F1 2021, Co-Op, S02, R06, France

And now back to France, where I think the AI are actually a little weak but not so much that I'm going to talk about it, because I'm not that good around there either.

ANOTHER fast lap for Brett! I think it was following this race that I argued (successfully) that we needed to turn up the base difficulty. We went from 75 to 78, and the results from this point (or so) moving forward amuse me a lot more than they do Brett. But still a great run from him. And a nice little run from me too. Looks like Brett got the better start (as per usual) and was able to hold on to things,  while I was making slow forward progress. Ended up ahead of both Ferraris on track but sandwiched in between them after accounting for a time penalty.

 

Looks like only Charles and Giovinazzi were stuck with the hards today.

Interesting chart showing the progress of the pack. I don't remember Brett leading a big pack but evidently that's what happened. Makes for some mighty tight racing, that does.

F1 2021, Co-Op, S02, R05, Canada

Wow, it's been two weeks since I've published anything here! Time really does fly. With all the changes happening, maybe I should provide an update:

Kat had her Ph.D. defense toward the end of last month. Her parents and sister (and their SOs) and her grandma made the trip, and my parents did too. That made...11 people here for a couple days. Lots and lots of meals out. Lots and lots of money spent. We all had a good time, though.

She also had her commencement (i.e. walk) date two weeks after that, on the first Friday of the month. Her mom showed up for that. More meals out, more money spent, and one nasty trip back to the house after the occasion through one of the harder rains I've seen in this state (and the first one I had to walk through). Only one graduate made a scene about the IU grad student strike.

Meanwhile, she'd already accepted an offer on a job at the University of Houston. I think she accepted it back in March or so. Which means we're moving. Which means we have to pack all our shit up. Which is thrilling. We've been putting it off, mostly, because of family visits and because who wants to live in a bare townhouse for a month or two? But now we're down to the last couple weeks or so, and the U-Haul box order showed up yesterday...so my hope is that I can get motivated enough to pack up the books and lots of other non-essentials this weekend.

With our families visiting in April, they both brought us some boxes of our stuff. My pile was far larger, and I didn't have the heart to tell Kat that it was probably only 1/4 of my stuff (or thereabouts). Kat's includes some kitchen wares (I think that belonged to her grandma before she moved in with Kat's mom), yearbooks and some dance/baton stuff from her childhood (including two VHS tapes of performances from '95 and '01). I got a bunch of books and some old VHS tapes of my own, as well as my baseball card collection, coin collection and my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So I've had a fair amount of time taken up by going through my own stuff and finding items I don't care for.

I also spent some time and money tracking down a VCR--which are getting expensive, let me tell you--so I could check the contents of the tapes and "rip" Kat's tapes to digital format. Lots of work, that all was. But kind of nice to hear the old whirring of a VCR (which I called a "VHS player" once maybe 5-10 years ago and have been careful not to do again, although I can't forget making that mistake and it occurs to me every time I see a tape at Half Price Books or Goodwill). 

Small note for my own posterity: I still had a copy of one of Grandpa DeRooy's Sonics tapes (WCF against the Jazz in '96, Game 7). The tape still played just fine and the game was still good, but the tape also contained the ending of a broadcast of Inn of the Sixth Happiness. I just thought that was funny.

Anyway, this also means that we need a new place to live. We spent a bit of time looking for places around Madison, WI, as far back as last fall, because we thought that's where we were headed. Nowadays we're more aware of the destination, of course, but the market is rough for us poor people. Buying a house that we'll only be living in for maybe two or three years seems like a risky proposition, especially given the possibility that the housing bubble bursts while we're there. 

So we're looking for rentals, but I want a third bedroom (so we can have separate offices and/or I can have a man-cave of sorts, and I want a garage that we can park in and that I can do some carpentry in (instead of wheeling out my collapsible workbench to the patio along with whatever tools I need every time). Long story short, there are a ton of places going on the market because we're into summer, but they're all getting snatched up before we even have a chance to see them (Kat's going to fly out there for a day or two).

On my front, my employer told me they wouldn't allow me to keep my job if I wasn't within an hour of the building. Which makes sense, since I've had to go in to the office all of six times since we got sent home at the end of March 2020. Two of those occasions were to stuff envelopes, something that anyone could do, including the company that prints the letters we end up stuffing. The other four times was to have an in-office day, where I did the same thing I do at home but with the added benefit of 40 minutes of drive time and increased exposure to COVID, gas costs, more noise, etc.

I've been applying for remote jobs, including a few within Cook, all of which I've heard nothing about (except for GE, who was at least nice enough to tell me they weren't choosing me--way to go GE!). But as the last couple weeks wind down, it looks like I might need to either take an in-person job somewhere or will have to at least wait until we've moved to get something new.

F1 2021, Co-Op, S02, R04, Spain

 Back to Spain, or Pain if you take out the S.

Ricciardo back into the lead of the WDC. Looks like we have a new challenger! Red Bull have been a step or two slow through four rounds, but who knows whether they'll bounce back or not. Ferrari has also looked like a distant fourth-place team...they're only one point ahead of Alpine at the moment.

Ocon stayed out during the SC, having started the race on the medium tire. I see why, but I'm still pretty sure it was a mistake on his part, given that he finished 18th.

Hards for Verstappen (!), Sainz and Russell this time out. I tried going back to the softs (looks like I was hung out to dry by the SC along with a few other cars), but it didn't make much difference. The track is just too damn hard (insert Kenan meme).

