F1 2021, Co-Op, S01, R04, Spain

 Now we come to it, that terrible track where the AI is just too strong. No, not Monaco; it's true there too, of course, but that circuit is so unforgiving it's almost like its own acknowledged section of hell. With the ability to just pull it off the calendar, it's easy to ignore. Instead, I'm talking about Catalunya.

You'd think it would be easy, wouldn't it? With all the testing that goes on there, it's probably the track where we see cars running the most of any track on the schedule. It's not a particularly unique layout and doesn't have anything that seems like it should be difficult. But that modified chicane has had my number ever since it was added in 2007 (holy hell was it that long ago?). And no matter how much I try, I can't seem to get it right more than once every five or ten laps. I suspect that it, like a lot of chicanes in F1, might be much easier with a wheel, where a minute change can be made at low speed without ruining momentum as much. Or something like that. But without a wheel (or, rather, without a compatible wheel...I still have a Driving Force GT but I guess those don't work with the PS4) it's hard to say for sure. Maybe if I follow my dreams and get into iRacing once the move happens (that's another post).

Yup. Looks about right. A personal fast lap 1.7 seconds off of Brett's. Looks like I had a 3 second time penalty as well, but I don't know any easy way to capture that without screwing up the content or requiring another column (and I just ain't in the mood when I'm a season and a half behind in maintaining this thing). But what happened?

Also, Raikkonen's Fast Lap is not a misprint. It's wrong and impossible, but it's not a misprint--that's what the game showed. Sometimes that seems to happen, as I see posted on Reddit regularly.

Huh. Well, this looks like it was a bit confusing. Lots of multiple-place changes that don't appear to be pit-stop related by non-human cars. Wonder what was going on with Alonso, for instance...or Ocon. Or Giovinazzi. Unusual.

Okay. Now I'm baffled. Brett pitted from softs onto hards, then back onto softs, and then onto another set of hards? The last one makes sense but the first one doesn't...or the second set of softs doesn't. Or both. And I two-stopped and went for hards for 8 laps or so? And Ocon started on the mediums and put on the softs for the last five or so laps, when everyone else made the softs last about 10 laps? Bizarre.

And there was apparently no Safety Car for any of this. I see a problem for (presumably) Brett, and later a bit of a problem or two for me. But what happened here I don't recall and can't even make out from the data listed. PER-HAM-BOT podium and that's about all the information I can provide of meaning.

It's conceivable that there were some reliability issues here; that sounds vaguely familiar, but (as I've come to find out) I'm having an awful lot of those problems with the Haas. I think what I'm seeing is that I gave up on the race while Brett kept on. Usually that shoe is on the other foot. Actually, his data is pretty stable (the lower of the two white lines)...was his driving that consistent, or is it possible the AI was driving for him and I let the race run out without properly retiring. I'm so confused. Wish I could remember this one.

F1 2021, Co-Op, S01, R03, Portugal

As I get older, racing on a new track for the first time is less exciting. Maybe 10-20% of that is due to the catalog of tracks I've raced becoming larger, so it naturally would be less novel to drive in a new place. But I think the rest of it is just getting older and worn down by having to learn new things. What a sad way to be at 34, isn't it?

I will say that I enjoy the idea of the track; very polished surfaced, very sterile, and yet with a fair amount of elevation change and corner variety. That's an unusual thing amongst the resto of the F1 calendar, so I'm glad it's around. And, being a new track, it doesn't seem all that difficult. It will probably be harder in the next edition of the game as more users will have supplied feedback by that time.

Back to back wins for Perez at this point, and Red Bull out to a surprising and comfortable lead for so early in the season. Strange race results here, though--6 sets of teammates finishing consecutively.

I've gotta say, I don't remember this round AT ALL. Obviously Brett had a problem; looks like he started decently enough to get in front of me but it didn't last long a couple of shemozzles (TM David Hobbs) followed by a crash out or some such. I toiled around at the back the rest of the way, it looks like. Not much else happened for anyone else, so far as I can tell, either. Except for Russell, who briefly ran 4th by pitting later than everyone else.

Technically, I guess I don't know for a fact that Brett had the problem: I didn't get a full listing of the results from the game, I only got the top 14 finishers (all that is displayed at a time within the game). The telemetry app I use doesn't distinguish between drivers of a team in the views that I have been pasting here. However, the driving of the lower-place white mark in the above is erratic enough to be confident that it is Brett (not much different than my own green, which as the user with the app, is the only one that is distinguished from its teammate).

Actually, I guess I have two reasons to believe it was Brett. Looks like he started on the medium tyre--British spelling alert!--and then presumably had some wing damage so pitted early for the hard compound. What a drag.

In any event, I had to use these telemetry screenshots to guess at the finishing orders of the last six runners and made up fast lap data (which doesn't matter since we know none of those drivers got Fast Lap).

