Welcome to my personal diary and story of me playing through the online Racing Simulator game / management game gpro.net . A game that rewards players that have the most knowledge over those with the most luck, where you have to take your manager through Rookie towards the final frontier of the Elite tier. From scratch you will have zero information about anything, you won't know how much Fuel you use, how much your tyres can last and also not what setup you have to run for each race. Its a game about gathering information, look for patterns, outsmarting your opponents and also manage your tight finances
One season lasts 17 races and in order to promote from each tier, you have to be consistent in your results. Races are each Tuesday and Friday, where the Top 8 will receive points ranging from 10 to 1 for each race. There are over 100 tracks that can be chosen and Friday races will be the corrospondent F1 track if F1 is running that weekend. In the Rookie Tier only the Top 4 will promote to the Amateur tier, so therefore it is very hard to promote even to the 2nd worst tier. When a race is complete, there is a tab where all your race data is stored and it this information, that will lead the path to victory, as each race is different. Finally there are of course different types of tyres and track conditions has everything to say about your setup.
This thread will be filled by Diary Entries, Qualify Reports and Race Reports
Manager History
I am rather new to the game and have only raced for 5 seasons, but I have already came 2nd in my Rookie division and were in the Amateur tier for 2 seasons, before relegating again. I have already won 3 races (Monza, Singapore and Jyllands-Ringen) and gotten 12 podiums in 54 races. The Story starts from the 3nd race in the 65th gpro season in the division Rookie 67 after a horrible start of getting 13th in Montreal GP and 16th in the Indianapolis Oval GP already trailing 12 points up to the 4th and final promotion position.
One of the cool aspects of this game is the Team feature. If want to make a shortcut to all the good stuff of the game, then joining a team is a good idea. A team can give you information through formulas, that can predict all from tyre wear to fuel consumption of each track. You will also be given your own team livery and a private forum. The most experienced teams even has private tools, which can be used to show graphs and such stuff before every race. After a long search and many sent applications (getting accepted into a team is often very hard), I have two days ago joined the team Pole to Pole Racing and as you can see above they have their very own tool for all this wonderful information. This will make the road to get back to Amateur a lot easier and hopefully we will see a turn in events, as what results are considered.
Team Livery
The team history goes back Season 17 and thus is a very old team, which on average finishes each season around the 150th spot on the overall team standings, which cover every team in the game. If I haven't already explained there are 5 tiers (Rookie, Amateur, Pro, Master and Elite) and while it will be hard to promote this season, as there are managers with the same merits as myself, this team has been in the highest tier Elite, so I'm very confident this team can help me towards the bigger tiers of the game.
Our Driver for the Season
[img-l]https://i.imgur.com/b45sdp0.png[/img-l] Name - Alex Liuzzi Nationality - Italy Overall - 73 OA Weight - 78 kg Age - 24 Wage - 800.000
Alex Liuzzi is our current driver, but might not make it till the end of the season. This is the area where we are currently struggling, while Alex Liuzzi would usually be good enough to promote with, this is not the case this season. The Top 5 in our division has far better drivers and we won't be able to win any races with this driver. As the market currently not have better options, we will have to stick with Liuzzi for now, but it should make for a great challenge nonetheless
*Qualify Time is Q1 time + Q2 time. Q2 time includes your first stint of fuel for race. You can only use one specific tyre in qualifying and the race
Verdict
Q1 Time 1.23.267 (11th best) Q2 Time 1.25.971 (13th best) Tyre of Choice Soft Compound Expected Pit Stops 2
14th on the grid is our starting position on this 305km long track consisting of 69 laps in around 24 degrees with sunny weather. It is perfect conditions for a 2 stop strategy for the race today. However 14th is far from ideal and on a track, where it is hard to overtake, our strategy has to be on point and also our pitstops crew performance is vital. It seems some have made their Q2 with almost no fuel, so they will stop early, giving us space to retrieve. With low tyre wear it will be hard to gain an advantage on the users of the extra soft tyre, so therefore a podium is not on the cards. Expected position at the end of this race is 6th, but in Montreal Liuzzi failed to keep consistency in place, so therefore all is up to him to keep it up this race
I will follow this story, will be interesting. A ggod team can be worth a lot. Im playing gpro too, just relegated from Elite (2nd was there my best) and going probably down until AMA to gain some money and the return back ... boredom for like 2 season
jaxika wrote:
I will follow this story, will be interesting. A ggod team can be worth a lot. Im playing gpro too, just relegated from Elite (2nd was there my best) and going probably down until AMA to gain some money and the return back ... boredom for like 2 season
yeah, its actually why I started this, cause when I get to Amateur its all about saving those money for a few seasons and that can easily be a tilter. But it is the game. Nice to hear others from the forum playing, too, thought no one did
Ripley wrote:
Nifty game, I have to admit. Watched the replay of your Mexico GP, obviously you still have a long road ahead.
