My 2022 YouTube plan and my thoughts on it.

For 2022 I decided to make a few changes to my 3 personal YouTube channels: Supercars Mabeanie, Mabeanie Games, and Mabeanie Talks. 

Supercars Mabeanie

The plan was to use my new Rode Podcaster microphone to make weekly (or at least semi-consistent) Supercars videos for the channel. This has worked fairly well. I have posted four videos so far. The videos are opinions based on research and data, the predictions video might be surprisingly different to other peoples predictions. What is proving difficult is coming up with video ideas. I don't spend enough time coming up with ideas or preparing them so that I can make a video. A lot of my ideas are loose concepts that need developing, so I can't just whip it up in a day. Nevertheless, I hope to make many more videos this year. It is disappointing that I can't manage to produce a new video every week.

Mabeanie Games

The plan was to combat some of the big issues with this channel by making less videos and turning Friday Night Funs into podcast-style videos with clips uploaded later. The problem is finding or spending time making the clips. It's hard to be sure what to do at this stage, but I typically go with what I feel like doing.

Mabeanie Talks

Yes, I have started doing vlogs on Mabeanie Talks. The plan was to make vlogs, but I didn't know how they would look until I started making them. The first two videos were a little uncomfortable to make because suddenly I was vlogging for the outside world to see rather than my own personal enjoyment. Content for this channel is easier to come up with and easy to edit compared to Supercars Mabeanie. At the moment the problem isn't coming up with ideas, but knowing where to put my efforts channel-wise. Talks' video for next week is already scheduled, so I'm not concerned about the next video yet. I don't want to schedule a video and then come up with another idea and have old videos scheduled for the future to the point where the video becomes obsolete because I don't feel the same about the subject when the video eventually comes out. It's almost a topic for Talks in itself. Sigh...

Overall, my channels are very close to what I've wanted them to be since I relaunched them in 2019 with their current names. Supercars Mabeanie is close to a drawing of a hypothetical screenshot that I made in 2018. Mabeanie Talks is what I've wanted my YouTube career to be since I started in 2010. Gaming videos is the only real difficulty at the moment.

Motorsport Manager - My 2023 season

Okay this season I remember as being good for some reason. I don't know if it's because we were competitive or because I felt comfortable with how I was playing the game. I started by having the livery be primarily black because the team's designated colour in the time sheets is black. In 2022 it was yellow because we're supposed to be the yellow team. So I started the style of having primarily black cars with a little yellow to reflect the time sheet colour and then the team colour. 

We started the season off the pace, just outside the top ten.

Round 2 was Munich and it was also wet, so we raced our way into the top ten.

Milan was very memorable, risking the 1 stop strategy with Nick Chu in the 13 lap race and pulling it off for a podium.🏆 Again, not qualifying higher than 10th.

We shocked with a 2nd and 3rd in qualifying at Ardennes. Then we went all out on dry tyres in the race, knowing that it was going to get wet, but pitted too early. Maybe the pace wasn't there, and Stef was bad on tyres again. Chu was best in 9th. Stef in 19th.

I don't know what happened at Munich 2, but after poor qualifying we raced our way into the top ten in a half-wet race.

Round 7 was Guildford, and after an okay intermediate qualifying with Stef starting 7th, we raced our way nicely into the top ten.

Then we went to Tondela again, where Stef shocked us all with an incredible start in the race, going from 12th to 3rd on the first lap and we managed to stay there for the rest of the race and score a podium.🏆 Chu didn't have the pace to get up the front with Stef, so he finished 11th.

After another race in Milan where we pushed into the top ten, I got to try out my reserve driver Kaori Aoto in Chu's car because he was incapacitated for a bit. I haven't forgotten that Black Sea race where she stuffed it up at turn 1 and I had to strategise her back to where she should have been. Last to 12th for her, Stef finished 9th because her tyre wear sucked.

Round 11 was Pheonix, where we qualified just outside the top ten and raced there too. Aori was okay and mixed it with Stef for the whole race, but wasn't as good as I thought she was. Her morale was falling rapidly too.

Aori's last chance to prove her worth was Doha, where Stef started on the front row and finished second too.🏆 Aori started back in 16th and I couldn't get her much further than 12th. The two races before, you could say that the cars weren't equal, but I gave Aori the best car possible for Doha.

Then Chu was back in the car for Cape Town, where we had a great qualifying with both cars in the top ten. Chu came 2nd and Stef fell down the order because her tyre life sucked. Then Chu was bumped up to 1st for both his and my first win after Santore was given a penalty for having an illegal part.🏆

Round 14 was Sydney, where for some reason the media thought Aori was going to race and so they thought that she would get pole position even though... Ugh. She just wasn't living up to her performances in practice. Chu and Stef qualified in the top ten, and Chu finished 3rd 🏆 while Stef had an issue at the end and had to pit, but stole the fastest lap anyway.

Beijing was strong for us. Chu qualified 3rd and Stef in the top ten too. We finished with both cars nicely in the top ten, but no trophy. Oh well. Nice race. I tend to go well at Beijing.

The final round was at Dubai and we just weren't on the pace. Stef qualified 7th, but that was the best that we had. Chu got our best race result in 9th, Stef 12th.

Chu was 10th in the championship, Stef 11th, and the team 5th.

I failed to resign Aori for the following season because her morale was shot. I wasn't going to sign her as a main driver, but her feedback was really good so I wanted her for practice sessions as a reserve.