I think it was at this point we realized we needed to turn the difficulty down a touch, from 85 (!) or so. Probably took it down to 80-82 at this point, even though I knew the next round was going to be tough as well. Better to undercorrect than overcorrect, I guess.

F1 2021, Co-Op, S01, R02, San Marino

San Marino! Hah! What I meant to say was Emilia Romagna. There's a habit I'm unlikely to break, just as I'm unlikely to call the Commanders anything but the Redskins. Big yikes in 2022 but that's where yours truly is living in his old age.

Well, on to business:

Not a great round for either of our human participants. F1 2021 is of course the first appearance of this track for us since 2006's F1 Championship Edition for the PS3, which Brett owned and I borrowed. I'm sure he was a lot more comfortable with the track at that time, and we didn't do much practice for this race as we wanted to save time and figured we could get away with it here more than most other tracks.

Wrong. Something about the default setups at a lot of the tracks in this game make the car unstable on corner exit for me, and I'm guessing for Brett too. After not getting a time set in qualifying, it looks like he didn't get very far either:

The telemetry stops when we're both out of the race, so if there's a double retirement there just isn't as much information to go off of. Looks like Bottas had a terrible start with some contact and had to pit for a wing or something and was working himself back up. Brett ran as high as 17th or so before binning it (if memory serves, at T1) and I didn't carry on much longer. Can't recall if I also wrecked (very possible) or if I decided that I wasn't going to move up enough to make it worth wasting Brett's time (also very possible and something I'm sure we've done at least a couple times so far). I'm guessing that Ricciardo had started the pit cycle when my race ended.

As suspected, Bottas put on some different tires. However, he went for the Medium compound instead of the Hard. I wonder if he was able to run the rest of the race on that set; I could have figured it out in the moment, I suppose, but definitely I wasn't in the mood. What a rotten round.

As for the championship, Perez follows up a rough season debut with a solid win, the first of many for him (you'll see). Norris takes a great 2nd to keep himself at a surprising 3rd in the standings, and Gasly also finishes a nice 7th to make himself the current best of the rest.

F1 2021, Co-Op, Season 1, Round 1, Bahrain

I'm sure you thought I had died. Sometimes I wonder about that myself. To put it mildly, I hate, just absolutely hate, having my time wasted by other people. However, I love, absolutely love, wasting my own time. The people closest to me definitely know this too, but I'm sure if my co-workers (who I hassle when they don't respond to me for weeks at a time) learned this, they would be shocked.

Making a long story short, Brett and I got started on a career save, got maybe 6 races into the first season and then decided to start over.

For one thing, he's rusty at his racing...with a family, he doesn't get as much time to play as I do and so his results were just unbelievably bad (something like 4 DNFs out of the 6 races and one of the finishes was in 18th place or something). It went unsaid, but I'm sure we were both thinking that he would have been replaced by another driver at that point.

For another, the game gives you the option of choosing your teammate. Actually, wait--more accurately, it lets you choose what real-life driver you'll be racing in place of; I had fudged the bucket by misreading the page and thought I was choosing a teammate, so chose Mick Schumacher at Haas...to replace. Leaving me with Mazespin™. That was bad enough, but I think I told Brett what to do (he went through the deal after I'd set it all up, 10 minutes later) and he made the same mistake.

So we took a mulligan, fixed the teammate situation, got a sense of how to handle various screens that operate differently in Co-Op than they do in single-player, felt a bit more comfortable with the chaos that is racing F1, on a controller instead of a wheel, online, with another human also racing on a controller instead of a wheel, and generally have enjoyed the second run-through much more than the first. 

So much so that we're now about halfway through Season 2. And I haven't posted a damn thing about it. In my latest effort to commit myself to blogging/frequent writing for pleasure, I'm going to try to get it all caught up.

F1 in Sauda Arabia

 Am I just one of millions of fans writing what they think about this race? Yes.

Am I even sure what I think about what I saw? HELL NO.

...

Just a couple bullet-points, then:

• I had pretty well made my peace with the idea that Lewis will win his 8th WDC, and I believe I told my dad and best friend (another F1 fan) the same thing. But this weekend did nothing to stop that feeling of inevitability.
• The lengths Max has gone to to try to stop Hamilton are positively Schumacher-esque (and the Red Bull team therefore very Brawn, Todt and co.-esque). 
• The dude is a menace, absolutely. Not that I have a huge problem with the idea of someone being a menace in ruthless pursuit of winning.
• Could Mercedes have been playing along quickly enough during the pass/repass/rerepass that they weren't shaken at all by RB's/Max's tactics? Seems a bit of a stretch until you remember that Mercedes is always a step ahead in tactics/strategy over everyone else, even when their car isn't.
• On the other hand, Mercedes sure did hose themselves by pitting both drivers during the first safety car, making Max's choice to stay out and hoping to persuade Masi to throw a red the only option...by which point Merc were on the back foot.
• That whole cat-and-mouse experience was just nuts, and I suspect it will get lost in the shuffle of what came afterwards. But Bottas either deserved a penalty for what happened there, or the rules need to be changed where that sort of shit becomes a penalty. That the red flag turned it on its head does not excuse what happened before it. It would not be the biggest shock if it turned out the FIA was working their magic to neutralize everything as best they could, and if so, shame on them (even though this was one of the most memorable races of the past decade).

