Grand Prix World 1998: The Tyrell Challenge Part 5

 Outside Issues: The Monaco and Canadian GPs

There's another travel to America coming, as I totally forgot about Montreal (I'm sorry, Canada). It shouldn't be that much of an issue. I'm not too worried about the little spike in cash ... I need a bit of a safety margin, we'll talk about that later.

The performance chart for today, you can clearly see Ferrari brought a massive upgrade for Canada. This is not all them, I helped them by increasing their handling percentage. IRL Ferrari did upgrade enough to match McLaren. This is the only time I'll do this on this series due to ... many reasons, one of them outlined below.

I think you know where we are going next.

Monaco. Bumpy, dusty and very demanding on the drivers. The mission for us will be simple: to bring the car home in what piece, and to prevent the drivers from tiring themselves out. If you are on a Mid team or better, this is a big sponsorship race. If you are like us, this is a throw away.

McLaren are so much, and yet somehow The Michael is keeping up

Takagi is on the softs today for a 2 stop strategy. Rosset is on the hards for a 1 stop. It shows I think. BTW, The Tosser took 3 attempts to meet the 107% rule. For a moment I thought about just letting him not qualify to save cash, but that's just as he was crossing the line on his 3rd hot lap.

McLaren out here showing no mercy

We had ... like ... no pace. Takagi was slower than Rosset ... remember, the Tosser was on Hards and 1 stopping, Takagi was 2 stopping on softs.

 

This feels all kinds of wrong

 

Other than Tyrell with points, this feels ... believable

 

Ricardo Zonta to backup. So is Luca Badoer. Also, the media with confirmation of the Tyrell Honda reality.

Hmmm ... Interesting.

Now,let's go back stage to check the finances.

Hmmm ... Maybe that test was a bit expensive. Oh well.

Next on the list is the newly signed Goodyear Customer deal. $450k is fine. I'll try negotiating bonuses with them. Bonuses mean faster upgrades and, in the case of Customer deals, cheaper supplies.

In other departments, for some reason the guys were able to build 3, THREE, spare parts without too much effort. Usually we can make 2 and either the 2nd is very expensive, or we can make a 3rd one but is EVEN MORE expensive.

That's because the Department's morale for some ungodly reason went up. Why? Who knows. Maybe they liked that we tested or something.

Back to America, that means expensive transport ... well, not as expensive as Brazil and Argentina, but still. And we are low on cash ... time to use some Special Weapons and Tactics to prevent Bankruptcy. We going to the banking section. 

Raising Money: Stage 1

At the start of this run, I owned 100% of the team. Also at the start of this run, the Share Selling Price was something like $40k. Now that the team is moving a bit, it went up to $105k. The Selling Price is a combination of RNGoodness and how good the team is. Ferrari could sell shares for a ton of cash. Us ... well, these aren't ideal Sell prices, but I want a bit of a safety margin for the next weekends. I'll be coming back to this screen every now and then to sell a few more. It is fine to do so ... UNLESS you sell more than 49%.

If I were to sell 50% of the team, I would stop being the majority owners. That means that, if the team ever looks a tiny bit bad, I'll get Ron Dennis'd, sacked. And I can't get those Shares back, so they are fire and forget. I'll just sell 5% for now. If the prices look good, I might sell a bit more. Do be aware, this will NOT help us late in the season when a certain BIG amount of cash must be used. We have more Special Weapons And Tactics to help us.

In other notable stuff, I HATE that wrecked chassis. Also Montreal is not a high wear track, so no need to fully patch up the cars.

Why the F'ing F there's so much interest for Tyrell merchandise? We suck, people!

Look at that, the good suppliers all made engine upgrades. Ferrari got a massive power boost. The Works teams are probably working with those new engines now. However ...

We are a customer team, upgrades work slow for us. While Stewart is probably enjoying the buffed engines, we ... won't be seeing them for a while ... if at all. Minardi's on the same boat, so no worries.

OK, the back stage action is over. Time to head to the front. On to Canada, we are perfectly FINE.

