Grand Prix World 1998: The Tyrell Challenge Part 39

-

We are Hungry. We are coming: The 2002 Preseason

Welcome back to the Tyrell Challenge and ... yes ... we are champions. 2001 was ... crazy good, and hopefully a sign of things to come. In my 5 year plan, I said that Year 5 was the year where we would start winning. Well ... 2002 is Year 5. Winning, and winning convincingly, is what we must do. This year, tons of good contracts will either kick in (like the Supplier contracts) or will start showing their performance (Our Chief Designer and Tech. Director, most notably). Let's kick off the 2002 Preseason, we have a lot of ground to cover today.

Here's an interesting comparison. Diniz is, points-wise, the weakest champion on this save. We weren't dominant by any stre- ... well ... by the end we were. Other than that, we were just ... kinda there. This title took significant collapse. If we do things right, this next title won't need anyone collapsing.

I hope to make it back to back championships. And agree, this is an unbelievable result.


Welcome back everyone, and welcome Fisi and Philips.

The Team Lineups

You ready for this? Grid got shuffled. Let's start:

  • Pedro Diniz: Tyrell Driver 1 to Williams Number 1
  • Emmanuel Collard: Benetton Test Driver to Ferrari Test Driver
  • Jean Alesi: Sauber Driver 1 to Benetton Driver 1 (This relegates Shinji Nakano to Driver 2)
  • Mario Haberfeld: Minardi Driver 2 to Benetton Test Driver
  • Jorg Muller: Arrows Driver 2 to McLaren Test Driver
  • Rubens Barrichello: Prost Driver 2 to Jordan Driver 1
  • Alexander Wurz: McLaren Test Driver to Jordan Driver 2
  • Ralf Schumacher: Stewart Driver 1 to Prost Driver 2
  • Mika Salo: Free Agent to Sauber Driver 1
  • Johnny Herbert: Jordan Driver 1 to Arrows Driver 1
  • Esteban Tuero: Jordan Driver 2 to Arrows Driver 2
  • Tora Takagi: Minardi Driver 1 to Stewart Driver 1
  • Giancarlo Fisichella: Arrows Driver 1 to Tyrell Driver 2
  • Juan Pablo Montoya: Benetton Driver 2 to Minardi Driver 1
  • Luca Badoer: Ferrari Test Driver to Minardi Driver 2
  • David Coulthard: Williams Number 1 to Free Agency

First, the shocker. MegaChin, David Coulthard is out of a seat. Why? Part of it was me thinking Williams was going to extend him, which made me look for Fisi. I guess the rest of the grid thought the same. And Williams went "Nah, go for Pedro". Which is smart but ... MegaChin.

Pretty much all teams had some form of change. Minardi totally flipped their lineup, as did Arrows and Jordan. Funnily enough, Arrows just took Jordan's lineup outright! Stewart hired the 1998 Tyrell lineup with the hope they can do what Tyrell did in 5 years.

Ferrari STILL has the best overall lineup for the infinieth time. After that, McLaren-Jordan is the second/third best. After that ... maybe Williams, maybe Tyrell, maybe Benetton, Prost or Sauber. Williams has the reigning, defending World Champion so ... advantage?

Our contracts are alright, no need to worry about them for this year at least.

The Team Department Managers

I can easily make the argument that Tyrell has the best overall Department Managers. Everyone is at least Level 4, with new CM Ian Phillips and long time LM Mick Ainsley-Cowlishaw our Level 5 stars. You can try to make the argument Benetton or Sauber are better ... you can try.

Ferrari and McLaren are slowly regressing. Williams is bad. Benetton and Sauber will rise next year, Minardi is ... Minardi.

If you payed attention to the Technical Directors column, you might have noticed that there is someone missing.

Where in the World is Adrian Newey?!

The Team Entry List and Main Sponsors

Williams Mercedes ... thanks to real life, this is very believable. McLaren Ford has happened in real life (and was terrible) so it is not insane. Ferrari MERCEDES is batshit insane. Thank you, Grand Prix World.

Williams is number 1 because Williams Number 1 also happens to be the current World Champion. Our 4th place is thanks to Nick Heidfeld.

As for us ... Galoisses (French) Tyrell (British) Ferrari (Italian). A true multinational team. Hopefully Ferrari's engine is good and reliable. It won't slow us down in the long run if it is, but it will make the first few races much, much better.

Red Marlboro on the very blue Prost Peugeot is sure to be funny. Arrows enjoyed the Merc engines, and then decided to go Ford power. WHYYYYY????!!!