F1 2021, Co-Op, S02, R03, Portugal

Ran a few laps in preparation of Portugal. Unfair for Brett but definitely need to make the round play out like more of the others. And, hell, I just needed to be more comfortable around here. The track is pretty smooth in surface but there's a fair amount of elevation and a wide variety of corners, leading to a few that are easy to spin oneself around on exit.

Managed to qualify myself 13th, which seemed like a victory, and then followed up a great start (6th place!) by holding on to 10th, which definitely was a victory! Brett was a little off in qualifying (not having prepared, I'm sure) and then managed to race himself right up behind me by the end.

Looks like Brett ran the alternate strategy pretty well. He probably coudl have made the softs last a bit longer but who knows. Ferrari ran both their cars onto the hards. This better not be a sign of things to come (assuming I get my wish!).

Wish I could see just how close I was getting to the cars in front of me. Looks like I was separating myself from Leclerc but evidently had a time penalty because I finished behind him. But I think I was closing up on Sainz and Bottas--definitely wouldn't have been able to pull away but hanging with them all is still a big win for me.

Brett, meanwhile, pitted at just the right moment--came out just in front of several cars and was moving slowly away from them (being on the softer compound).

F1 2021, Co-Op, S02, R01, Bahrain

On to season 2! We were pretty ticked to have lost ground in the R&D battle, but I suppose it was sort of merited by all the cars we ruined as rookies. Of course, I'm confident the game isn't built to connect those dots, but it works out in a way that's not totally unreasonable.

Well THERE's a finish! First human podium of the career. I felt (and still feel) slightly guilty that we didn't turn up the difficulty even more than we did, because that's just too easy. But a huge sign of encouragement for me in my second season. Brett only finished 9th, but did secure fast lap, so a great day for him too.

Ferrari got the strategy decently right this time around; Schumacher and Gasly were the ones handed a handicap of hard tyres on this day.

It looks like it may have made a difference on this day for Brett because of that fact. He outqualified me and ran right on my tail for the first half dozen laps before a slight spin moved him down and out of the points. Before you ask, no, it wasn't my fault; just a lonely spin, probably at the hairpin if I had to guess. He went for the undercut at this point, and was able to work himself back up past Tsunoda, Bottas and Gasly, and up to Sainz and Schumacher (who was developing a bit of a train after his switch to hards.

I, meanwhile, had been able to hang with one of the Mercedes throughout the first stint, and was able to get them both along with Norris, running second for a lap or two. Norris got by me, but he was unable to get more than a second or two ahead of me. Meanwhile, the hard-shod Mercedes helped me build a bit of a gap to the cars running behind me, and after things sorted themselves out behind me Perez continued to battle Hamilton for 4th, slowing themselves down enough that I was able to maintain the gap until the very end.

Hell of a day.

F1 2021, Co-Op, S02, R02, Emlila Romagna

(Formerly San Marino)

Great day for Brett! Way to bounce back. Sixth and ran pretty damn consistently.

Meanwhile, I trudged around at the back. Beat Dan, at least!

I don't remember anything about this race except for driving around at the back and hunting down Dan and also Carlos having some sort of accident and ending up behind everyone else. I'm not sure if I had an accident or damage or spun or what, but somehow I ended up moving from 13th or so down to last. At least it happened around the predicted time for my pitstop.

Looks like, after that, I was able to run fairly consistent lap times. I wasn't losing much time to anyone, not even the leaders, caught Dan and was catching Russell quickly. That's really my silver lining for the round: even through I threw away a decent result--13h would have been just fine and a huge overachievement for my dog of a Haas, and I don't really expect I could have down it, but maybe 14th or 15th was achievable--I also beat Sainz (my target for season 3) and was about matching Leclerc. Turning heads at Maranello is the key.

Brett, meanwhile, appears to have been running 5th but was demoted a spot due to some corner-cutting penalties or something similar.

F1 2021, Co-Op, Season 2, Preseason

As mentioned in my last post, for season 2 we turned up the difficulty just a tad. We were both shaking the rust off pretty quickly; not of driving the cars quickly, or at least not just that, but also of running in traffic, dealing with the chaos that adding another human driver adds to the experience, etc. So from 75 to 78, haha. We have a bit more data for S2 to change tracks on a race-by-race basis as well, so can make Bahrain more difficult (a necessary change but one we didn't go far enough to fix just yet, as you'll see). If we ever get into decent cars we'll really need to crank it up!

Here's the entry list for season 2. Moved a couple teams around from last season to indicate the WCC standings from 2021, of course, and also added in the new drivers. Mick left me to take an open seat at Mercedes, replacing Bottas (!). I suppose getting a Schumacher into a Mercedes is worth a loss in performance, but hey, at least Mick is better than probably any of the F2 graduates.

Speaking of which, my new teammate is Dan Ticktum. Jesus. Kill me now. The guy is actually pretty poorly rated in the game (much worse than he deserved to be, given what he did in F2 in 2021 in real life). But I guess the choices were Mazepin or Ticktum. I'm not happy. Also, I had to ask Brett to figure out what his car number was because I couldn't find a listing of all the F2 drivers anywhere online.

Bottas took his Mercedes gear and exchanged it for Alpine gear, replacing Alonso, who apparently only unretired for one season. Alonso's retirement doesn't make sense, but Bottas' move there sure does...a factory effort and a pretty damn good shot of crushing his teammate (who somehow finished with 0 points last year).

Everyone else came back to their old seat, I believe.