European Grand Prix

 Hope everyone had a great holiday.  I was blessed to have my kids home for the holidays and our parents.

So I talked about F1 Forward and qualifying at Nurburgring last post.  

Nick was slotted 7th and with his great pit crew a 2 stop strategy was a no brainer.  He and Joel Evers his race engineer decided on an aggressive start with banging wheels.  Jacques started 11th and was hoping the rain would hold off so he and his team decided on saving tires.  

 Gentlemen, start your engines!

Lap1  Fisichella uses his chip to pass Raikkonen to take the lead! Nick passes Montoya to move into 6th.

Lap 4  Raikkonen takes the lead back.  Nick still in 6th.  Alonso in 7th now.

 Lap 7  Raikkonen extends lead.  Ferrari and Alonso start to pass BMW [ look at shell curve] as I run out of decent cards.Montoya and Button breathing down Nick's neck.  

Lap 10   Contest at Shell curve!  Nick's agressive driving is tested...

Nick gets the lane and passes Alonso.  Montoya tries to follow but is not quick enough.  He bends Alonso's wing.   Alonso decides with impending rain to hold off on a stop to repair.  He pushes ...

and can't hold it at Bit Kurve.  This puts him back in traffic.   Meanwhile Massa is again running a great race and has moved into second behind Raikkonen.  Nick stays in 8th.  Jacques is in 11th.  

Lap 18 Raikkonen pits and Fisicherella takes lead.

Lap 27  Starts to rain lightly just as most cars need to pit including BMWs.  Everyone comes in except Schumacher who is running a 1 stop strategy.  He needs to pit in 4 turns.  This puts him in first.  Nick changes to intermediate tires and changes to balance strategy.  Partially due to his pit crew he comes back out and immediately moves up to 5th.  [ He has pitting skill.]    

 Lap 31  Schumacher on mediums looses ground in the rain.  Massa takes the lead with Fisichella behind him.  Nick is behind Raikkonen.  You can just see Alonso hopelessly stuck in traffic in the back of the shot.

Alonso's frustrations continue as he keeps trying to break through traffic.  Here he runs wide on turn 2. 

Lap 34    Everyone stuck on traffic.  Weber in the white car is not in the lead.  He is trying to avoid being lapped by Massa.

Lap 42  All out racing on the ITT Bogen.  Raikkonen moves into first and Nick moves into second!  A first for BMW.  Schumacher, despite his late pit is in 5th and he will soon move into 4th.  Jacques is penalized 5 seconds for a pit lane violation.  Pierre Haas, his engineer, is emphatic it is bogus and we should protest. 

 Lap 50  big contest at coca cola corner...

Nick takes first place!  

Alas glory is short lived.  All cars on the 2 stop strategy have to pit by lap 56 which they do since the weather never changes from intermittent rain.  Schumacher doesn't and easily takes the lead.  Out of the pits Nick moves into second with a lucky strategy since cards have been a problem.  

I would like to say that Nick was gaining on Schumacher but Nick didn't have soft tires.   Instead the problem was Nick holding onto 2nd place.  

Lap 64   Nick skillfully kept his rivals behind him for almost 10 laps.  Then at Shell Kurve Raikkonen and Fisichella made their moves..

He did it!  That boy ran quite a race!    

Final results-- Schumacher wins easily with his 1 stop strategy given the weather stayed much more stable than anticipated.   I come in second for my personal best.  Raikkonen third with Fishichella fourth and Massa fifth.  Button, Coulthard and Montoya finish the points with Rosberg is a slow car just missing 8th.  Alonso finishes 10, very rough day.     

This tightens up the standings even more.  Raikkonen now has sole posesion of first place with 29 points.  Schumacher and Massa are tied for second with 25.   Here are the standings after 4 races:

Raikkonen        29

Schumacher     25

Massa              25

Alonso             23

Fisichella         21

Heildfeld         18

 Ferrari takes the lead in the constructors with 50

Ferrari         50

Renault       44

McLaren     36

BMW          19

Honda          5

Red Bull      3

 Alonso scoring 0 points really upset the apple cart. 