A very very long road ahead . The first rookie division I promoted from, I started in the Top 5 every race (even with hard tyres) and now I start around 13th. To add to that Mexico wasn't that lucky for me, as you know
Preety good game. I've been playing it for years also with my brother and dad.. I'm not that into it, Amateur right now, but my brother is really into it and good at it (just came down from Elite, planning to return).
Anyway good luck! I'll be following whenever you post Also, if by chance you haven't seen it, I recommend to you the Giro/Tour/Vuelta challenges they make in the forum there, preety interesting and I've won some myself
Mexico, 18 Rookie 67 Starting Position 14th Final Position 15th Fastest Lap 1.19.972
Another dissapointing result as driver Alex Liuzzi in his perhaps final race ends on a useless 15th position on the grid. Okay pitstops wasn't enough for the team, as Liuzzi made a mistake on his 1st lap on his 2nd stint and lost 7 valuable positions on a track, that is hard to overtake on. From that point it had looked promising as Liuzzi was up to 8th position at the end of the 1st stint. From a zero point position we could see ourselves lose around 1,5-2 seconds per lap to the Top 5 and that is not ideal, as we're running similar tyres, similar strategies and the same level of car parts.
The 2nd stint was hard despite this and also opening up some possibilites at the same time, as managers had obviously put too little fuel into that stint. However that was also not to be taken advantage of; as 11 laps into stint 3 rain conditions hit us just 5 seconds after passing the pit lane. This just made us lose the most time to rain conditions possible. From that point the final 10 laps we managed to climb from 17th to 15th position, so now there is even more room to recover for upcoming races. Hopefully Kyalami will bring some more fortune, but as stated that race might be with a whole new driver and approach.
Season Standings
#
Nat.
Manager Name
Pts
1
Mirko Vukovic
24
2
Francois Cervert
22
3
Cole Fainter
20
4
Sylvain Kuberski
18
5
Zlatko Vlasta
15
6
Jean Lanet
8
7
Todor Todorov
6
8
Humberto Madeira
2
9
Mark Horvath
1
10
Lee Porter
1
11
Thomas Fricke
0
12
Luigi Santini
0
13
Marko Magisalu
0
14
Siva Punisamy
0
15
Dani Piho
0
16
Stephen Cornford
0
17
Adrain Vladislav
0
18
Stefano Scanzani
0
19
Daniel Andersen
0
20
Kestas Baranauskas
0
21
Marton Laszlo
0
22
Tim Mcarthur
0
23
Stefano Sivelli
0
24
Rawr Rawr Rawr
0
Track Spotlight | Kyalami
Low Grip, High Downforce and take the high speed straits away from Circuit de Catalunya and you have the South African GP on Kyalami. Low temperatures for the weekend from 5-12 degrees during the race and in the lower end of that for the qualifying sessions. Practice laps currently have us at a 1.18.000 time, which is an okay time, but whole 2 seconds behind Zlatko Vasta's official Q1 time for the race. Now if the race will be run with Alex Liuzzi, this will mean we need to take a more defensive approach to the race and go for long stints, but if we monday night manage to sign a new driver, which hopefully can do much quicker qualifying laps. Its a sacrifice for consistency, but being consistent at a slow pace is not enough to promote from Rookie. We have until Tuesday 8:30 pm CET to decide our strategy
Name Aguri Inoue Nationality Japan Overall 77 OA Weight 86kg Age 20 Wage 472.000
After just 3 races in the team, Alex Liuzzi has been replaced by the young talent in the shape of Aguri Inoue, who is set to promte us from Rookie next season. The plan is for this season to train him up to the task of securing promotion next season, while putting a hold to wild chases for wins this season. We will despite this plan still go for race victories this season, but sacrifice plenty of resources in training. A few hours after signing the contract Inoue took some practice sessions, already beating Liuzzi's weekend times. We already expect him to start well within the points of each race this season, but while not having Liuzzi's consistency, gives us an easier starting point and access to more aggressive strategies.
