Yep, I've scrapped it - apologies to any Katayama or Tyrrell fans.
Last night was the first round in a series of streams that I'm doing, playing rFactor 2 against AI in a fantasy Formula 1 season. We started at Catalunya doing some pre-season testing, followed by the first race at Albert Park in Melbourne. The results were slightly mixed, as you'd expect from the AI - Minardis pretty much dominating the testing with Williams, Ferrari and McLaren languishing outside the Top 10. I was hoping that this wouldn't be the case come Melbourne.
We Qualified 17th, which was nice and realistic by my standards - I didn't want to be up there battling for wins all season. I thought it'd be a much more rewarding path to go from season-to-season gradually improving who I drive for, and aiming for better results. The two cars in front of us though were Hill and Villeneuve, who really should've locked out the front row.
After a good start, getting just inside the Top 10, some of these quicker guys started to come through as expected, and for the majority of the race we were stuck in 11th chasing down Berger with Verstappen a few seconds back, holding off Alesi. The entire field seemed very static though, and didn't really provide much exciting racing around me.
After a silly spin at the end caused a full-course yellow, the win went to Katayama and Tyrrell with Fisichella and Rosset rounding out the podium. Now, in 1996 if you'd seen a Tyrrell, Minardi and Footwork at the top of the order, you'd have thought that everyone else must have crashed. Irvine and Alesi were 4th and 6th which was slightly realistic, but they were a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the order in my mind.
Due to this, I've decided after the stream to strike the result off, and try some new settings with the AI and other parameters to get something more realistic going on. I'll be restarting the championship from Albert Park in my next stream, (yes, I'm sorry this will be the third race you've seen there if you've watched the other two!) but only after some extensive tests to ensure realistic results each time.
I'll still be aiming to get Top 10s at best, just to grab a couple of points by the season end, and will also be setting up some scenarios to move forward on from year-to-year, based on where I finish in the championship.
I'm very grateful to those who watched the entire stream last night, and those that subscribed and cheered Bits for me - without you guys there wouldn't really be such a great atmosphere around the stream, so thank you. I'll be back on it soon, but need to put a bit more time in to fine tune it first it seems.