11th Hour Madness: The Italian, Luxembourg and Japanese GPs
I'm impatient. Yes, this is a triple header chapter. I was totally planning to run a typical double header here, the run the Japanese GP as its own thing, but I'm impatient. I ran the 3 remaining races, and it is time to run the report on them. Let's get going, we have a lot of ground to cover today.
The final performance chart of the season. McLaren brought a Japan upgrade. Minardi did so as well. Minardi probably burned their entire budget doing so, BTW.
Just like it happened with the engines, there's some fun stuff going down in the tyre supplier section. We will enter full blown Tire Wars next season. For one, I'm sure the Bridgestone Soft was not as OP at the beginning of the year. For another, the only Bridgestone "upgrade" is a Benetton-made spec where Benetton moved some stats around. The top teams probably have even better tires, but that's not a public tire. Ferrari can have Goodyear make tires for them that only Ferrari can use.
Monza. Do I need to say more? I'll just add that can't push the engines too much and track has a serious case of the bumps.
That can be a problem.
Oh oh ...
G'damn Tosser. How can you not put a lap time inside the 107% on the dry?! This is why you ain't coming back, you ... are ...
A GENIUS!
Think about it: Not qualifying means no racing, no racing means car doesn't wear, no wear means we don't have to waster spares repairing the car. Ricardo Rosset, if that's the last gift you are giving us ... we like that, that's a 5000 IQ Galaxy Brain strat from the Tosser himself.
Unfortunately, during the race, out actual qualifier in GOATakagi blew the engine (Ford). So all I had left to do was ... watch the championship fight.
Ferrari F'd up their strat. The 1 stop ended up being the superior strategy, as seen by race winner CRT TV Man.
This is sad.
OK, permutations. If DC can score 14 points over the next few races, he is World Champion no matter what The Michael does. The Michael is still at striking distance. Irvine could also become a WDC, but it would require approximately 4 miracles.
Ferrari needs 23 points to properly lock up the WCC.
Hmm ... this isn't enough. We are VERY short on cash. We'll deal with that.
J- ... Jordan! Dang.
Hah! We beat you again Minardi. Also, that's your own fault Tosser. And we are thankful for that.
ARROWS!! Also, hopefully Sarrazin can complete the race he gets called up to ... if he gets called up at all.
Even with a Pit mistake, they won.
This isn't MyF1Team.com, chill out.
OK, let's take a look at the behind the scenes. After Action Report:
This is the best the Design Stage will get. A 77% is alright, we'll get 77% of the car's true potential. That potential is mid, but that's not a concern.
Uhhh ... you can see the issue, right? Building a Chassis costs at least $560k. We have $420k. We need money, but we aren't selling any more shares. So, what do we do?
Hit the BIGGER Red button in the SWAT (Banking) section.
The Loan
Unfortunately, I didn't take the section image. What we can do in this section is ask for a certain amount of money, from $4m to $8m. Bank will give us that with the condition that we have to return said amount of cash, plus a certain amount of interest over a certain number of years/race weekends. We can go less races for less interest rates, but more payment per race. Or more races for less payment per race, but higher interest rates. I went for less races, as I don't want to deal with the loan in Season 3. We should be fine in Season 2.
Here are the details of the Loan. No, I won't sell more shares. As you can see, we now have $8m. That will be dropping really quick.
With 2 races remaining, I repaired the cars to exactly 26%. As I understand, that should be enough to survive the last 2 races. That said, Takagi's car has some damage due to the engine exploding. I don't mind a DNF. Also, in the "Cars Built" section, we have a 1999 car built already.

Additionally, I'm doing something ... potentially stupid. This is the factory screen. As you can see, we have a Level 1 facility, the lowest level possible. We can upgrade the factory at any point we want. That costs money, money we didn't have until now. We could upgrade the Factory itself, which let's us have more Facilities and Personnel, or we could build and upgrade the Facilities. In this case, I will build a CAD Facility, which increases the speed of the Design stage when making a chassis or chassis upgrades, and a Workshop, which increases the speed of the development of Technology components and Driving Aids, something I hope to do on a regular basis next year. The CAD Facility is the most important one here, since the Design phase is the most important in terms of development.
As an extra, Mugen Honda will now give us a bit of cash-money for using their engines. I love these bonuses. We won't get a Goodyear bonus, however.
Here we go, the Nurburgring in GP configuration. A bit harsh on low handling cars but a fantastic track nonetheless, and at this point in the calendar, suffering from the slightly crazy German weather. Expect a race to go from dry to wet to dry at any moment.
With The Mika now being the team's number 2, he's doing a good job containing The Michael. DC right behind. I will say ... that Top 4 do be tight. BTW, I noticed while making the performance chart that Ferrari brought a Traction Control system to this race.
Hard tire + Minardi upgrades = Slow Tyrell. At least in qualifying pace.
This is a lie, a trick. An illusion designed to give us hope. It will rain and it will rain hard. Do you know what that means?!
Yep, it was The Michael domination show from the start of the race (Their race start was amazing, Ferrari took the 1-2 into T1), through the rain, and to the end of the race. McLaren did put up a fight ... it just wasn't a big enough fight. That said, Eddie didn't do his part as the number 2 driver.
Typical Tyrell result, yeah?
All right, time for the After Action Report.
Well, geez. Eddie is out, so it is a straight up fight between DC and MSC. Permutations are simple: MSC needs to outscore DC by 2 points as I think DC has the tiebreaker. So, MSC needs a 5th place as the bare minimum. DC should be fine by finishing right behind MSC ... unless that result is 1st-2nd or 2nd-3rd.
3 points lock up Ferrari's WDC bid. McLaren need to outscore Ferrari by 13 points, which is nigh impossible, but who knows. Bigger comebacks have happened.