Cya tomorrow for the Qualifying Report, where you will see a definite improvement in grid positions
*Qualify Time is Q1 time + Q2 time. Q2 time includes your first stint of fuel for race. You can only use one specific tyre in qualifying and the race
Verdict
Q1 Time 1.17.937 Q2 Time 1.18.907 Tyre of Choice Extra Soft Expected Pit Stops 3
6th place on the grid for the race tonight, which is a definite improvement since the last few races. Only few hours into joining our team, new driver Inoue have already impressed greatly despite his short time at the team. During the practice sessions Inoue had the potential of pulling more time than the Q1 time. In fact he were 1 second slower than the Practice Net Time for our car, but it wouldn't have given us a better grid position either way. Now excitement is at the top and hopefully he can maintain strong stints tonight, however he is by far not as good at that as Liuzzi were. We have very mild temperatures this evening, so therefore tyre wear will be at its lowest. Also the extra soft tyre is around 0.5 seconds faster per lap than the soft compound, so we should keep that tyre behind us at the end of the race, however the big questions remains if we can challenge the Top 5. Will be interesting to see what strategies our opponents are on, so all in all a great race is on the steps in 1 hour.
South Africa, 18 Rookie 67 Starting Position 6th Final Position 8th Fastest Lap 1.14.628
Our bad luck streak seemed for a second to be over and while not being as bad as a race like previous races this season, we did come home with one single point. A miscalculation and traffic was the main opponent for us, in a race that seemed to be open at first, but wasn't to be in the end. Our debutant driver Inoue started fantastic getting up to 4th position and kept this position with his fingernails from the 2 cars he overtook. Our 2nd stint started from 19th position and would prove to be too far down, so a longer 1st stint was our first mistake.
Here we were stuck behind Siva Punisamy for 20 laps being around 2 seconds slower than our average lap. To top things we even had the 18th best pit stop times, so the rest of the race were ruined by our tyre choice, too. Lastly a miscalculation meant we had 2 laps less fuel than needed to do a 3 stop and while only losing 7th for 8th position, that is not something that is allowed to happen ever. Overall strategy cost us dearly, but we were the 3th fastest car in the race overall and that is a positive to develop further in the remaining races. On to Paul Ricard in France, where Q1 is Wet and Q2 in dry and furthermore 3 viable strategies being quite close to each other.
Aquarius97 wrote:
One point despite all the problems during the race. Not that bad
Nope not that bad at all, just would be nice with a problem free race for once. Oh well it's a good challenge at least and not as easy as first time I promoted
The new driver has given you an instant upgrade in results, hopefully it's not just beginners luck for him and he can continue to impress and show his full potential in races where you have less mistakes/ bad luck with pitstops.
@sammy Hopefully not, but I hope that this Grand Prix tonight will put me up around 5th place, where the Top 4 just seems to have better drivers
Qualifying Report | French Grand Prix
#
Nat.
Manager
Qualifying Time*
Difference
1
Cole Fainter
2.31.099
st.