What an incredible race and experience.

Upcoming Carpentry Projects

I've been in my current digs (avec girlfriend and her cat) for about four years now. In the same town for that plus about six months. When you're in an apartment or townhouse that has no garage, no shed, no covered parking spots, and only a paltry patio, it's difficult to rationalize purchasing too many tools or having too many projects. Every time I think of buying something that is larger than a T-shirt or a book or a DVD, I have the same questions for myself:

• How are you going to pay for it?

I'm not poor by any means, but I'm not well off enough to buy my own house or a place that has the aforementioned garage/shed/covered parking

• How much will you use it?

I have that tendency that some others share where I start a lot of projects or think I'll get excited about a various hobby, only to fizzle out soon afterwards. That didn't stop me from buying an electric guitar and amp, nor did it stop me from buying a few paint supplies and building my own easel to try out some Bob Ross-style painting, but the results of those make the next time around a little less likely to result in a purchase.

• Where will you store it?

This is the biggie. At this point, all our closets are pretty much busting at the seams. Two bicycles stored in the master bedroom closet? Check. Or, well, until I took one out, rode it a few times, and have now left it in the kitchen because it's filthy and I don't want to clean it or put it back in the closet. New tool chest loaded with tools in the other bedroom (office) closet? Check. And a damn good thing it is, too, because I kept buying tools and was just piling them on each other...as a result, this was a great purchase, but that doesn't make the closet feel any more full. Bowling ball bag, car wash bucket, old birdhouse, box of paints/adhesives/aerosols, and two coolers in the downstairs coat closet? Check.

You get the idea. It's a damn mess. Girlfriend doesn't complaint much, but if I bring it up she will share my anxiety about it. The cat doesn't complain at all--what a trouper. But that doesn't mean there aren't still ideas running through my head. Occasionally one of them is even decent!

F1 2021, Co-Op, Preparation: Runnin' Down A Dream

Author's Note: I was going to publish our results from Round 1, originally, but thought I needed to give some setup and housekeeping first, so started going and before I knew it I was typing about a dozen different things. So this will just be a preparatory post, allowing for the possibility that we re-start our Co-Op Career.--DID.

Brett and I decided to run a shortened schedule for our Co-Op career mode; 23 races (the full season within the game, I believe) is an awful lot and we'd like to be able to feel like we made some progress in this over the next year or two, however long we play it. Also, I'm not positive that a 23-race schedule would allow you to make any changes from season to season. So a 16-race season it would be, allowing us the option to change a half-dozen items of any schedule from year to year. 

Even in real life the schedule has been a mess. The last several months, dating to before the release of the game, has seen a never-ending shuffle of the real-life season. Most recently, Qatar is rumored to be added in to replace...Japan, I think...but this hasn't been confirmed yet. For those non-F1 fans or those who are baffled and overwhelmed by the fluid status of the schedule this year, I present the following:

Current Schedule:

• 1 Bahrain
• 2 Emilia Romagna (Imola)
• 3 Portugal (Algarve)
• 4 Spain
• 5 Monaco
• 6 Azerbaijan
• 7 France
• 8 Styrian (Red Bull Ring)
• 9 Austria
• 10 Great Britain
• 11 Hungary
• 12 Belgium
• 13 Netherlands
• 14 Italy
• 15 Russia
• 16 Turkey (Istanbul)
• 17 USA
• 18 Mexico
• 19 Brazil
• 20 TBA (Qatar the leading rumor)
• 21 Saudi Arabia (Jeddah)
• 22 Abu Dhabi

Cancelled from one part of the 2021 schedule or another:

• China
• Canada
• Singapore
• Japan
• Australia

Of course, the video game doesn't even have all the tracks that have been advertised to be a part of game: Qatar will not be added in, but Algarve (Portugal), Imola (formerly San Marino, now Emilia Romagna) and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) were also not included at the time of release. Since beginning to draft this post, Algarve was added in 1.10 and Imola was added (in 1.12, I believe), but Jeddah is still not done.

All this ignores that Imola and Portimao were both raced last season and never made it into last year's game either. The subject of a steady stream of frustration and inquiry from fans of the game series, it is reported that the amount of work required to design a single track takes months. Which makes sense. But then, we're over a year past the second F1 race to take place at two of those tracks. Jeddah is a more reasonable situation, as (last I checked) the track hadn't even been finished yet...so how would Codemasters create that one?