SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - F1 Challenge '99-'02

When driving F1C and any other racing sim, I use the cockpit view, preferring it because it's the closest to the actual view out of car from the driving position. As far as the driving aids go, I'll use 1) traction control (high) with manual shifting or 2) traction control (low) with auto shifting or 3) all driving aids off. I don't like the driving aids, and usually run with them off. I understand they're to assist in making the drive easier for occassional or new players, but they encourage a certain synthetic feel to the driving. So I guess if you plan to devote any significant time to F1C in an attempt to drive better, lose the driving aids. If it's just an occasional romp, then leave them on. But the driving aids provide for an even more synthetic drive akin to riding the Disney World monorail. "Buy" the course for test session (the solo "Test Day" mode) and learn the tracks. Everyone learns differently, but try this....drive the course multiple laps with the infamous speed control left on. Yes, a snail can pass you but what happens is you study the course and each corner setup for the turn. If you just can't stand it, forget the "R" key and drive in second gear. When you know every turn coming-up as you're entering the previous turn, you're close to learning the course. As my driving instructor used to say, "Slow down, you'll go faster". Most people have a tendency to "rush" the process and then they over-correct, miss apexes, and end-up driving slower. They're always "behind" in the driving trying to correct instead of setting-up for the next turn.

I love the Spa circuit (and glad to see it's slated for return in the 2004 F1 Championship). It's always the first track I head for when trying out any new F1 racing sim. Because it has such diversity of turns, elevations and visuals, it makes for a great "test track". F1C is supposed to be a better driving experience through a significantly redeveloped physics engine. That became very evident after a few corners at Spa. "They got it right!" I'm thinking to myself. Then I cut in too tight at Eau Rouge and an old nemesis of the EA F1 series was back — ice skating off-course with zilch grip. Without any forewarning or tactile feedback while I'm going very slow through the turn, the back end kicks out with absolutely no warning and it's off to the gravel. There is no hope to correct regardless how slow you're going or how early or late in the turn you attempt to correct. Once it's decided you're going into the gravel, you are going there. At that moment F1C showed it has a remnant of the earlier arcadish action that ISI has worked hard to remove. Heading back to the garage, I started looking for setups.

Do yourself a tremendous favor and download the F1C Driving Guide available here from Blackhole Motorsports and the RaceSimCentral forum here. It is the single most beneficial item you'll add to your driving skill in F1C. The setups are fantastic. The very next time on course at Spa it was smooth sailing. Most significant, the setups give you time to correct. The accompanying doc file (or pdf file) discusses so many valid points to F1C driving that it's closer to a clinic. Why ISI didn't get us this type of setup right out of the box is beyond me.

At this point I'll digress. If you're still trying to drive F1C (or for that matter F1 2002) like a Grand Prix Legends car — don't. The GPL era cars depended on power controlling the car and flinging it around. The F1C cars have modern day technology including the aerodynamics to make it fast. You cannot drive both era cars the same, and hanging the backend out like Keke Rosberg of another era will only prove to frustrate you to no end. The modern F1 cars don't take kindly to getting tossed around like a dirt-tracker, and they'll make you pay in either slower lap times or a visit to the land of the blue gravel. Mistakenly it's sometimes thought that you just have to "drive smoothly" to achieve success. Well no matter what type of racing, you have to drive smoothly. That's a given. What you have to do with the modern F1 cars in F1C is drive with precise, exacting control. So when I'm speaking of "no grip" and the "ice skating" effect, it's not from driving fast and deep into a corner, tapping the brake once to straighten the car for the next turn as you would do in GPL. Most all of us like fast cars but few of us have driven anything close to an F1 cars power-to-weight ratio with that much downforce. Certainly the most powerful car I've driven fast is a Porsche 930 Turbo, and it doesn't approach an F1 car's power. But many of us do know how to setup for a turn and take the turn fast. Because of this, the EA F1 cars can show a nasty low-speed cornering temperament until they're tuned. The good news is, it's obvious ISI has worked hard on getting F1C right, and it's mostly been corrected...most of the time. But occasionally it misbehaves. When it does — and this is further good news — it can be tuned to make it right. This wasn't always possible in previous EA F1 versions, and frankly the same problem resides in some of the more heralded F1 2002 mods, and yet some other F1 2002 mods don't demonstrate the problem of this synthetic effect. But no doubt about it, the drive in F1C is much better than previous series offerings and the car acts much more as you would expect it to, especially after getting the correct setup. The physics in F1C are not up to the Papyrus level (arguably), but it's much better than any previous version of the F1 series. You don't have the tactile sense with the course that you have with the Papyrus sims, but with the right setup it's close — real close. I think the braking is still too twitchey even when the car is balanced-out. There is little transient response and what there is arrives after much tweaking and dampening so that a quick flick of the wheel doesn't send you off-course.

To help matters, the F1C reference manual has the same nice setup walkthrough and tutorial that F1 2002 had. It shows you by adjusting to extremes the effects of different setup adjustments. It does a good job of introducing setup effects. Start with it before making a bunch of changes "you think" will help your lap times. Note the differences in the damping of the suspension. That's the key to balancing out the car so you won't have to work as hard to drive it fast. The better the racing sim's capability to adjust settings usually means the more variations in the setup. And setups should reflect your driving style. Even with the precision required to drive F1 cars there is still a certain individuality found from setup-to-setup. Different people will trail-brake to different corners. Some corners you'll be naturally fast in, some you can't get through regardless of how hard you try. That's where the Telemetry capability in F1C helps.

Telemetry

Poor Telemetry. If there is a stepchild in F1C it's this mode. Mentioned nowhere in the reference manual is the Telemetry. It has a separate shortcut to launch it outside of F1C (same as previous versions) and is available from within F1C on the menu. Maybe it's because it's so detailed, people are intimidated by it. Maybe it's because it takes time to learn it. I'm guilty of not spending enough time with it. Most of us can probably say the same. The funny thing is, after we learn F1C and get decent basic setups, this is where we should head to next. If you haven't taken the time to explore this area of F1C, you should soon as you can.

Audio

From the time you first drive down the pit lane, you'll notice the much improved car sounds. This is one of F1C's "big changes". If you have a decent sound card you'll be treated to F1 cars that sound so much better than the previous offerings it's amazing. The previous versions sound like they're being played through an old 8-bit Sound Blaster in comparison.

Replay

For whatever reason, the replay mode seems to be much less jerky than F1 2002. Whenever I ran a replay from F1 2002, it always acted like it was a few keyframes short to do a smooth playback. That's the good news. The bad news is, why not include an MPEG or AVI capability? While F1C has better playback than F1 2002, it's still got a way to go to beat the Papyrus offerings in GPL and the NASCAR series. But it is improved. This is another area that hopefully some modder will get excited about and build an add-on. F1C home movies. Think about it.

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