E-racing COVID Special
Anyone want some E???
I was going to keep this site purely to films but hey, under lockdown, we’re all having to adapt and change our plans on the fly. While I have heaps of films watched and reviews ready to come your way I thought a quick guide to some E-racing might be on the cards while you might still have a chance to catch some live E-Racing action. Here are the top five I have been tuning in to while real racing action is off the menu.
F1 Series – Everyone has aids
F1 have done what F1 does and gone and F1’ed their E racing series. “Here at F1 we take the ‘fun’ out of formula one” Which actually leaves us with Ormla oe. So that’s what we have. The Ormla-oe racing series has gone with using the Codemasters F1 2019 game as their platform. The good thing about this is that the game is one that is easily accessible to people and many F1 fans have it and can play it. The drawback is it is limited to current F1 tracks, cars and liveries so we don’t get a lot of variation from the standard f1 championship.
Interestingly Ormla-oe are one of the few E-racing series to introduce sports stars from other disciplines into the main series. We have seen stars from Cricket, Golf and Football mix it with the real drivers. These guys have actually managed to maintain pace with the F1 drivers largely by enabling a lot of the driving aids that the F1 2019 game has such as traction control or line and breaking indicators. This is something that would be more difficult for a non-racer or gamer to adapt to in the other platforms like iRacing or rFactor. These spaces have largely been made available because some of the F1 stars are missing, at the time of writing we are yet to see Lewis or Seb in the F1 E-series.
Much to my irritation F1 have avoided one of the best features of the Codemasters games by dropping the automated post-race press interviews that were introduced in the career gameplay mode for F1 2018 onwards. I am particularly fond of the AI reporter ‘Claire’ in the 2018 game who asks you repetitive questions after each session with a bunch of multi choice answers. I would have liked to see the drivers all go through this part of the game as well as the actual racing. I miss you Claire 2018….
Rating: Three Hartley's
Platfrom available: NZ Spark Sport for live action. You tube for full replays.
V8 Supercars – You’re a “f**ken peanut” if you’re not watching this
V8 Sueprcars took their time to launch their E-series and I’m glad they did because they clearly put some thought into the race format and production of the content. In NZ they also chose a great timeslot with qualifying coverage starting at 8pm on a Wednesday night every week. It is a great thing to look forward to and an excuse for a few mid-week beersies and some social chats with some other racing pals.
Pretty much the full V8 Supercars field are competing although some’ like David Reynolds, clearly don’t want to be there, why would he? He's only on a $10m over 10 year contract. Supercars have set things up so that we get to see into every driver’s sim set up and get a lot of driver interaction through the evenings racing. Supercars are also the only series to bring in their actual Driving Standards Officer, Craig Baird, into the fray to dish out random race altering penalties. Bairdo has had a big influence on most of the races so far. Personally, I think it would have been way cooler to see him driving so that the other V8 guys could enact a bit of payback here and there. Although I can’t complain as the extremely harsh approach taken to driving standards in Round 1 has become a lot fairer in later rounds. Also the decisions so far have heavily worked in favour of the kiwi drivers. Cheers Bairdo!!
Like a lot of the E-racing elsewhere we see a great levelling of the fields where team budgets and resources are having less of an impact. While there are some big budget set ups in there, we are also seeing guys race from their living rooms, having to keep the noise down so they don’t wake the kids and man I love Nick Percat’s dog ‘Nelson’ who sleeps through all the racing action. The only anomaly is Team Sydney who even with a more level playing field and less impact of budgets are still running at the back of the pack.
While most of the supercars content in Australia and NZ is accessible through pay TV (FoX in Australia and SKY in NZ) they have been very decent and are putting up the replays on you tube for everyone to enjoy for free. This is the type of corporate goodwill I hope remains post COVID. Maybe it will help people realise that it is the accessibility of you content and size of your following audience that matter more than what those people pay. Sure charge us all for live action but be generous with your content after the fact and I’m sure you build a bigger following overall. Its also been great that we have been able to follow the action from other angles through the twitch feeds from various drivers. Having all of their chatter and quotes available after the race is also a good place to find inspiration and words of wisdom in tough times. Sure we’ve seen the expected Will Power tantrums. But Mark Winterbottom has really raised the bar to use his words If you’re not watching this “you’re a fucken peanut!”. And yes Chas Mostert does look a bit like Nigel Mansell with his mo right now…hot dog helps too.
Rating: Five Hartley's
Platform available: Sky NZ for live action, you tube for full replays
NASCAR ProInvitational - Low budget heroes triumph over big budget evil
E racing NASCAR has actually brought back all the good things about NASCAR that have been ruined in recent times. No more stupid stage races and the points system that no one understands doesn’t matter anymore. What NASCAR have done is bring high quality fields in races that are long enough to introduce quite a lot of strategy as well as deliver close racing. NASCAR was the first series I encountered that added their standard FOX production team in to do commentary and added some professionalism to the production. NASCAR has most of their main drivers competing alongside a lot of guys that recently retired which is a cool mix.
