Why does this suddenly get more public attention the week after I win a race - SSJ2Luigi (rFactor League)

Breakaways and Recovery

It's not often that somebody from Cyanide joins in with a discussion on the forum, but when they do, it always tends to be worth a read. This week saw a few posts from Freire which gave an interesting insight into the game mechanics behind how the AI decides whether or not to chase down a breakaway attempt, and the workings of freshness, and how the recovery stat is involved. So if you have any thoughts on either of those parts of the game, get on over to those threads and leave a comment - it just might have an affect on the development for next year's game.

Height Maps and a Hard Tour

This week has seen Samu12 complete his Tour de France variant, a race he set out to make as "21 days of hell". There are cobbles throughout the first week, before the latter two weeks are dominated by some extraordinary mountain stages with climb after climb. A few notable stages at the end of the race are a 108km time trial that finishes on the top of Mont Ventoux, a summit finish on the Pic du Midi, and a final stage that is nowhere near Paris - and a tough 315km long!

Meanwhile I have written a detailed guide on how to use the heightmap feature of the stage editor to create stages, which hopefully helps to unlock one of the great mysteries of the stage editor. Heightmaps do make it easier to create races outside of the .DEM file coverage, such as the Rio 2016 Olympic course.

Jersey Votes

This Tuesday voting will open for the August Graphic Contest, in the sixth month of competition to decide upon the best fantasy shirt designed in the past month. The contest, organised by MARSUPILAMI, has seen five different jersey designers take victory so far: Cavendish-Fan, krisa, Maximka, trvalezmateny, and the_hoyle. With plenty of entries this month, it could be one of the most competitive votes yet.

Weekly Vuelta

Bilbao will get a stage win at some point in these three weeks, definitely. - Shonak

Will Shonak be right? Two more weeks to find out, after a near miss yesterday.

Thread of the Week

U23 Discussion Thread. This week saw the Tour de l'Avenir, the biggest Under 23 stage race of the year, and a chance to see who may (or may not) be the stars of the future in cycling. Probably the most discussed race of the season, of the races that don't have TV coverage!