Grand Prix World 1998: The Tyrell Challenge Part 10

 Let's do this again: The 1999 Preseason and Australian GPs

Welcome back, everyone. Last time, we completed the 1998 season. We saw The Michael and Ferrari achieve a fantastic comeback (well, McLaren commit a gigantic collapse) to win both 1998 WDC and WCC titles. As for us in Tyrell, we scored 2 points. 2 more than we expected. Compared to the real life team, they scored 0 points. That confirms we are approximately infinity (∞) times better than the real team. You know, because 2/0 using Calculus magic (Limits) tends to infinity. Anyway, the point is, we were ... "g- ... good?". But more importantly, we survived. On to the 1999 Preseason.

Thank you. I'm not sure we'll do "much better" but we'll do our best.

First things first, the Driver Lineups and Department Managers:

So, let's talk about this gigantic image. Had to be this way or resolution would have died for some reason. In terms of drivers, Ferrari arguably have the best Driver lineup, with The Michael and John Newhouse. Something that would have totally work in real life because Michael and Jacques are very good friends, yes. Williams totally failed in retaining both of their drivers (Like IRL), but they got a nice haul for their trouble. The Chin and Irvine are solid drivers, with DC close to winning a WDC last year. McLaren got the other Williams driver in Frentzen, as well as holding on to The Mika (You are welcome, McLaren). Amusingly, Wurz is now their test driver. Fisi went back to Jordan, Hill did a Hill by signing with Prost.

As for us, we got a decent improvement in terms of performance. Pedro Diniz is better than the Tosser. We have the advantage in terms of drivers against Minardi. In terms of car? Who knows.

As for the Department Managers, Ferrari is even more OP and will be a dominant force in 2000 and potentially 2001. McLaren will be their main threat in 2000, with Williams and Benetton being behind and Sauber just behind that. Ferrari and Jordan also have the best Commercial Managers in the field, so expect them to get good, sound, smart deals for all their supplies.

Next, the Official team names and Suppliers/Sponsors.

This was all automated in Excel, making the Ferrari part of the Formula work was a pain. Big pain.

First, the asterisk on Ferrari's Engine Deal type. In code, they are using Mercedes Engines, as that's what they signed. This is despite me editing the save and making the have Ferrari as the Engine Supplier. Grand Prix World is smart. Big smart.

Anyway, as here are all the suppliers, and the Title Sponsor. Like before, those with 0s are just elevated Cash Sponsors. Anyway, the only team dumb enough to go for a Customer deal was Arrows, keeping their Hart engines (Hart can only do Customer deals). Ferrari, McLaren, Benetton, Jordan and Sauber have probably the better engines. Minardi has learned nothing and went back to Ford because ... meh. Stewart was big smart and left Ford's work engines to go to Peugeot's work engines. No one else followed them.

In terms of tires, is a nearly equal grid. 6 Goodyear teams (Including the championship protagonists) v 5 Bridgestone teams. Arrows only good deal is here, somehow securing a Bridgestone Works deal.

As for Fuel, this is where we shine, with our Elf Partner deal. Only Ferrari elected to pursue Elf as their Fuel supplier.The Shell teams should have a halfway decent Mixture, though.

Also, notice that Red Bull is not a title sponsor. Put a pin on that thought, we'll return to that.

There's only one thing remaining. The car performance ratings. Who adjusted properly to the new regulations and who F'd it up? Let's see.

Appreciate this chart. Here, we can see, from left to right, the car's performance in 1998 Round 1, 1998 Round 16, and 1999 Round 1. This chart shows you how much the team improved the car through the previous season, as well as showing the result of the regulation changes and the work on the Technical Director and Chief Designer of each team.

The grid is divided into 3 groups basically. The front runners, AKA "Those who can": McLaren, Ferrari and Benetton. Then there's the backmarkers, AKA "Those who can't": Stewart, Minardi, Williams (Dear Lord Williams). Finally there's the midfielder, AKA "Those who want to": Arrows(!!), Sauber, Prost, Jordan ... and Tyrell. We are, technically speaking, a midfielder team now. We are the worst of the midfielder, but a midfielder nonetheless. 8th best team in terms of car performance, compared to the combined worst last year. Stewart is in a weird bubble of being a midfield and a backmarker.

It doesn't help that some of the other midfielders have better engines that us. That's what's letting us down.

Finally, let's talk about how Suppliers changed, compared to the beginning of the previous year. First, the raw stats.

