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Feature:
Mods for F1 Challenge '99-'02
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F1 1975
Team
Crew and ORPSG
released a demo of their upcoming F1 1975 mod recently,
and this is the first mod for any of the EA Formula 1 titles
that looks back into Formula 1 history by some 30 years.
We've had the 1995 mod for F1 2002 and a conversion has been
made for F1C, but F1 1975 takes us back another 20 years and
we arrive at a time in Formula 1 where there was still room
for technical pioneering that didn't require a multinational
auto-manufacturer's financial backing to compete.
These were the days when the cars had huge slick rear
tires as well as huge air boxes to catch the air and
feed it into the Ford-Cosworth DFV 8 cylinder engine of 3
liters that almost all the teams ran with — except Ferrari
— who were still convinced that putting 12 cylinders
in their engines was the best approach. By season's end in
1975, they were proven to be right!
Large rear-wings were the norm in
an attempt to harness the 500 bhp these 500 kg beasts boasted
and to push the rear-wheels onto tracks that were yet to be
adorned with the multitudes of chicanes that we know in today's
courses.
In 1975, they raced these cars on Nurburgring's Nordschliefe,
Ladies and Gentlemen, can you believe it?!
With almost equal engines and the technical development not
as advanced as today; ground-effect was still a twinkle in
Colin Chapman's eyes, and the "turbo-revolution"
was just around the corner. This was a very interesting and
competitive series.
In all fairness, the good old days were not always that good.
Driver fatalities were still atrociously high because of flimsy
cars and deplorable circuit safety. In fact, the words were
not even invented then.
All these drivers had nicknames; The Rat, Sideways-Scheckter,
Lole, Hunt-the Shunt, Wattie, Mad Ronald... and it's a tell-tale
sign that it's hard to imagine something like that happening
today. Ok, there's the Iceman, but that's about it.
The F1 1975 mod for F1C promises to
bring those days back, so we can race with the Lauda's, Scheckter's,
Reutemann's, Hunt's, Watson's and Peterson's.
Watch out for a patch for this demo in the very near future.
It' will contain some physics improvements, bug-fixes, and
last but certainly not least, the Lotus 72E!
Previous mods from Team CREW and OPRSG have been made to a
very high standard and I can't wait for this one as it's includes
the type of cars I can relate to!
FIA GT 1997
Another demo is the FIA
GT 1997 mod and with this we go to get acquainted with
Porsche's GT1 which made it's appearances at Le Mans.
I remember them breaking-down or breaking-out on fire in one
particular 24 hour-race they participated in. But they did
secure the overall victory in 1998. At the same time they
were put to good use in the FIA GT Championship.
In all fairness to Porsche, the cars were extremely quick,
and the Le Mans race was in a state of regulatory turmoil
for a few years. In the mid-nineties the big Group-C / GTP
sports prototypes like Jaguar, Peugeot, Toyota, Porsche 962's
et al had been outlawed in favor of more "common" supercars
like the McLaren F1 GTR and Porsche tried to build a common
supercar which they couldn't. There was nothing common about
their GT1 and in effect it was more like a Group-C disguised
to conform with regulations.
Le Mans wasn't quite Le Mans without outrageous cars though,
so a revised set of regulations were quickly introduced, allowing
cars like the Toyota GT1 (which was even less common than
the uncommon Porsche GT1). Even the old Porsche 962's were
allowed back, this time as WSC95's. The current LMP-categories
were slowly being introduced to attract the big auto-manufacturers,
Cars like Audi, who started development of the very successful
r8.
If you think this is confusing and not very logical, you're
right.
Now Porsche stood with a Le Mans car that wasn't suited to
the new regulations, but it fit in very well with the FIA
GT Series, and this is where we meet it again, in the FIA
GT 1997 mod to once again fight with McLarens F1's (the sports
car), Mercedes CLK-GTR (of flying fame), Panoz GTR-1 and other
classic and beautiful sports cars.
This one looks very promising, the mod group has had, I hear,
input on the driving physics from none other than Andy Pilgrim,
and the demo is a hoot. I'll definitely be looking forward
to it's arrival.
Time Machine
The best thing about mods for
me is that they can explore the avenues that are probably
of little commercial interest. If a developer wanted to make
a sim based on a racing series from 20 or 30 years ago chances
are sales would not reach very high figures.
For nostalgia-minded persons like myself, mods are proving
to be a fascinating travel back in time when technology in
racing cars was in it's infancy. And personally, I'm a fan
of wide slip-angles and power-on oversteer!
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