F I N E

A track where brakes suffer a lot, as do suspensions. A favorite of mine, 1 stoppers seem to work well here. We'll go hard tires on the cars to 1 stop the thing. We probably will stick with the Hards until Germany.
(Side note: Well, it seems me editing Ferrari's handling rating after their upgrade screwed the save a bit ... not too much, just we lost our permission to use Active Suspension Level 1 ... just a note. Just making the game more difficult, yeah?)

I'm 99% sure the AI only uses the Hard tire and ... well ... look at that, Technically Minardi beats us. However, we are 1 stopping. If they 2 stop, advantage Tyrell.

Ferrari has arrived. Also, it is a good result caused by DNFs if we can see one of our guys without scrolling down.

Good job Minardi mechanics, and good job Ford for making trashy engines and giving them to Minardi.

The Mika is heavily underperforming. DC is performing ... actually on pace. I don't care about our finishing position, but we'll always be able to say we finished the worst season of our career classified on the FIA F1 WDC.

Same here, on the FIA F1 WCC.

'bout time, The Michael.

Oh, like hell you are Ferrari. You will be forced to use Ferrari power.

OK, Minardi, you get the Tosser. You know what that means in terms of our drivers? If you don't we'll check the state of the paddock on the next post.

Wurz, get ready.

F you.

OK, time to see how we did after the share sells.

Without the Share Sell, we made $1,200,001.

So ... we would have lost $265,788 had I not sold those shares. Part of the reason is that I've been expanding my staff to get job done AND the construction of spare parts. That means that I'll have to sell a few more in the future. We are nearly at the halfway stage of the season. I think we are doing fine.

Chassis development is slow, but it's fine for now. No need to hit panic buttons for now.

I did another test, thanks to the fact that it was cheap and we are in Europe again. Just need another small test and we fill up the Research bar.

What's not OK is the fact that our sponsors ain't happy. Unhappy Sponsors means Sponsors that pay less cash.

Also, we constructed that Driving Aid I stated was illegal. I had to build it anyway. I guess we can fix that issue by developing a Level 2 Active Suspension and getting that approved. I'll check that next season.

Sponsor Talks: Fuel Supplier

It took us a bit more than expected, but now we know the deals for Elf and Petrobras. Petrobras is actually cheaper than Elf, but Elf is monumentally better developing Fuel. Also, down there you can see that button that's active in the Advantages section? That's a TV Advantage. We got seen on TV so much that we can use that to speed up negotiations. I won't be using it for Elf, I will use it on another negotiation. We need a Title Sponsor. So, let's talk Fuel Suppliers.

Arguably the best Suppliers are Shell and Mobil, with their high Cash and solid R&D, plus the fact that they are the only suppliers that give out Works deals. Petrobras is probably the worst. Elf is interesting. They are nearly immune to Fuel Regulation changes and are very good developing fuel, are the lowest Cash sponsor so they are cheap ... but to counter that, they don't offer Works deals. I don't mind. I think Elf is the best supplier if you are looking for a Partner or Customer deal.

That said, let's see how their Fuel Mixtures rank.

At the start of the game, all Suppliers have 10 points distributed on Performance and Engine Tolerance. This WILL change as the seasons go along. Now, before you start thinking Texaco makes engines more powerful and Elf is trash due to the opposite, let's talk ratings:

• Performance: Nothing to do with raw CAR Performance, higher increases fuel efficiency, simple as that.
• Engine Tolerance: Higher makes the engines more reliable.

So, Fuels aren't game breaking, Engine supplier is considerably more important. Now that we know that, we know that Petrobras and Texaco fuels are HARD on the engines, but they can use less fuel if the engine survives. Elf and Total fuels consume quickly, but make the engine reliable. The rest are more balanced. Mobil and Shell are perfectly middle of the ground in both aspects.

We aren't hoping to compete for anything, I'd rather get a stable fuel that won't kill our Mugen Hondas, so I'll put additional effort into getting an Elf Customer deal. If not ... we'll go Petrobras.

Next post, we'll take a look around the paddock to see who went where. The news aren't showing the movement of Department Managers, we'll have to keep an eye out for them.

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