Absolute Zero: My first take on Sim Racing.

[johnrafael]

I always liked sports. All kinds of sports. Even those I'd clearly never play. Football, Basketball, Rugby, American Football, Field Hockey, Cricket, Motorsports, et cetera. But one day, when I was doing the daily races in MyRacingCareer, I found a nice Press Release:

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MyRacingCareer.com is proud to announce a new partnership with Formula World Championship, a Spanish simracing league created in 2018 now-based in the Automobilista simulator. After a tough start on its first and second year, 2020 is the year on which FWC becomes a real ‘threat’ for other Automobilista leagues, getting participation from more than 25 drivers at the same time on many races and with +40 drivers who signed up on their categories.

Formula World Community is now hosting three different categories. The first one is the Formula World GT3 Championship, which is running its second season at this moment. You can choose between six cars which have been equalled on performance so nobody has an advantage with any car. Those cars are BMW Z4, McLaren MP4-12C, Ferrari 488, Mercedes AMG GT3, Lotus Exige and Chevrolet Corvette C7. Average attendance for this series goes from 18 to 22 drivers, with a maximum of 26 reached at the first season in Road America.

The second category is the Formula World F3 Series, which is also running its second season and has become the most popular and successful category from the league since its start on August 2018, so popular that it will need prequalifying sessions as the game doesn’t allow more than 30 drivers at the same time. This series are using the Dallara F309 car with performance improvements to make it work like a Dallara F319 from real FIA Formula 3 Championship.

The third and new category (and which is being announced now) is the Formula World Pickup Cup, featuring Pick Up cars from Turismo Carretera, a popular Argentinian championship which is also on MyRacingCareer. This series will feature all cars from real life competition: Ford Ranger, Nissan Frontier, Volkswagen Amarok, Toyota Hilux and Fiat Toro. As we are saying, this is a newly-announced series for which Formula World Championship has opened sign-ups at this moment.

Apart from that, Formula World Championship will start focusing on making improvements on non-in-game activities. A rating system similar to the used at MRC will be implemented in order to rank all the drivers by their ability.
Drivers who race at just one category will count rating points by their results on that category, while drivers who race on more than one category will have to choose before the season starts on which series does he want to count his rating points.

The partnership includes MyRacingCareer.com sponsoring each of Formula World Championship series and the creation of the Formula World Cup at MyRacingCareer, featuring tracks with a special meaning for FWC like Buenos Aires No. 15, Nevers Magny Cours, Barcelona, Anderstorp, Donington Park or Cascavel.

We hope this partnership lasts for much longer and that it can be expanded from time to time. You can join Formula World Championship by its Discord server HERE, as it is the way used to communicate while work on the official website keeps going. You don’t need to own Automobilista at Steam, as you can request an online demo so you can race for free.

And before finishing this announcement, I want to call everyone, experienced or not at sim-racing. On the last 2 months, we’ve received many rookies which have become better drivers just with a bit of help. Whether you have a wheel, a joystick, a keyboard or even a mobile phone with gyroscope, come and try. You won’t regret, I promise :)

This made me think. I could at least give a try. If I was shitty, I could only quit.

Then I entered on their Discord server to know more about it. I downloaded the Demo Automobilista, the files for the season and the circuit for the first race, Monza. But I failed to join. I trained a little while but completely forgot about that. I thought "this season is almost ending, so I should wait for the next."

But no matter how much I trained, only the keyboard wasn't being that easy. I needed something better to train. Looking in some old boxes, I found my old PS2/PC joystick. It was kind of destroyed but would work for a while. I wasn't interested in spending any money for the time being. Analogs were not working, so I decided to go with pads. Better than dealing with the horrible W-A-S-D.


Found this below a lot of dirt.

I kept training in Monza for some weeks, then the new Formula 3 season started. Now, I would need a team name and a partner. Found one in MyRacingCareer, and decided to re-use the name I used for my NationStates team "Bitten Heroes".

[johnrafael]

As I was already shown to you, these are my liveries for the time being:

My tentative to reproduce that F4 livery for Formula World Championship, a Sim Racing group based in Spain/Argentina using Automobilista to race F3 cars (Dallara F309) every Saturday.





Last but not least, a nice nod to IMG on my helmet.

With this livery, I already entered two races:

First: Pau, France. The Grand Prix of Pau was my first race. I qualified 23rd, 16 seconds behind the 22nd, and broke in lap 2.

Second: Mount Panorama, Australia. It was yesterday, but I had too little time to training during the week, so I DNPQ'd. I even had problems to keep the car in the track and finished the Pre-Qualifying 12 seconds behind the second slowest. I'm really feeling my fingers hurt after that. So I'll buy a new joystick this week. Probably, it will be the cheapest one, since I have this policy of not spending too much on games.

I'm not worried if I'm an Absolute Zero. We have to start somewhere. If I will develop? Only time will tell.

[BassTrombone]

Good luck on your journey!

[johnrafael]

Thanks for your comment, BassTrombone.

Little updates this time. I bought a cheap joystick, the cheapest I could find. It cost around USD 14 in a shop near my house, but it was on sale on those Chinese websites costing around USD 9. Since I was in a hurry, I decided against buying it on the internet.

With the holidays, FWC interrupted its activities for two weeks. The race we would have this Saturday in Autodromo Oscar y Juan Gálvez Track 6, Buenos Aires was postponed to January 9. So, I'll have more time to prepare myself. And the joystick itself is already proving useful. I reduced my best time on the track from 1:50 in my first completed lap to 1:43.256 in my personal best. Not sure how it would work in the online tests, but I'm feeling good. According to other drivers, best times are around 1:38, so I'm not that awful.

Graphics-wise, I'm dealing with a lack of templates. I still search for good racing suits, not only for the driver but also for the crew. Otherwise than that, the project is evolving nicely. This time I put my hands on a pit box template:


And the template also includes a team truck. I inspired in the concepts of this event to paint this big boy:

[EchoKilo97]

Great to see the bug is biting!!! Honestly, the best thing you can do is get yourself an FFB Wheel, doesn't have to be a big thing like an OSW/DD wheel (which go for £700-800) but, a G29/G920 will only set you back a couple hundred brand new (2nd hand can go for less than 100) and will actually give you a real feel for what the car is doing on the track. It can be desk mounted, sling the pedals underneath, and just lap. you'll initially be slower because there's a lot of subtlety to FFB and some odd things to do with how it simulates certain forces. However, with practice you'll see lap times tumble and, more importantly, the FFB builds muscle memory so you'll be able to do consistent, fast, laps.

[johnrafael]

Buenos Aires happened last Saturday. For the first time, I finished a race. Last running, four laps behind the winner, and people made a lot of fun of me, but it was really nice, to be fair.

About buying a wheel, it's out of my plans. I usually don't spend money with games, unless it's a really small price, like the joystick I bought for less than $15. It's just a pastime and an opportunity to paint some nice stuff.