Engines:

Merc's engine is still plenty strong. It overheats a bit more, gained a bit of Power, has better Response, is more Rigid and lighter. However, the reliability took a STRONG hit. The 3 Merc teams better be careful.

Ferrari's engine seems better. Improved fuel efficiency, cooling, power while maintaining reliability. Engine is also lighter without losing stats. Ferrari are probably the best engine supplier.

Peugeot improved the cooling system, and traded response for rigidity. Decent engine. Good enough, though Stewart definitely needs a bit better.

Mugen-Honda, the one we care about. A bit less fuel efficient, all in the name of weight reduction. Down on power though, but it could be worse, ask Ford.

Ford, so ... better fuel efficiency. That's all. The worst power of all suppliers will compromised Williams, Prost and Minardi.

No one is using Mecachrome, should be SuperTec, engines, so we won't bother.

Everything Hart did to their engines was improve their power output. Didn't lose anything in the process, good for them.

Tires:

Bridgestone ... made the better Dry Weather tires, and probably the better overall tires.

The Bridgestone Hard is exactly the same. The Goodyear Hard is exactly the same. Advantage Bridgestone is everything except Stiffness (tie) and Temperature (Goodyear).

The Bridgestone Soft is the OP tire of the season. Gained 2 points in Grip, 3 in Resilience, 1 in Stiffness and 2 in Temperature. They clearly focused on the Soft. Goodyear's Soft is exactly the same as last year. Advantage obviously Bridgestone. AIs don't use Softs, I think. So ... we won't see that OP tire. I hope.

The Wet weather tires is where Goodyear shines. Bridgestone Inters gained 2 points in Stiffness and Temperature. The Goodyear Inters gained 2 points of Grip, 1 in Resilience and 2 in Temperature. Clear advantage to Goodyear in Wet condtions.

The Bridgestone Wets is exactly the same. The Goodyear Wets is the same. Advantage Goodyear once again. We want as many rainy races as possible.

Fuel:

Mobil 1 improved performance, as did Petrobras and Repsol. Agip lost 2 points of performance, Total lost 1. Repsol improved their engine tolerance, as did Shell and Total.

Elf remained static, just what we wanted. No big problem there.

OK, expectations have been set. The stage is ready, let's begin this year's operations.

Hello old screen. The new drivers and Postlethwaite are happy. Everyone else is pissed.

Oh ... so I guess that's it for Panis. He'll retire.

Thanks FIA, that will help a ton.

We managed to get that Active Suspension Level 1 legalized. Again.

We did some testing, a monumentally bad idea. This won't happen much.

Here's the Design screen. We now can see the car's Handling percentage. 46% is midfield level. 60% is roughly the rating that tells you the car can fight for top 6 spots consistently. 80% is championship contender.

Here's what I was talking about. Red Bull didn't sign for any team. Apparently, only us called. But ... they did not respond. We will call again, let's see what they reply.

Here's our car. The 1999 Tyrell which ... is quite empty in terms of sponsors. That's a sad looking Mugen-Honda logo in the engine cover BTW.

That's a solid amount of cash. That said, we need to keep Castrol happy, those nearly $4m they are giving us can be better. How to keep them happy? Find out next chapter.

And here' the bonuses. More bonuses, aside from giving us a ton of cash, give us advantages and more upgrades by our suppliers. Hopefully Mugen Honda develop an engine with better power OR one we can push a lot.

We now must focus our mechanics into Car Security. We will be using the Active Suspension Level 1 we developed, we don't want ... IDK, Minardi stealing it.

I know I said share sells were over, but it might still be a thing, depending on how things go.

There we go. AS is now legal, we want that.

Australia, you know the place. A good track to see how we stack up against the rest of the teams. Our target for the year is consistent top 10 finishes. Similarly, I want to survive this year 2. Remember, we are paying a loan. And I did ... something a bit expensive. We'll talk about that later.

