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?

Realization of a Dream: The Creation of F1 Multiplayer Career

The announcement came this past Spring. My dream. 10-20 years in the making. Something I've been wanting so long that now I may be too old to get much enjoyment out of it.

This year's F1 video game by Codemasters introduced a new game mode: a multi-player career mode. I know that might not sound like a big deal to many people out there, but it really is. Contract negotiations; driver movement; competing R&D. Two human players. Working their way (hopefully) up the grid. Maybe teammates at times. Maybe not. Two. Humans.

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The whole thing reminds me of the coffee table book I acquired at a Hasting's many years ago, Realization of a Dream: The Creation of British American Racing. Unsurprisingly loaded with pictures that varied in quality and subject from good to charming to seamy, the pictures were also a hint that the team and those they employed were not nearly as ready for the elitist environment of F1 as they thought they were. The book travels through the few years leading up to BAR's debut, talking a lot about Pollock, his successful efforts to snag Villeneuve, the hiring of Adrian Reynard, development and testing of the car, the ill-fated attempt to get two differently-liveried cars onto the grid and the bizarre compromise the team settled on, and their debut at the 1999 Australian Grand Prix, where Villeneuve qualified 11th, briefly ran as high as 7th and ultimately lost his rear wing.

The parallels are innumerable: a lofty idea beautifully visualized in the mind, the number of half-steps taken toward the goal, the challenges involved, and the ultimately half-baked result that we are left with. If you grab your binoculars and squint into the future, you can even predict the next decade: the dream becoming more and more realized following a series of buyouts, to the point that the end result is no longer recognizable. Not that you're complaining about the improvements.

Hang on. Let me start over.

Spurspective - Game # 2, Vs. Toronto, 26DEC2020

I know, I know. It's been almost two weeks. Six games have been played since opening night by this team. 

Did I realize just how much time was involved in watching every game and then writing about it (even if it's just a few scattered thoughts)? No. No I did not.

If you don't mind, I'm going to write about this as if I haven't been following the team in the five games since this one. And don't worry, I haven't even watched all of those yet (as I've learned over the past few years of aging and moving to the EST, East Coast Bias is a real thing).

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The home opener came against Toronto, surely a leftover from some scheduler who forgot Kawhi doesn't play for the Raptors anymore. If Kawhi didn't just absolutely HAVE to go play near his home,