Motorsport Manager - Ups and downs of 2021

 Hey guys,

So I've played my way into late in the 2021 racing season, and now I have a fair bit to write about here.

Firstly, I am no longer the manager of Espirit GP in the World Motorsport Championship.

I started the year spending as much as possible to make the new car the best it could possibly be, designing a new part straight away so that we could score points and get ourselves into 6th in the teams championship. Needless to say, we simply did not have the pace to get points. We started to score points in my last three races, and I spent heaps in the off-season to upgrade the team HQ. A new building, and two building upgrades including a simulator and telemetry, it was a massive disappointment to see that Espirit fired me and have failed to score points when they really should have been able to if they made their strategy correctly. I had a heap of setups that were always at least 70% competitive, and by the race it was always at least 95% competitive. It's a crying shame that I've moved on to better things and see a team that I poured my heart and soul into for almost five years fall to pieces. If it continues in the top tier then I would be surprised. We were always batting out of our weight. The worst team on the grid with one of the best pit crews challenging for the top ten regularly. The fact is that I made a mistake in expecting to be able to regularly finish 6th out of the 10 teams every race, and 6 races in I got the ultimatum to finish 9th or better to keep my job. We started very well, but maybe I pushed just a little too hard so that we were a few places ahead and this may have cost us my job.

Secondly, I am now the manager of Archer BMR in the European Racing Series, banging wheels with my old buddies at Octane. Archer is a very competitive team, and hopefully we can keep it that way in 2022. We're not in the red financially, a lesson from my mistake with Espirit, I had to fire Marion Fournier again. She was with Octane for a few years when I was with Espirit. She's a good driver, but her hotheadedness is a disaster for team cohesiveness. So I've got the drivers more-or-less sorted for the short-term future. I think I should invest in the team's HQ, and I'm keep on keeping the finances green and not paying drivers too much. We'll see how we go. I got my first podium with Nick Chu. Our other driver Cindi Stefanowski is good too, but we haven't been able to make it happen for her yet. I also found a good reserve driver in Kaori Aoto who is a strong backup in case one of the main drivers wants to leave. All of the drivers are contracted as reserve drivers, so it's a bit odd contract-wise. It's been a dramatic day that's for sure. We're in lockdown in South Australia, so maybe I've spent too much time playing Motorsport Manager :P

WTF this is so easy lol!

"This one's for the guys and girls at Espirit GP."

 Anyway I'll post more when there's more to say!

Bye!

Motorsport Manager - Excited for the 2021 season

I'm at the first round of the 2021 championship, and I'm simultaneously nervous and excited for the track action to commence.

The finale three races of the 2020 championship were surprisingly successful. I started spending money on designing new parts, got my drivers the new brakes that they wanted and a new engine for one of the cars. Soon enough we got a bunch more points and moved from 7th to 6th in the teams' championship, where the chairman predicted we would finish. So this season I figured that I would pull my finger out and get the new parts rolling so that we could get points throughout the season. We've also spent as much as possible to get the best possible car for the season. Hopefully we don't have too terrible a 2021 season. I'm putting myself on the line to get the results that we want so badly. Banging around the mid-pack is good racing, but I want podiums and wins. It would give me a warm feeling. I've also set the target of 6th in the teams' championship so that we're getting decent pay from the chairman and I feel that I've learned enough to really go for the results now. I'm sure that there are plenty of mistakes to come. One thing that I'm dead set on is keeping Johnny Navarro until he retires.

Motorsport Manager - Mistakes at Espirit GP in 2020

I had a wet race where I pitted both cars just before the rain started, but it didn't start for another lap and so the wets that I put on both cars were a quarter worn before they were competitive, and what's worse is that I should have put intermediates on. The track was truly wet for two laps, and was only wet enough for intermediate tyres the rest of the time. It was such a stuff-up that I gave up until the drivers complained about their tyres and I switched them to dries. Maybe I could have switched them to dries at the right time, but I was so devastated by how badly I'd screwed up the strategy. We were on for a podium, or points at least and it would have put us in a better position in the championship. Who knows what the rest of the season could have been like.