2
Zlatko Vlasta
2.31.257
+0.158
3
Mirko Vukovic
2.31.428
+0.329
4
Philippe Taffonneau
2.32.769
+1.670
5
Stephen Cornford
2.32.771
+1.672
6
Daniel Andersen
2.34.167
+3.068
7
Jean Lanet
2.34.745
+3.646
8
Sylvain Kuberski
2.35.694
+4.595
9
Stefano Scanzani
2.35.827
+4.728
10
Lee Porter
2.36.083
+4.984
11
Siva Punisamy
2.36.302
+5.203
12
Humberto Madeira
2.36.318
+5.219
13
Todor Todorov
2.36.498
+5.399
14
Mark Horvath
2.36.805
+5.706
15
Dani Piho
2.37.666
+6.567
16
Thomas Fricke
2.37.707
+6.608
17
Luigi Santini
2.38.011
+6.912
18
Kestas Baranauskas
2.39.209
+8.110
19
Adrain Vladislav
2.42.533
+11.434
20
Marko Magisalu
2.43.008
+11.909
21
Stefano Sivelli
2.44.899
+13.800
22
Marton Laszlo
2.49.322
+18.223
Verdict
Q1 Time 1.20.970 (Wet) Q2 Time 1.13.197 Tyre of Choice Medium Expected Pit Stops 2
6th place once again on the grid and while having a distance up to 5th and above, it is great to finally have a consistent qualifying session. We can thank for the Q1 session being wet, as we "only" had 8th best Q2 time on the grid. This we hope is mainly due to being on a harder compound than the rest, where we after the South African GP want to see some longer stints. The practice sessions saw us around 7 tenths quicker than our Q1 time, so we wouldn't have gotten any further than 6th on the grid.
Being on the harder compound tonight is all about keeping in touch with the front and maybe, just maybe take a podium because of this. What will hold us both back and keep our winning chances at the same time are the low Tyre compound differences. This will in theory keep us close to others, but also mean that for time to be gained, it has to exceed the cost of an extra pit stop from our opponents and that is a narrow window. Hopefully a great start will clear the road for a Top 5 finish!
France, 18 Rookie 67 Starting Position 6th Final Position 3rd Fastest Lap 1.08.804
Cannot believe it myself and cannot believe that despite many issues during the race, we managed to pull off a strong race nonetheless to finish in 3rd position. In a very very open start to the race, Inoue was given a free position as Stephen Cornford had an engine failure. First 5 laps we were only a few seconds away from the leader, but slowed down a bit and were ovetaken by Lee Porter. On the 10th lap Cole Fainter started having technical issues and dropped down the field. Vukovic and Porter started early pit stops around lap 20, this gave us 3rd place on the field.
Spoiler
We then got our 1st pit stop at the 28th lap and came out provisionally one spot futher up, as Porter was stuck behind 4 cars from his early pitstop, Vukovic much luckier in front of that field. This meant that we only had to keep up our consistency and 4th would be secured being behind Vukovic, Vlasta and Taffoneau in the mid of our 2nd stint. We failed doing this as Inoue exited the track limits and lost 7 seconds losing a position to Scanzani behind us. It was only after the next pitstop round we managed to overtake him cleanly and left him for dust and with us in 4th position again. Here Taffoneau made a strategy error and seemed to have shredded his tyres making an extra pitstop giving us 3rd position. Here we managed to defend our 3rd position. This ended a short run trying to score big points in a tough group and we managed to do so. We are back in the fight for the fun positions!
Valencia is next race on Tuesday, but next post will most likely be there then
Was a bit bored and thought I'd show those who doesn't play the game how the race screen looks and all. Couldn't find anything good music to put over sorry and sorry for the poor quality. Might just be a one off
. The first rookie division I promoted from, I started in the Top 5 every race (even with hard tyres) and now I start around 13th. To add to that Mexico wasn't that lucky for me, as you know 
