haven't risked a race as im so out of pratice, to be honest i've hardly done any races since i've joined, the solstice was ok but the drievrs were un predictable and i'd got used to single seaters with wings in lfs, similar issues re wings with the skippy but the mazda feels more familiar, i got licence advanced through tt.

as i said havent tried any races and probably won't for another week but we've had a few dices amongst ourselves in practice and it's a fun track and car combo though you have to watch you don't out brake yourself into the two lefthanders after the downhill straights when you're trying to pass / defend especially the second with little run off before the gravel . bit anoying at the moment that i can just break into the 2.05 sec laps as i know that my theoretical error free time is about a second faster

i've not played iracing or lfs for about 3 months till the last week or so as i've been too busy with cod 4 and 5, work, family etc.

however i've been practcing the last week when i've got home from work at 6 .30 am and the numbers using the mazda seem to be rising

p.s. went on lfs last week for a bit, it still gives an equal thrill, can't explain it but the two just seem to complement each other for me

it's surprising how different cars get diffeent results too

of the two diesels in our household, one prefers esso and the other prefers the "cheap" stuff from down the road though the cheap stuff is actually 1p a litre dearer than esso !, however it gets about 5 % better milage from it so i can live with a 1% aprox dearer price

that ad in autosport has been runnng for ages, it'll be interesting to see how the radical "demo" affects numbers

to be honest bob it wasn't that specific , just hadn't had a chance to try the player they will be using with anything other than what was on it

as it happens i am actually wanting to rip a nonb copyright dvd or at least one i have permission to copy, my parents do fund raising for our local children's hospice and whilst they can show a dvd it's not exactly convenient to carry a dvd player with them all the time, a copy of it on a portable player would allow them to always have it with them.

i'll try your suggestion thanks m8

anyone have any recomendations as to what to use to rip a dvd and save it as a wmv file?

same here, i was wondering if maybe their site had been hacked as it always links to the same pages

just a quick extra thought, if lertz is scared he'll left foot brake in real life and press the clutch, doesn't the same logic mean that he'll expect a car in real life to respond like it's only got 40 degree steering movement and go straight into something because he hasn't turned the wheel far enough ?

as has been said, you tend to automatically adapt to where you are, i tend to left foot brake when im driving an automatic in real life but if im driving a manual i right foot brake and nevr get confused about it.

before anyone asks, i got in the habit of doing it when i had a garage as there was nothing worse than trying to manuver an auto that either wouldn't idle and died if you take your foot off the throttle or had a very high idle and wanted to dissapear through the wall if you put it in gear.

also the late great LJK Setright pointed out that one of the biggest advantages of an auto is that in a car where you right foot brake the first thing you do when wanting to slow is in fact just to stop accelerating as you move your foot to the brake pedal where as when left foot braking, you can apply the brakes as your removing preasure from the throttle.

one other advantage is of course that you can use the brakes whilst accelerating to tame wheel spin or understeer which is why it was used in rallying even with gearchanges that neded a clutch.

Last edited by tinvek, Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:24.

yeah i must admit that seeing the cars in their "natural habitat" makes the wings look a lot better, certainly at that angle the fact that they have less elements etc makes the front wings look less bulkey that last years multi element units and you don't really notice how slim the rear is. i suspect thogu that we will all notice how wide the front wings are at the first bend of the season's races.

even if you don't like the look, it certainly looks like the rules have changed the turbulence for the best

Quote from Chrisuu01 :

Al the old charm of the race tracks is getting destroyed

How long wil it talk for them to screw up Euarouge at spa bacaus the bustop is already screwed and they plan on making the staight sigh...

to be honest i always thought the bus stop screwed up the old track at that point anyway, i can understand why it was needed, but it would have been nicer to have had it flatout up to the hairpin

just re read your post was the bet what you said i.e. who would be in europe first? if so then the word "would" suggests future tense and as his club were already in europe in the present tense, i'd say that doesn't count.

you can't post this without saying what the clubs were !


try to out smart him first but if that fails then

if it's a small bet, pay up

if it's a large bet treat it as null and void

just hope the two of you don't put winning this above a friendship

sad to hear about tony hart, along with patrick mcgoohan thats 2 childhood heros dead in a week

sam, i'd forgotten all about wilf lunn, i remembered pat keysall, david cleveland (the prof) and of course sylvester mccoy but i'm ashamed to say that wilf had slipped my mind completley

what is interesting to me is the design of the front wings, as i see it there are 3 possabilites regarding their shape

1, the teams aren't bothering with the driver adjust feature
2, the mechanisms are very small so as to not affect air flow

or what in my opinion is most likley

3, the wings at the moment are the usual press conference / launch items, i.e. they're designed to show the sponsors' logos off to their best advantage and to make the car as striking as possible whilst not giving anything away. if so then we can probably expect to see some different looking structures when the serious testing starts.

last week in autosport they were discussing kers and how the differing teams are shaping up, BMW have a lot of experience, ferrari apparently are behind the curve which could also affect red bull, torro rosso and renault as marelli are also working on their systems, toyota are not planning to introduce it till later in the year whilst williams have gone in an entirely different direction relying on a flywheel system, force india i assume are dependent on their engine supplier which brings us to mclaren who's engine factory apparently looks more like a kers factory and there are a lot of very content looking people who think they are ahead of everyone.

