Live For Speed, LFS (1998)

The TV4 competition got me into simracing again, but it also made me develop a nerve damaged finger, which spoiled my Race07 driving. Swedish Sim Racers had already started a league and filled a division when I could start racing again, so I turned to other simulators. I tried rFactor and LFS, and liked the physics in LFS more, so I stuck with that. Found a league here in Sweden called TorsdagsRace and started to compete. I was so off the pace, and every week it was a new car and a new track. LFS back then had almost only fantasy cars and only fantasy tracks. A lot of different cars and a lot of different tracks.

I did have some fun in LFS. Here, in a car that’s not a fantasy car, it’s a Formula BMW:

and here, same car, same race:

I also won one of the races in this league, unfortunately it was a so-called fun race, which was held between two seasons, and it was on an oval track, so maybe my skill is in ovals? I also held the world record for this track and car for some time. I finally got tired of these fantasy tracks and mostly fantasy cars, and again there were no simracing in my life.

Race07 Demo TV Competion (2007)

After not doing almost any kind of simracing since GPL the swedish TV channel TV4 announced a simracing competition with a first prize of 100 000 SEK. The qualification to six quarterfinals, with 6 drivers in each quarterfinal, was done in the demo of the sim Race07, which simulated the WTCC (World Touring Car Championship). I could not resist but had to download the demo and try a couple of laps. I was a bit late in the competition, do not remember why now. The track to qualify on was Brands Hatch and after a couple of laps I compared my lap times with the currently fastest in this competition. I was 15 seconds of the pace??? What the… I hoped that there were something wrong with my calibration of the throttle, so I recalibrated, and tried again. I immediately noticed a difference . I was now 5 seconds of the pace, which seemed more appropriate for the short practice I had and after such a long rest from simracing, or any racing for that matter. I hadn’t even started to fiddle with the setup yet.

You could qualify in one of two cars; The Seat Leon or BMW 3-series car. I picked the Seat for two reasons. First this was the car the rest of the competition would be run in, and second I really don’t like the looks of that BMW.

So… More practice, some setup fiddling and suddenly I had the 54:th fastest time in the Seat – Excellent ! I did some calculations and realized that I only had to be among the first 18 to get to a quarterfinal. The first two quarterfinals I missed, because they were finished around when I had the 54:th fastest time, and they were televised when I actually managed to qualify for quarterfinal 3 and 4, but had to go on a company conference instead of participating, so I had to turn down the offer given by TV4, but was allowed to try to qualify for 5 and 6 quarterfinals. By this time I was starting to get really fast and finally ended up with a lap that was the third fastest over all in the Seat. The competition for the last two quarterfinals had such names as Roland Ehnström, but he drove the BMW, and Robert Björkman who got the fastest time in the Seat, two tenth of a second faster than mine. My last laps were done in my newly bought Logitech G25.

I accepted the offer from TV4 to take part in one of the last two televised quarterfinals, but now I just had to buy Race06 and try to learn all the tracks which we could end up driving in the quarterfinal. I had a very short time to do all this and come race day I made a mess of it. Long story short, my setup ended up being almost undrivable with incredible oversteer and I didn’t manage to fix it in the qualifying session. I qualified last of six drivers. Now I only concentrated on not screwing it up for someone else, luckily they managed to do that themself, a bit, and I ended up fourth in the race, actually gaining on third on the last laps. The two first made it to the semifinals. Roland Ehnström won the final and the 100 000 SEK. This was my first experience of televised competition, and my first experience of competing for such a large prize, and my first experience of competing eye to eye against other simracers. I can’t remember ever being so nervous. Probably a big part of me making a mess of my setup. On the plus side it was really nice to meet eleven other really good sim racers.

How to make a video from a GP2 replay

You need GP2 and GP2 replays, obviously… You also need DOSBox (Google the string “DOSBox download”, without the quotation.). The version I use is 0.73. Now the hard part. The problem you will get out of the box with DOSBox is that the videos created by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F5 will be either in slow motion or fast motion. While recording the video and sound might studder and that’s okay. The end result should still be just fine. You have to edit the configuration of DOSBox. After installing DOSBox you will have a DOSBox entry in your start-meny, and in it you will have a Configuration – Edit Configuration entry. Click on that. The only thing I have changed is this line:

cycles=auto

On most tracks this got the best real-time result for me:

cycles=fixed 133000

But Monaco needed this:

cycles=fixed 200000

This may not work on your machine, then you have to experiment to find which fixed value will work for you.

I’ve also added this line at the end of the configuration, under [autoexec], to speed up the experimentation.

mount e e:\data\games\gp2
e:
gp2

Now this will of course only work for you if you have your GP2 installation at e:\data\games\gp2 .

Now you only have to upload the videos to YouTube – Good luck!