Oh, look, now half the grid has Bridgestone tires. All of the top teams have Merc power, good for them. Funnily enough, the 3 Merc powered cars were Ford powered last year. What does that tell you about Ford? Nothing good, sadly McLaren did not listen (Or were beaten to the Mercs). We now have 2 Ferrari PUs on the grid, courtesy of Sauber and Tyrell. Ford down to 2 PU teams. Mugen-Honda is out, as no one signed a deal with them. I'm sorry, but we need a Works deal and they don't have it. Maybe in a universe where they provide Works deals ...

Somehow Minardi, MINARDI, has a Goodyear Works deal. Other than that, nothing hugely notable. Grid is somewhat evenly distributed. 6-5, advantage Bridgestone.

Sauber and Tyrell with the only Works deals for Fuel, so we'll have a slight advantage there. Everyone else is just on Partner/Customer deals thanks to Mobil 1 going Partner only for ... who knows what reason.

The Suppliers

Fuel

FIA made a changes that forced Fuel suppliers to downgrade their fuel mixture. Let's compare them to the final 2001 Spec.

  • Agip: No Changes. Pretty all right fuel mix. Lacks a bit of Performance, but it will be fine.
  • Elf: -2 Performance, A bit disappointing from Elf. Discount Agip pretty much.
  • Mobil 1: No Changes. Basically Agip, but for Performance. I'd prefer Mobil 1 if I knew my PU had a good cooling system (Tolerance affects Engine Heat rating)
  • Petrobras: No Changes. Mobil 1 and Petrobras are functionally the same.
  • Repsol: No Changes. Discont Mobil 1.
  • Shell: -3 Performance. +1 Engine Tolerance. This ... isn't ideal from them. The engines won't overheat, that's for sure but ... could get a bit more power out of this mixture. Not the end of the world, as Works deals are elite.
  • Texaco: No Changes. Performance boosted Mobil 1, pretty much.
  • Total: No Changes. Good Value Shell which ...

Why, Shell? Why you were the only supplier that downgraded this much ... anyway, Works deals.

Tires

No changes here which ... well ... I'd rather see Tires getting downgraded since that makes the Works deal considerably more valuable ... we'll figure it out. Bridgestone reigns supreme until it gets into Inter/Wet territory.

Engines

Here we go, the part I'm sure you've been waiting for.

  • Mercedes-Benz: No Changes. Easily the second best engine on the grid. The only issue it has is the MID reliability and worse than average Heat rating. Plenty powerful and light. It is quite good.
  • Ferrari: -2 Heat, -1 Rigidity. Probably the best engine on the entire grid. And that's our engine. The best power output, the lightest possible engine, good fuel efficiency and close to perfect reliability. The peripherals, Response and Rigidity, will be better eventually. The cooling system needs help too, but if we keep it under control, this is easily the best engine.
  • Peugeot: -2 Fuel, -2 Heat, -1 Power, -2 Response, -1 Rigidity. The poor Peugeot got destroyed. Reliability is nearly perfect, light and very rigid. MID power, poor fuel efficiency and horrible response. Possibly the worst engine on the grid.


  • Ford: -1 Heat, -3 Power, -2 Response, -2 Weight. More likely to grenade than the Peugeot, it has better peripherals for the same power output. The best fuel efficiency, best cooling system on the grid, MID response and solid Rigidity and Weight. I rate this one a bit better than the Peugeot.
  • Mecachrome: -1 Weight. Better power than Ford/Peugeot, similar reliability to the Peugeot, great Response and Weight, MID Heat and solid Fuel Efficiency. Rigidity, however, destroys the potential of the engine. It is an excellent qualifying engine, but pushing it a slight, slight bit will make it shake a break the rear wing.


Here's the Hart in case you want to know how good it is.

The Team Performance Ratings

You ready for this?

Look at this. LOOK AT THIS! This is exactly what we've been working for. Yes, the other teams dropped, but we are matching Ferrari, FERRARI, step by step. This tells you all you need to know. Ferrari v Tyrell for the championship, Prost, Sauber, Williams, McLaren and Benetton fighting for best of the rest. This would be interesting with the 2010s scoring system. The best we'll get is the 2003 scoring system ... next year, in 2003.

So ... this is going to be a real life 2000-ish season.

There ... is something else we need to talk about ...

Yep ... The Michael will be retiring. This is just 2002. Imagine an early 2000s world without The Michael ... this ... is a thing. That is happening.