After looking at the screenshots, I think that Cape Town might have been worse than Beijing.

Then I had a race much later in the season where I got to put my reserve driver into one of the cars for the actual race. I have Sergio Arbeloa, who I used to watch win all the time in the European Racing Series. He qualified 12th and Johnny Navarro was 18th. My weather forecast said that it was going to be wet two laps in, so I had both drivers start on intermediate tyres. The first two laps were tough, especially as Arbeloa fell straight to the back with Johnny, but then the rain hit and we sliced through the field until we were 4th and 5th for a moment and then started falling back late in the race. The track dried up, but I kept running Johnny because he was better on tyre wear and it was going to rain in the last two laps. I pitted Arbeloa because he wanted to be on dry tyres, while Johnny would have been 17th if he pitted or something. It didn't end too badly. We finished 12th and 13th. Not bad at all.

I went from memory and then got the screenshots. Forgive me for being inaccurate, there's been a few rough races and I can't remember everything. Really racking my brain for how to make 2021 worth competing in.

Motorsport Manager - Espirit's year of the year 2019

Hey guys, I'm back with more on my Motorsport Manager career.

Entering 2019 I set my expectations low, spent lots, and painted the car black. There was no guarantee that we were going to have a good season. I think that my expectations of 2018 were high and I disappointed myself that year. So entering 2019 I set the bar low and set the goal low too. As long as we finished 9th or higher in the constructors championship we were fine.

We started off very well with both cars competitive. Then slowly over the next few races we fell backwards. Then we started picking up points again as we developed new parts. Early in the year Amy McCloud was in the top ten of the championship, but fell down the order by season's end. Johnny Navarro was a steady hand for the team and kept scoring well enough. He ended up finishing 9th in the points. Very impressive. I don't think we scored any podiums, but we didn't expect to either. We're supposed to be the worst team in pit lane. Our only strong points are our staff and pit crew. Amy finished 16th in the championship, and I was a little disappointed. I think that she's a good driver who should be doing as well as Johnny but I've screwed up the strategy and lost her some good results. Track position is key, and pitting early has been a mistake for me.

Johnny won driver of the year in 2019, and I won manager of the year. The only rule changes for 2020 are longer races, with 21 laps on average. It's going to be a really tough season, and I think that we're starting off on the backfoot. I get too excited and press the continue button during the off-season and blaze through those three months without thinking. So I think that our reliability and performance has been significantly hampered by my lack of foresight and even lack of experience. I went through this entering 2019 and we were pretty unreliable until about five races in. Hard to say what 2020 will be like.

I've been using my list of setups and it has been helpful only in terms of having an idea of what's good, but not what's great. Once you have a setup, you need to fine tune it to make it excellent and that means swinging downforce, handling, and speed in both directions until you get near 100%. Sometimes you need every session to get it right, even entering the race with an untested setup in the hope that it's better than what you've run before. Hopefully I don't get fired this season. The chairman was happy all year in 2019, even though we were bleeding money in the second half. Contract negotiations are costing me an arm and a leg.

See Ya!

Just a fun time

 

Hey I'd really appreciate it if you watched this video for a bit. Just have a look and if it's not your kinda thing then that's cool. I enjoyed recording it and hopefully it makes for good watching. Sorry about the quality. If you really want, I can post a HD version for your viewing pleasure. 

Cheers :)

Returning to Minecraft

 Hey guys,

I just did a blog post talking about the upcoming Minecraft series on SAIM Industries on the respective blog, but I have a few things to say here.