Grand Prix Legends (1998)

One day at the end of the 90′s I discovered a hotlap competition in a new simulator, Grand Prix Legends, and it was for the demo of Grand Prix Legends. I downloaded and tried it, and boy did I have trouble with that one. I was only top 20 in the demo, if even that, and Ian wondered why. Ian and I had become internet friends since GP2, so we discussed the driving of GPL, and he was amazed that I used right foot breaking, and at the times I was able to do with that in GP2, so I started to brake with my left foot. That needed some practice of course, but when GPL was released I started to get a grip on it. My sharpest memory was trying to beat the world record at Monza. I had it within grasp and tried evening after evening. The hotlapping in GPL was exhausting, because you had to leave the pit, do your outlap and then the hotlap started. Finally I beat it, I thought, and submitted my lap, only to find out that another driver also beat it, but with a little bit more than me. I was mentally exhausted and could not sit down and try to improve my lap anymore. Being second fastest at Monza as long as it lasted was my best result in GPL. I never got used to GPL. My personal opinion was that it was harder to drive than the real thing. If the cars of the 1967 F1 was this hard to drive a lot more drivers would have been killed. They did not have our possibility to practice hundreds of hours. I think I spent around 500 hours in GPL…

GPL almost made me give up simracing, but some years later, 2007, a swedish TV channel announced a simracing competition…

Microprose Grand Prix 2 (1995) by Geoff Crammond

I’ve later calculated that I spent around 1000 hours racing in GP2. To get a picture on how much leisure time that is, it is said that it takes 5 years, with 2 to 3 training hours a week, with an educated coach, to get the black belt in karate, the Shotokan style anyway. That’s a total of 750 hours.

We were a couple of GP2 drivers that wanted to drive and compare lap times in GP2 without using any help whatsoever and we found a site devoted to this – http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/2922/ -, unfortunately this site is no more (as of 2009-11-10). At the beginning I held most of the world records in this competition, but then came Ian Lake, and later Dave Mansell, and finally Bart Westra.

Here’s the fastest lap I ever did at Suzuka

We also run complete races in GP2, which of course lasted as long as real races do last in F1. I think I completed at least one season doing complete races. I remember blowing up the engine in the tunnel at Monaco after around 54 laps. I think a race was 84 laps back then, don’t know if it’s the same now. We of course use manual gear shifting, and I calculated that you need around 3000 to 4000 gear shifts on a race at Monaco. In those days we shifted gear by buttons on the wheel, one for up and another for down. Here’s one of the fastest no help hotlaps in the world, so you can count gear shifts for yourself.

One of my coolest experience with GP2 came with an editor to GP2. You could change grip and horsepower. This was easily discovered in the hotlap competitions, though, but what I did was to change it so I was as fast in the corners and straights as the compter cars was, and then run a complete race. Just to get a closer look on how that would be in real life. I think I qualified 8th and ended up at position 6th when the race was finished. I did it at Magny Cours, France. I remember trying to catch the car at fifth, and some laps I gained but some laps I lost to it. Lap after lap, it was frustrating. I was 7 or 8 seconds behind, and I think it was around that to the car behind me. Finally I was exhausted mentally and just settled for 6th.

I remember at the beginning of my simracing driving I had the race line shown all the time, to follow, and drove with the automatic gearbox. I found that hard enough and had no idea how to be able to drive with out that. One day I did, effortless, as if it was second nature. I practiced for it of course. At this time I still changed gear with buttons on the wheel, and tried a couple of times changing gear with the stick shifter, which my wheel also had. Found it impossible, but one day the buttons gave up, and I had too. With a little practice this also became second nature. I’m pretty sure my fastest lap  ever on Hockenheim was done with stick shifting. Stick shifting on this wheel ment pushing forward for gearing down and pulling back for gearing up.

What and Why?

What is simracing and why did I start with it? It’s short for simulated car racing, and by simulated it’s done with a computer. The object is to mimic the experience of driving a race car as closely as possible.

I started with this hobby back in 1995 if my memory serves me. It was the first time in Sweden you could buy steering wheels and pedals for your PC. I have always liked driving cars, and I think it was 1994 when I first tried to drive a so-called indoor go-kart. A colleague of mine invited me to join his friends. I won . Before this event I had only driven a go-kart once before. Outdoor and more than 10 years earlier. I remember I spun once, and it was with two other friends, and it was when we had motorcycles, 125 CC’s.

So not much racing experience then. I think my first sim was the F1GP (by Geoff Crammond)

a Formula 1 simulator, and I remember being fascinated by the fact that I could drive the racing line (wide in, hit the apex and wide out), I had to hit my braking points and not accelerate too early or too late. I’m pretty sure the first track I drove was Imola and I was alone on the track, in practice mode, trying to drive the racing line, memorizing the track, the points where to start breaking, the points where to start accelerating. The lap time getting lower and lower, which is a good thing in racing. I think I loved it, because the same year, 1995, Grand Prix 2 was released, again designed by Geoff Crammond, and I bought it.

At this time the internet starts to wake up and you could find hotlap competitions on this new thing. No prices, just glory and honour. I followed the real F1 circuit when learning the tracks in GP2, and when it was time for Suzuka in Japan, I found a hotlap competition for GP2, which had over 1000 registered drivers. Amazingly my best time on Suzuka was not far from the world record, or if I already had beaten it, I don’t remember. I beat it though and posted it, and it stood for a whole month. A driver from Japan finally beat it, but he was using a help in GP2 that later was shown to be an advantage. I drove with no helps activated whatsoever, true to the simulation of course. I see no point in using any help that the real drivers do not have. It’s a simulator for crying out loud.

Anyway, apparently I’m fast, and that’s probably one of the reasons why I like this hobby. If you’re good at something the odds are you like it.

There’s one really big advantage of simulated car racing – You can not die because of crash injuries.