Detour: The Setup screen

Before we get into the race, I said I was going to talk about setups. This is different than most racing games, here we have stats that ... I actually like, I like this system since it is clear what you do and what you improve. So, what each bar does? Let's talk:

• Speed: Raw pace of the car. More Speed increases the potential speed of the car, great for qualifying. The sacrifice is that it increases fuel consumption, and it increases driver errors.
• Grip: Raw grip of the car. More Grip adds potential speed to the car, but not as much as "Speed". It also increases fuel consumption. However, it reduces driver errors and increases tire performance.
• Surface: The track's bumpiness, as felt by the suspension. Higher Surface means the suspension is more capable of dealing with bumps, improving its performance (more pace) and reducing its wear. It also slightly reduces tire wear, but not significantly.
• Tarmac: How much the tire wear occurs. Higher Tarmac slows down wear, simple as that. Tire wear is also affected by temperature though.
• Dust: How dusty the track is off the racing line. Higher Dust means the car is more capable of driving on the dirty part of the track. Makes it easier to overtake, reduces driver errors and increases tire performance.
• Overtaking: How easy it is to overtake. High Overtaking makes it ... easier to pass people and to be passed. It should be noted that low Overtake skill drivers are VERY likely to crash into an opponent and cause damage. Just like last season where we lost a chassis thanks to the Tosser.
• Braking: How much wear the brakes suffer. High Braking reduces brake wear, which allows the drivers to be more aggressive on them. This very slightly improves pace, and notably improves overtaking ability.
• Rain: How good the current setup adapts to Wet and Very Wet conditions. Higher means the car loses less pace in the rain. It's either this, or hiring drivers with good Wet Weather skill. It should be noted that this stat is only useful in tracks where it actually rains. Brazil, Belgium, Britain, Japan, Luxembourg, those tracks are where you want to add Rain stat.
• Heat: How hot conditions affect the car. Higher Heat reduces the effect heat has on the car, that means tires overheat less, engines overheat less, and car wears slightly slower. It's either upgrading this or getting tires/engines with better Temperature/Heat stats.
• Wind: Yes, there's wind in this game. This affects aerodynamic performance. Higher Wind means the car is less affected by windy conditions, a big problem on low handling cars. This reduces driver errors and fuel consumption.

Generally, in terms of setup, you want to make it as even as possible. The only exception is on the wet weather tracks, where you want at least 2 points on Rain, then putting the rest on making the car worth racing.

OK, time to get going.

Our boys sporting numbers 14 and 15, like a midfield team. Yeah. This is real.

Oh look, everyone in order until Arrows and Sauber decided to mix it up ... Shinju Nakano is slow. Top 12 start, boys.

Jordan and Williams' fall from grace is ... horrifying. Minardi is still the worst team. We are 2 seconds faster than Minardi!

Top 10 finish. Good job. What was not good was Jordan beating us with Fisi. Then again, Fisi >> Takagi/Diniz. Sadly.

Beating a ton of people on pace, though. Including an Arrows, Prost and Sauber! Notably, no Mechanical DNFs, only crashing.

Time for the After Action Report.

Not much to say about this other than that we will keep watching the standings.

OK, before panic starts, let me explain ...

Let me explain. First, this is an overseas race. Second, we now have the added cost of Hospitality, though that isn't an issue. You might notice the $180k we spent on Testing, and the $1m(!) spent on Construction. This is because I built a 3rd car, so that Heidfeld could help us with testing. Factory costs might go down as well, let me consider it.

Did I say he was retiring? No, that's BS. He isn't. What do you mean?

This again?!

Ok, this is good. We got the Level 2 Active Suspension, and we built it ...

But glitches! We have NOT built a Level 2 Active Suspension. Thanks to the glitch of getting the Level 1 AS, the team somehow developed Level 3(!) suspension that's not legal. I won't abuse the game. We only have Level 2 AS.

We also did enough testing to find out our car is bad, and what we need to do to improve it.

The Rear Wing is bad. It's causing high speed understeer ... I mean, that's what the Chief Designer thinks, he knows his stuff. That High Speed Understeer increases tire wear on high speed tracks. We can fix that issue.

The advantage of having 3, or even 4 chassis, is that we can change which one each driver is using. For Brazil, I'll do the risky call of leaving one of the chassis with slight wear., The other one is the fresh, Test chassis.

OK, we got a situation here. Ferrari, for some UNGODLY reason, Ferrari decided to offer us a 2 year deal, that could be a Works deal! ... Was I expecting this? No. We will put ALL of our resources into that deal ... however ... there's an issue. Ferrari signed a 2 year deal with Sauber, so they can only offer 1 more deal. If someone picks this up, we are screwed.

If that happens, we have this deal. A potential 1 season deal for Merc engines, potentially a partner deal.

Finally, we have Red Bull. They have (finally) answered our calls. This will help us, oh so much. $18m is a ton of money for a small team like us. We will also focus our resources on this deal.

That's it for today. Next chapter we go back to the double header. Brazil and Argentina are up next.

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