The Driver Ratings Changes

Williams

  • Pedro Diniz: +1 Overtaking, +1 Concentration
  • Eddie Irvine: +1 Wet Weather, +1 Concentration

Ferrari

  • Michael Schumacher: -1 Speed, -1 Skill
  • Jacques Villeneuve: No Changes

Benetton

  • Jean Alesi: +1 Overtaking, +1 Concentration
  • Shinji Nakano: +1 Overtaking, +1 Wet Weather, +1 Concentration, +1 Stamina
  • Mario Haberfeld: +1 Overtaking

McLaren

  • Mika Hakkinen: +1 Speed
  • Jan Magnussen: +1 Speed, +1 Overtaking, +1 Wet Weather, +1 Experience, +1 Stamina
  • Jorg Muller: +1 Experience

Jordan

  • Rubens Barrichello: +1 Speed, -1 Skill, +1 Overtaking, +1 Wet Weather
  • Alexander Wurz: None

Prost

  • Damon Hill: +1 Overtaking, +1 Concentration, +1 Experience
  • Ralf Schumacher: -1 Skill, +1 Overtaking, +1 Concentration

Sauber

  • Mika Salo: None
  • Heinz-Harald Frentzen: +1 Overtaking, +1 Wet Weather

Arrows

  • Johnny Herbert: +1 Wet Weather
  • Esteban Tuero: +1 Overtaking

Stewart

  • Tora Takagi: +1 Skill, +1 Overtaking, +1 Wet Weather
  • Ricardo Rosset: +1 Wet Weather

Tyrell

  • Giancarlo Fisichella: +1 Overtaking, +1 Wet Weather, +1 Concentration, +1 Experience
  • Nick Heidfeld: +1 Speed, +1 Skill, +1 Wet Weather, +1 Concentration

Minardi

  • Juan Pablo Montoya: +1 Concentration
  • Luca Badoer: None
That's it for this chapter. On the next one, the season opener at Melbourne. The expectation is that we will fight with Ferrari for the lead of this championship all year long. We want a solid opening result. Will we get it? I don't know, only on way to find out. See you at Melbourne.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Art of Setup Building, Part 1: The Baseline

-
Image
Post number 1 of the blog, Jose21crisis here, hello all. I had a few projects in mind that I wanted to implement on my YouTube channel (well, one of the many versions of said channel), but considering my computer is effectively a potato with a bunch of wires with a monitor attached, that wasn't an option. So, I decided on this format, where I can be as through as I would like to be, in a format that's easier to create and edit. I know for a fact that video editing can take ages. I have a few ideas planned regarding F1 Challenge '99-'02, one of the best F1 games ever made and effectively the grandfather of other sims such as rFactor and Automobilista, as well as Grand Prix World, an F1 manager masterpiece made by Microprose, of Grand Prix 4 fame. The first project planned was me taking a stab at something that's been done again and again. The art, you could call it black magic, of making setups. This one in particular is focused on F1 Challenge '99-'02, hopef...
Read more

The Art of Setup Building, Part 2: Your best friends

-
Image
The tires, temperatures, pressures and alignments. You might have heard, a lot of times in fact, that the tires are the only part of the car that's in contact with the road. While not always true (though you generally don't want the floor touching the ground too often), what is true is that adjustment to the tires can net so much more time than nearly any other adjustment you can make. Before we get into that, however, we need to look at the rubbers themselves first. The compound In F1C, the tire suppliers give us 2 different compounds of dry weather tires, and 3 different configurations of wet weather tire. For now, we'll focus on the dry tires and leave the wets to the Rain Adjustment section. Naturally, the compounds can change when mods come into play. The two tire compounds we have are the Soft tires and the Hard tires. Soft tires provide excellent grip and are quick to heat up, which makes them ideal on races in cold weather. However, their wear rate is high and they ...
Read more

The Art of Setup Building, Part 10: Need for Diff. Speed

-
Image
Differential, objective and adjustments We arguably have the car setup up perfectly fine for us. Despite us having the car setup to our likening, maybe there's some behaviors that we want to reel in, but if we adjust the suspension we will screw up the rest of the car. That's what adjusting the Differential can do for us. Now, I could talk about why we need differentials in the first place, but that's for later. I will explain the technical details (That I know) later. First, here's something I want you to see. A differential set incorrectly allowing power to disappear when exiting the pit stall ... ... exiting a slow speed corners ... ... and a high speed corner. This needs to be controlled. See what happens when the Differential isn't set up properly? This is only one of the side effects. We'll cover the other ones. First, let's see the settings. We have 4 settings to adjust. Sounds like a lot, but one of them assists the others. That said, we need to tal...
Read more