Gentlemen, start your engines!

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Hello, is this thing on?

Popular posts from this blog

Jam tomorrow

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My heart goes out to Robert Kubica. This time last year, he was fighting for the F1 world title. At one stage, he even led the championship . Things were going brilliantly for him, he was driving well and people were saying some very good things about him. Fast forward to 2009 and where is he? Nowhere. Where's the press coverage and hype about his talents? Nowhere. It's as if he's fallen off the face of the planet. What went wrong? From what I've read, halfway through the 2008 season, BMW decided to shift their development efforts to the 2009 car, despite the success they were enjoying in 2008. The effect of this was that their 2008 season quietly tailed off, taking their #1 driver from championship leader to frustrated also-ran. If I were Kubica, I would've been mad as all hell. What makes it even worse is that, while Honda adopted the same approach and built a pretty awesome car for 2009, BMW completely failed to capitalise on their long development time for...
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Nostalgia: GP2 and racing lines

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Funny how songs can bring back specific memories so vividly. Here I am, sat at my computer, and I put on OK Computer by Radiohead. Airbag kicks into life and I'm instantly transported back to 1998, designing my first track using the Grand Prix 2 Track Editor . Based on the Estoril circuit — as nearly all early tracks were, thanks to its simple pitlane layout — it swept down and to the right from the start/finish straight. The opening bars of Airbag often accompanied this stretch as I popped in a CD before starting play-testing. That first corner will forever be strongly connected with Radiohead for me, which is no bad thing. I loved creating tracks and I still love OK Computer. The track, I believe, was called Cheviot, named after the hill in Northumberland . This was a highly apt name, as I completely misunderstood the editor's height settings. What I thought was a change in absolute height was actually a gradient change. Consequently, when I tried to make a slight h...
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Catching up

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A lot has happened since my last post, back in August 2009. God! August 2009! That's 2½ years ago. Anyway, in that time, I've gone from having a girlfriend to having a fianceé and now a wife . :) Said wife has also started learning to drive, which has required the purchase of a slightly more sensible car: a 5-door, 10-year-old Ford Focus. That said, the 350Z remains in the garage. So, in short, I've grown up, but am still clinging the last vestiges of boyracerdom. ;) Another thing, pertinent to this blog, that's happened in the past few years is that I've almost completely stopped doing trackdays. The last trackday I did in my own car was February 28th 2009; just under 3 years ago. And I was dreadful. The last track experience I did was a second Palmersport day, in August 2010. Since then, nothing. Well, except for a charity karting event, which hardly counts. All of this has left me feeling pretty flat about my own motoring/motorsport. The presence of the Foc...
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