Motorsport Manager - My 2022 season

Currently I am in the 2027 season, so 2022 was a long time ago in the game. This means that my understanding of that season is less about how I feel and more about what I think happened based on the screenshots that I took at the time.

First of all, I won manager of the season, so it must have been a good one.

We were really strong in pre-season testing, with Nick Chu 2nd and Cindi Stefanowski 10th. I still don't know how to capitalise on a strong pre-season test. It just gives you an idea of where your car's at heading into the new season, but at the end of the day your reliability is rubbish and you have to manage that. Looking at that screenshot, Stefanowski was really young when I joined the team. I don't normally sign really young drivers unless they're really talented, so 17 year old Stef was impressive at a young age.

We started the season well at Black Sea with both cars in the top ten and the team 5th in the standings. I've always managed to shine in wet qualifying and races. I think the AI suck at it. We had Kaori Aoto as the reserve driver, and she was always fast and good with feedback I think.

While I often shine in wet qualifying and races, sometimes I screw up the strategy and we have a miserable race. It doesn't help when your driver wrecks tyres too quickly, as must have happened in round 2 at Munich.

By the third round at Milan it's clear that 2022 was a grind. Barely in the top ten. I probably wasn't getting enough money to build new parts.

Tondela might have been the fourth round, and it was a shocker. Not in the top ten at any stage.

We bounced back massively with a double podium at Ardennes.🏆

I must have put new parts in the cars at Ardennes, because we continued our form with top ten capable cars at Munich 2. Aoto showed the world how good she can be by topping practice, as she tended to do on occasion. Moments like those got me excited about running her if one of the main drivers was injured or unwell.

Guildford was round 7, and Stefanowski beat Chu fair and square with 5th. I had to pit Chu at the end. His tyres were probably shot or I screwed up the fuel count. It was a wet race that started dry and got wet, then dried, then wet again. I probably ruined Chu's strategy with tyres, but Stefanowski had probably ruined her tyres and I didn't know it was going to get wet again.Stefanowski ahead of Chu in the drivers championship.

We returned to Tondela, struggled in qualifying, but got Chu to 6th while Stefanowski most likely ruined her tyres. Chu put himself within striking distance of Stef in the championship, which was disappointing. I always like to believe that my drivers are equally talented and that given the right opportunity they will get the same results, but sometimes Stef let me down. She was consistently behind Chu during the race, and I couldn't strategise her out of it because her tyres wore out too quickly.

Then we went back to Milan. We qualified on the edge of the ten, and raced forwards. Chu finished 5th while I had to pit Stef a few laps from the end. She should have been either immediately in front or behind Chu. Tyre life again.

Round 10 was the Black Sea again. It was mixed qualifying with Chu ahead in the ten and Stef down in 16th. That meant that unless Stef had stellar first stint or Chu had a shocker, they could be on the same strategy due to the gap between cars. We finished with both cars in the top ten, and Chu overtook Stef in the championship.

Round 11 was Pheonix. The standard layout of that track is always my Achilles heel. I don't know how to make it work. My engines are probably never good enough, and it's a power track so if you're not fast then you're gonna struggle. Just outside the top ten all weekend.

At Doha Stef showed how good she could be, keeping up with Chu and even beating him. We started outside the ten and got both cars in the back of the ten.

Then we went to Cape Town. Chu on the front row, Stef in the mid-pack. We simply didn't have great pace. Chu was up front until after his second stop. Then he couldn't get back. He finished 7th. Stef was in the top ten, but her tyres died in the last few laps and she fell backwards.

It looks like we were on for double top tens at Sydney, but Chu lost a wheel or wheelnut and had to make another pit stop. It was another wet-dry-wet race.

At the final race in Beijing, we were on the pace all race and got a double podium from top ten starts.🏆

 

Chu was 7th in the championship and Stef 9th. The team finished 4th. As I said before, I won manager of the season. Other teams must have had very mixed results, because 2022 wasn't my best year. Maybe because it was my first year starting with Archer.

My best FNF in ages!

 The Zuma part starts at 26:50.

I talk about when I first played Zuma on my late Grandad's computer, Ms. Pat and giving people as many chances as they need, and saving up for a house so that's why I'm not buying a new microphone or anything.

I'm proud of this episode and would love it if you could watch it and hear my stories and thoughts on life.

I don't like the SuperLite video

Hey guys,

I just watched my latest Supercars video which is about the SuperLite entry run by Matt Stone Racing in 2020. It's been six months since I made it. Back then I was happy enough with it, but now I'm not. I think that my next Supercars video will be different in terms of the way that I edit and structure it. I think that even though I stayed on the subject of SuperLite and similar programs, I maybe spent too much time talking about things that were a little complicated and unnecessary.

The section where I talk about the three MSR drivers and their Supercars racing experience is a little messy. The bit where I talk about how many years each driver had done was overcomplicated by talking about how Garry Jacobson had done 5 years of Super2 and 2 years of main game cars, and the same analysis for Jake Kostecki and Zane Goddard. The audio sucked, and I'm definitely really keen on improving it to be as good as SAIM console gaming videos are. 

I should have structured the video more step by step like I'd done in previous videos, just so that people know where the video is headed. 

I also will change the font that I use in the opening titles to one that you can read easily.

Ihasnotomato made comments in a Mab and Tom recording, and I will definitely consider and probably implement everything that he says to do.

That's it from me.

See Ya!

PS: Still playing heaps of Motorsport Manager, currently in 2027 with over 200 hours played.

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.