Now on to the team...

Banner day for BMW.  Our first podium of the year.    Our 2 mandatory events are press conference and drivers check.  

 

 Our press conference goes okay which for us I consider a win.  Nick says nothing wrong [ except failing to mention his great pit crew. more on that later] and Jacques is able to defend his penalty, whew. Maybe my mentoring Franz Glick is paying off.  

The second event is a drivers' check.   Nothing happens here.

For our 2 BMW team checks we get Nick's interaction with his pit crew and a team 1 chemistry check.  Turns out that the pit crew noticed Nick's snub of their efforts at the news conference.  They are not happy.   This could have had dire consequences during the team 1 chemistry check but so far everyone continues to pull together well.  Fortunately I noticed the snub [ using AKOT for those of you familiar with that, I set it at unlikely.]  and talk to Leo about it. We will need to formulate a plan to ensure the pit crew continues to feel valued as they certainly are key. 

So F1 Forward rolls along as does BMW racing with our first podium.  Next up the Belgium Grand Prix. Can we get a second podium?  Will Nick's pit crew continue with gusto?   

We will find out, stay tuned.

 Enjoy

 

Joe                     

 

F1 Forward and the European Grand Prix

 

F1 Forward and race 4 2006

 Now that I am getting comfortable with Race 90 solo I can finally get started on what I really want.  A true campaign game where you take a team for 3-5 years and try to build them up to a contender and stay there.  This doesn't take the place of the tactical/operational racing game but adds to it by adding flavor and background to the team on the track.  For those of you familiar with my other campaign games, Platoon Forward, Squadron Forward and Flotilla Forward you get the idea. 

So I have started playtesting the above game tentatively called F1 Forward.  This could all change but as principle you will have 8 people you track plus 2 pit crews.   There relationships will affect how your team runs and you will have to manage this, try to improve performance and sack people if necessary. I want to avoid bean counting so right now money is vague and you either have, not enough, enough or alot.   Should be fun!    

So I rolled up my BMW team and was pleasantly surprised that my technical director, Leo Hansen is very good but my commercial director Franz Glick is weak.  Everyone else appears average but we start with good funding as we have BMW backing.  

Pre-Season we unveil our new cars at an event that Glick organized and it was a disaster.  Sound was poor and the pictures were unflattering.  BMW and several of our sponsors were not pleased.  I hope this doesn't affect our cash flow.  Also the press wasn't impressed and we get a -1 to further rolls which won't help us going forward.  I need to get Glick on board as press relations is important.  

The other pre season event was bad as well.  We toured the chairman of BMW around the facility and when he asked Leo some questions Leo was very technical and somewhat condescending with his answers so the chairman wasn't happy.  Yep, we get a -1 from the chairman now.  The only good thing is he is very fickle so there is a chance if we win all will be forgotten.  

So that is my intro to F1 Forward.   Stay tuned as it develops.    I skipped the sequences for the first 3 races to keep my season going.   So on to race 4 the European Grand Prix at Nurburgring!

 

So almost everyone was happy to be back in Europe where most of the teams lived.  Raikkonen and Alonso were tied for first and Renault and Ferrari were fighting for the Constructor's title.  All the top tier drivers had a shot at the top.  BMW was solidly a middle team between McLaren and Honda.  Our reputation was "1".  

Qualifying brought the usual suspects to the top with 2 surprises.  Honda's Button was third and Alonso was down the grid in 8th.  With my quick pitting skill I gave up 2 turns of fuel but still was slotted 7th ahead of Alonso. Now as a principle I care about my teammate and Jacques was 11th.  I decided to run his car with 1 point and no skills.  I used the point for tires.   Raikkonen took pole followed by Fisichella, Button and Massa.  All of them took a 2 stop strategy.  Schumacher was 5th with a 1 stop.  The weather was clear but rain in the forecast.  

 

Another great track by Benetton

At the starting line.  Tires function as blue tire chips for those in 2 stop strategy.  With impending rain when to stop would be important.

Too be continued...

Joe