Quote from BlueFlame :

By shares in VAG go go go!

too late, porsche got there first !!

not directly a racing subject but may have major ramifications for F1

toyota have forecst that they will make a loss for the first time in 71 years


the loss is expected to be circa £1 billion

if you read autosport this week, it's obvious that max is pissed off that the teams are for once unified against him and his dream of a spec series , normally the FIA manage to create a split and then when no agreement is reached by the teams implement their own prefered solution. however since jean todt has left ferrari, there has been an outbreak of cooperation and mutual support amongst teams due to a lack of me me me in backing ideas.

this latest "mistake" could just be an attempt to split the new cooperative spirit apart. if so then personnaly i think it will fail, for starters as mentioned previously it has been well known for years and stems back to when ferrari were struggling and needed all the help they could get to remain in F1, secondly at the moment and given the anti max feelings it will probably bond the teams against him.

however autosport also pointed out that the current right holders to the F1 coverage may decide that now is a good time to pay off their debts given the current climate by selling up and of course the best placed person to afford to buy them out is the previous owner of the rights.

obviously if it apears there may be a spilt in the teams then the rights are not worth as much so he could buy them cheaper, in which case he may be pulling a fast one, knowing the teams will stick together but also that the current media rights holders can't afford to take the chance that he has "accidently" caused a split. the teams may not always like bernie but they know that he's responsible for the money they've all made in the past and trust him so given an advanced warning they may actually behave one way in public and another in private plus of course bernie led the fight against the previous egotistical maniac in charge at the FIA during the '80s

there do seem to be some cars which have abs that triggers very early, though why they have been developed that way s open to debate, it may be accidental or it may be deliberate, possibly to cover a potential instability in the car if it is subject to higher braking force or as have seen suggested in the past purely so the customers trigger it more often and feel they're getting their money's worth !

what is interesting to me is an article i read had an abs developer ponting out that if a car has it's weight, weight distribution, springs, shocks, wheels or tyre sizes changed from standard, it should really have its abs re progammed for it to work to its best potential. apart from thinking about all the modded cars out there he also pointed out that a lot of companies have just one abs setting for a model, regardless of spec and almost certainly regardless of any optional extras such as alloy wheels

what pisses me off these days is that so many RWD cars use electronics to try to stop them behaving like RWD cars, presumably because they are "aspirational" cars who's target buyers have bought them after being brought up on FWD and demand they feel the same without realising that it's that difference that made then so desirable in the first place.

and yes the scirocco is heavy but so are all new cars due to crash regs etc. if you are in the uk go along to an mot station and ask to look at their vehicle weight chart and compare how much each new car has got from the one it replaced.

good decision to delay the release till your happy with it rather than have LFS gain a reputation for being buggy

anyone who's complained that because they planned to release by xmas it means it should be released by xmas should remember that plans do go wrong.

perhaps they would also think a bit about the people who have lost or are about to loose their jobs this xmas because their company's plans didn't work out and gain a bit more perspective about life

Quote from evilpimp :

I like it more then the BMW but the 2009 cars will probably be the ugliest cars in F1 history.

there were some pretty ugly ones in the 80s and as for the march 711 !!!

http://www.motomanuali.com/imm ... rch%20711%20cartolina.JPG

Quote from ultrataco :

Ban on refueling in 2010? The races are going to have to be a heck of a lot shorter.:mad: Maybe they could run two sprint races or something. (Doesn't GP2 do that?)

why do they need to be shorter? before brabham introduced refueling in the 80s F1 races lasted for close to the full 2hrs / 200 miles figure specified, in fact they were longer than some of todays races. it just means the cars will have to carry more fuel when designed and they've got 12 months notice to make sure the tank is big enough. if they cant get a big enough tank, they need to imrove their mpg or face being beaten by someone who can make it to the end. i'm not alover of economy formulas but it does open up a few more options in race tactics.

nice to see they've finally listened to what prost has been saying they should do for the last 10 years. the current regs mean drivers do 3 or 4 sprint races and have no consideration to preserving the car, with the cars beingn heavy at the start they will have to think a bit about saving brakes and tyres to find the optimum stratergy (before someone mentions it, modern F1 brakes do still suffer from heavy use, look at some of the problems teams have had in canada ) with a bit of luck this should see a return to the old days of some drivers going like a bat out of hell from the start and then suffering near the end of the race and others looking after the car when its heavy and being in better shape at the end. at times when refueling was banned you could have the chasing cars catching the leaders at up to 3 sec a lap and entering the last lap 2 secs behind.

if all of these measures save enough money then maybe we won't need / be forced to use a "spec" engine in the future