I haven't played Minecraft since the 31st of December 2018, and so I want to go into the game as fresh as possible. I know that there was a new update called Caves and Cliffs or whatever, but I don't want to know anything about what it includes. I know there are lots of new blocks, items, and mobs, so I'm excited about being very upset with what the game has become, but at the end of the day I just cannot wait to play on a server with my buddies Akirasora and Ihasnotomato. 

Not only has it been a few years since I last played Minecraft in any capacity, I haven't played survival mode seriously and built anything since the start of my Mine Craft Building Stuff: Colossal Conclusion series when I played survival in it. That was 7 years ago!

So it's going to be awesome and it can't come quickly enough!

See Ya!

Motorsport Manager - My time at Espirit GP so far

 Hello,

So continuing my story so far, I joined Espirit at the end of 2017, and after one race I fired Fournier because her hotheadedness was impeding my chances of keeping my job. I promoted the reserve driver Amy McCloud into Fournier's seat. We finished 10th in the constructors championship as expected, and the chairman was happy with that. What I didn't know was that we could lose our place in the World Motorsport Championship (WMC) by finishing 10th. The champion team of the Asia-Pacific Championship (APC) is invited to join the top tier, but they declined and so I realised that I had to finish higher than 10th to stay in WMC.

I spent $52 million on the 2018 car, but we struggled at first. Johnny Navarro scored an 8th place finish in a wet race, so we looked pretty good for a few races when realistically we were struggling to consistently finish in the top 15. Both Navarro and McCloud suffered neck injuries during the season, so for five races I ran the reserve driver Ellie Marsh, who was really popular but awful on tyres. Sometimes even if she wasn't in the event, fans would act as though she was the one to beat. The only points finish for most of the season was Navarro's 8th place. In the mid-to-late part of the season, my bank balance ran into the negatives by a few hundred thousand, so I didn't design and build any new parts for the cars. I had to concentrate a little more on the races because I knew that our cars were capable of scoring points, I just didn't know how to do it and still don't. Then, with a handful of races to go, we scored some points. Johnny is my best driver and so I'd been putting the best parts into his car. When he crashed on lap one I felt like the race was ruined. By the late point in the season, my typical strategy was to run Johnny flat out until he had a delta of 1 lap less fuel than he needed to finish the race, and then run him on normal engine power and mediate the tyre temperatures for the rest of the race, pitting when the tyres got to half way or if he was in good track position run him until they were at 30% or the rain was coming. McCloud's strategy was to run her at push or attack and with normal engine power with one lap less fuel so that she had a weight advantage and could therefore run at slightly faster lap times. I also ran her with one level harder compound tyres. So Johnny crashes, then we're under safety car after another driver crashes and then the race continues, I decide to hang on with McCloud and we get to the end of the race and finish 9th. It was a huge relief. I'd agonised over whether to pit her or not and decided that I would finish a few seconds or positions down if I pitted and that I would have a better chance of points if I kept her out for the rest of the race. After that we were 8th in the constructors championship, on target with our set goal.

Then came the final race of the year at Dubai. The last three races of the year I had access to my old setups from the previous year, so I had a good advantage with setup direction. Our cars were set up well for Dubai, but in the race Johnny was shocking. He couldn't get past many people and stayed in the back of the field, while McCloud hung on to finish 12th. I was pretty happy with that, and then I saw the constructors championship leaderboard and learned that I'd been knocked to 9th by Velan Racing. Grrr... So now I was familiar with the way the game worked and knew that my time at Espirit was at an end. I'd failed to achieve the objective, and the Chairwoman was not very happy with me. Now I'm at the first round of the 2019 championship and she still hasn't fired me, so I'm pretty sure I'm on thin ice. The 2019 car cost about $42 million, but the car is better than last year's so maybe we're in a better position. I'm not optimistic, but I am confident that we have some great setups sorted for the new year. I think I should also focus hard on making the best engine that I can. Speed let us down too often I feel. We didn't build a gearbox in 2018, so the full goal for 2019 in my eyes is to build things that make the car go fast.

Anyway my water is boiling.