Heh, Stewart know Ford ain't it.
You still whining? Also, the guys kept getting in the way of lead lap cars, so I had to micro manage them to avoid lappers, while defending their position. It was ... annoying.
I don't mind not getting full sponsorship. We have enough.
We'll check those regulations in a moment.
Heh ... media.
This is ... nearly perfect. So the new regulations can ask for an Upgrade (which makes the components get a boost for next season), a No Change (components change based on the supplier) and a Downgrade (which makes the components get debuffed). The upgrade size is based on the Supplier's R&D stat. Better R&D = Bigger upgrades and smaller Debuffs. We have an advantage in terms of fuel (Elf), and a disadvantage in terms of Engine (Mugen Honda).
We have also signed 2 cash sponsors. They don't give us much cash-money, but some is better than none. Let's compare next season's sponsors to this season's.
Our current sponsors hate us because we haven't do any Hospitality, which explains why our money from sponsorships has dropped. We hope to improve sponsor relations next season.
This is the overview for this year. That's $3m extra compared to the current season.
But if, as I've told you before, take into account the cost of suppliers, that's a boost of around $10m. With less sponsors. Why? Because the Commercial department did an All-Pro getting us the good suppliers and solid Cash Sponsors.
Appreciate this Cash chart.
And this Expenditure break down. Specially notable are the Construction and Banking section. Construction has the new chassis we built, Banking has that Loan. Expect the Engine and Fuel cost to vanish next season.
Now, using the data from this season, the Commercial department is projecting that we will earn $8.9m next season. I'm not 100% sure we'll get that simply because the Loan is a thing.
OK ... that's it for the AAR. Time to deal with the final race of this season. Will The Michael win his 3rd WDC or will DC finally stop the bleeding and win his first? Only one way to find out.
Suzuka, a track that's seen many a championship decider. Hopefully we don't see the F1 equivalent of an NFL tackle into T1 on this go around. Yes, we all know who I'm targeting here.
Oh dear. This will be interesting. Something that we can expect is that the track will dry out for 5-10 minutes and those will be the flyers. AI might or might not use those dry track moments.
Here's something I struggled to believe. The Michael, on inters and on a wet track, put a faster lap than our guys, on dries and on a dry track. Let that sink in.
Look at this! Ferrari didn't use the dry track period! Some AIs not going out on the dry helped us start here. As for Ferrari ... it isn't the real life Last to First challenge The Michael had to do, but it isn't ideal anyway.
There's also the fact that the McLaren bois do be quick.
I had to take this picture just to get you to understand this. Look at the track map, the Number 3 Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro car driven by one The Michael Schumacher is in the lead. Somehow, his race start and opening lap was so out of this world good that he took the lead the front runners entered Sector 3! McLaren had a horrible start and fell to the midfield.
And, because this is Japan. It rained. Despite that ... The Michael didn't have the pace. It was McLaren that had the superior pace both in the dry and wet parts of the race. DC eventually was running P4, with The Michael running P5 which basically means DC would his first WDC ... except ... race was not over.
OK, let me explain what happened here. You can see that DC DNF'd. I was in Time Acceleration mode, so I couldn't see the action, I could only see DC DNF'ing with the reason being "Rear Wing". My best guess is that a backmarker on a better compound of tires (Wets instead of Dries?) ran into him, but no one else DNF'd with him (what usually happens when someone runs into someone else). Maybe he did that to himself? Anyway. With that DNF, all The Michael had to do was finish 5th or better. Just like in the real life 2003 season, he did just barely what he needed to do.
As for down here, I underestimated the Wear values for this track. The Tosser had an outright part failure (Excessive wear) while Takagi had some sort of engine issue, I suspect cooling problems. Doesn't matter, because we won't use these cars anymore.
That leaves The Michael as the 1998 WDC by a single, solitary point. But we don't care about that. What we do care about is Ricardo "Tosser" Rosset finished the WDC in 14th position, qualified, something we didn't expect.
Ferrari is the 1998 WCC. Williams beats Benetton. But more importantly, Tyrell finished 9th, qualified, far better than our expected result of ... Unclassified.
You'd believe the media would peg me as the Worst Manager, but no, Jackie Stewart was the worst. Considering we (Tyrell) scored points and they didn't ... yeah.
Finally, to close out this chapter and season, we will look at 2 rankings. The first is the manager ranking. For all the media smashing us all year, they labeled me the 4th best manager behind WDC/WCC manager di Montezemolo, collapse artist Dennis and ... David Richards of Team Enstone? ... All right. Something else we beat Minardi at. Heck, we beat Frank Williams, who won the championship last year and ended up a nice 3rd this year.

Then there's the FIA ranking. This one is based on a combination of performance and how much they like us. Points standings have an effect, but how much they annoy the FIA does alter the ranking too. See Jordan, Prost and us for a good example. Jordan being much better than us in points, Prost being unclassified (5th v 9th v Unclassified) but Jordan lower than us and Prost being higher in the FIA ranking. Why? All those Illegal Driving Aids they found and destroyed, that pisses off the FIA in the case of Jordan, and Prost ... I guess lower expectations that us? What this ranking affects, as seen down-left is the funding the FIA will give teams. This year, we had $3m in funding if memory serves, next year we expect to have $10.25m.
That's it, for this year. We will enter Season 2 with $4.8m in our account. It will be a fight between the Loan and our running costs v our Sponsor/Pay Driver Money. We should be able to build up cash through the next 2 seasons. Depending on how well that goes, we should start fighting for something soon. On the next chapter, we'll enter the 1999 Preseason and we'll run the 1999 Australian GP. We'll see who's good and who's not in it.
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