up on the gravel for a short while. 2:22. Next lap I messed up the fast left and right combination, was still all over the place on the extended bit, but avoided the sand trap. 2:18. Also it's 3:30 AM here and I've been up since 8 in the morning, so I'm not exactly fresh. This on a totally green track and no setup work (not even my usual "less camber to get the outside of the tyres to actually touch the surface" setting for every car), on my least familiar track. I'm sure that given time to practice and perhaps set the car up properly I could snatch 10 seconds off of that, maybe more, 5-8 seconds would probably come pretty easy. On a green track that is, on a rubbered track I could take out significantly more. Don't know why you're experiencing such problems. How familiar are you with that particular layout?
Agree. Prost wanted to win races, and everything else was far below that. Senna wanted to reach the theoretic Perfect race, to be at limit of laws of physics every single lap, no matter how fast the rest of field was. To actually win a race though, you often don't need that. And thats what most people enjoy more but is just a matter of personal mindset, there's no objective truth that Senna's mindset should be admired more. But yeah, as one youtube comment said, in the end nobody could put together such an insane lap as Senna. Its interesting that in every thread where something about limit is mentioned, these names will spawn in the discussion lol.
Yep. Though I'll say this: Had Senna been able to cool it occasionally, we wouldn't be having this discussion. =)
Not that familiar, but it's things like the last corner, where I've exited in 1st, pick up 2nd, and find myself on the other side of the track because of the torque wave that tankslaps the hell out of it, and I was trying to be progressive with the throttle.
Actually, using the EVE and paradoxically increasing the throttle sensitivity may have helped a bit, as I got it down to a 2m17f, and with what is probably an ordinary set up, think I'd be happy at 2m15ish. The AI cars are doing 2m07 though....
I just ran 10 or 15 laps on a well rubbered track after being away from it for quite a while. I am very familiar with the track and only managed high 13s and low 14s. These were sloppy laps as I was trying too hard. I believe I have low 13s (and maybe high 12s) in me. I'm a very average driver so that means aliens will probably do 6s or 7s. Done that many a time. The car has to be balanced when you throttle down or it will definitely pull and if the "torque wave" is too intense then change your gearing so you're at the lower end of the torque band when you punch it or be less aggressive with your progressive throttling.
I don't think the obvious fact that these old F1s can spin away from you under power if you're not careful has ever been denied. Only the root cause has been argued. I never look at my speed so I can't really say. But here are my final gear ratios for the Spark 32: 9.19 (kind of low - I might try raising it some) 6.53 5.25 4.45 3.89 I ran some laps to see how I shift exiting the last right hander leading to the grandstand straight. Seems I have about three techniques I use depending on how hooked up I am. 1. Hooked up and balanced - Wind out 1st gear fairly far and shift to second well into its power band, say 8000rpm. Hang on! 2. Not so balanced - short shift 1st gear, enter 2nd at about 7000rpm. 3. If technique 1 starts to get me squirrelly, quickly short shift 2nd and go to 3rd lower in its power band. 4. If technique 1 starts to get me squirrelly, just back off the gas quickly and reapply. Bottom line is that is what the car does and you have to be very atuned to the situation and react quickly.
True, but some of the faster guys just seem to drive thru without experiencing what we do, so I'm curious how they're able to do it. If I try and drive smoothly to ensure the torque wave doesn't get the better of me, then it's like driving Miss Daisy.
The fast guys are SMOOOOotttthhh. Real smooth. I am no expert in these but I will tell you how I explained it to some newcomers who could barely get out of pits. Ok...gently accelerate, breath, take foot off of accelerator, breath, gently place your foot on the brake, breath...press harder...breath, gently remove foot, breath, place foot on accelerator, breath, press harder....repeat. The thing is the fast guys do this sooooo well....and yes i hate them too.
Indeed smoothness is all what racing is about, basically you can go on the pedal fast and not smooth, or slow and not smooth (thats the slowest of all but at least fairly safe), or slow and smooth or fast and smooth (thats what you want). Somebody who can't drive well can look at pedal work of pros and say "well they are on full throttle in 0.4secs - so I why do I spin out if I do the same!?" Because you don't do the same, you are on full throttle in 0.4 secs but not linearly and calmly (iirc perfect input is sinusoid, which is even trickier than linear), most people tend to increase the pedal much more heavily at one moment or the other and thats what the car doesnt like. I'm not talking to anyone specifically here, please nobody take no offense, but the truth is most of dont have the skill, its not just about money why we don't do real racing...
OK after my 2 months rf2 hiatus I gave the 60s cars try again (the Spark to be specific), because I have new cpu haha. I can't see any "torque wave" some people talk about. If you're not stupid with the throttle, the engine curve feels perfectly normal corresponding to the RPM. BUT. I feel different issue. To me it feels like the car weighs 200kilos, not 600. This means that when its about to slide, you only have almost no time to do corrections. For every tiny mistake you are punished by sliding off the track. Everything feels to be happening too fast. Total amounts of grip is ok, after all it does realistic laptimes. I can drive it quite fast if I really want but the amount of concentration is crazy. It does feel harder than it should imo... The suspension works great, you can feel that, but somehow it feels like a 400hp gokart, I think if that would be real there would be much more deaths than actually were in 60s... edit: well not exactly weight, more like inertia. Can somebody check if the inertia values are reasonable?
I'm not trying to be .5 of a second behind the best times, I just wanna make sense of any particular car and see if I can get within at least 4seconds, and I don't see why I or any experienced sim racer shouldn't. I don't need to be told to go easy on the throttle cause I simply couldn't be more gentle, IOW, there's a problem somewhere, but at the same time, it's not like anyone races the F1, it's usually just the F3{the easiest car to drive}
My guess would be that ISI surely hasn't missed on inputing the mass characteristics of the car. The related inertial behavior would just fall out of the modeling equations. I think it all has to do with driving style. Since we are in no danger of being seriously injured or killed (or bankrupted) we tend to drive much more aggressively than the guys did in real life back in the day. And of course the 60's were known for lots of deaths, and I would bet there were a correspondlingly high number of "offs" that were never recorded. As has been mentioned in other threads, on-boards with Jim Clark (albiet not in a race) show a very smooth style. The annoucer talks (as I recall) about his smooth style. Jackie Stewart's verbal "lesson" stresses smoothness both in acceletation and braking. Most of my big moments happen when I drive like the guy Jackie says not to drive like. But then again, since I will be racing against guys with better reflexes and more talent than me, I intend to continue practicing like that. One can always dial it back a bit on race day. Edit: Been reading discussion of tire model completeness. If developed further I would think this could make a differnce in the handling of the 60s F1s.
At least in rF1 inertia was defined somewhat separately, because inertia depends not only on total mass but also mass distribution, and since you don't issue separate weight values to the various components in the car, you have to feed in predetermined inertia values.