The NASCAR Proinvitational series has also had some of the best racing action. The race at Texas Motor speedway is a beauty and for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet you should check it out on you tube. NASCAR in the real world obviously has a lot of wheel to wheel action which has been even fiercer in the online series. The no fear approach from the drivers means they can run really close giving us some great racing and some spectacular accidents. The NASCAR series has also retained quite a strict approach to throwing out the caution flags which regularly bunch the field up to keep everyone in the running.
With the NASCAR series we also get to following along with the trials and tribulations of Clint Bowyer. Usually the comments man in the commentary team he has put is racing gloves back on to get amongst it with his old buddies. He clearly finds virtual racing a real challenge but is having a blast doing it. He gets the balance just right in terms of trying to be competitive, getting annoyed if wrecks but also enjoying the fun side of sim racing to add some colour to the overall FOX commentary package. He’s become the underdog that his commentator buddies are rooting for but also having a good laugh at when things go bad, which they have in pretty much every race. In round at Talladega we saw fellow commentator Jeff Gordon join in to see if he can do a better job than Bowyer…he didn’t….
The big budget v low budget scenario has played out well here too, we get to see Dale Earnheardt Jr going at it in his $40k rig vs Timmy Hill who has a single screen and basic steering wheel clamped to a desk. The rivalry playing out has seen guys like Timmy Hill race door to door with some of the big names in way that is unlikely to have played out on the real race track. I’m pretty sure there are competitive comraderies being formed here that will change how guys race each other when we get back to real racing.
Rating: Four Hartley's
Platform available: You tube replays. Weidly this is not on the usual Pay TV carrier in NZ that normally show NASCAR
TCR Australia – have you played wreckfest??
I have been following the actual TCR racing series for a little while now I’ve been enjoying the mix of close racing with young up and commers racing some old heroes. The Australian TCR series was also being supported by the incredible F5000 series too. The TCR series have actually been a bit shafted by their rivals V8 Supercars who have tried their best to kill the series by not sharing meeting billing and therefore made it hard to get a fair shot at some decent broadcasting. I’ve had to follow this excellent series in NZ via you tube only. The exception was going to be the Australian GP where TCR and V8 supercars were both support categories on the F1 programme. It was a real shame that didn’t happen. TCR is your classic race on Sunday buy on Monday series.
Sadly also the NZ series did not get underway as planned largely because of administrative and bureaucratic bungles. Much to the frustration to a lot of people who invested time and money into getting some cars and teams set up here. TCR New Zealand were meant to be a support category at the NZGP this year but pulled the pin and announced a series would start in June. All of this is probably off the table now too.
Anyway on to the all star e-series. TCR unfortunately have had to remove one of the most interesting facets of the category which is the wide variety cars on show. They have instead got one car the Audi RS 3 LMS being used across the whole field. However, they have made up for this with some massive fields. The first round had 52 cars all trying to squeeze across the top of the mountain at Bathurst. With damage on and no resets the field was whittled down to around 25 by the end of the first lap. It was probably a mistake to go to such a challenging track with a whole lot of drivers who are new to E-racing all struggling to find their feet. From round four TCR did some racing in F3 single seaters to mix things up and keep it interesting for the drivers. However, I would have still liked to see a mix of cars on track and see some of the performance differences play out at each circut.
TCR has brought together a good range of drivers, we have drivers from TCR Australia, Toyota 86 Australia and NZ, Muscle cars drivers, some super 2 drivers, and drivers from super utes. They’ve got their legends involved like Garth Tander who features along side some UK touring car stars like Charlie Cox. I think they’ve taken a bit of a quantity over quality approach though. The streams have been patchy, and the large fields have made the races a bit random. To be fair they were one of the first on this side of the world to get their series up and running and have kept the emphasis on fun over simulation.
Rating: Two and a halfHeartley's
Platform available: You tube live and replay
The Race All Star Series – Old dudes can sim race too!!
As I understand it ‘The Race’ have been streaming online racing content with a degree of professionalism for some time now. When COVID hit their reputation enabled them to quickly pull together some absolute legends of motorsport to join the fray. Star power is the feature here as ‘The Race’ have had drives from multiple raicng disciplines like; Jenson Button, Jaques Villneuve, Dario Francitti, Max Papis, Jason Plato, Tony Kanan, Imanuelle Piro and Emerson Fitipaldi. Yep that’s right at 73 years of age Emerson Fitipaldi is out there mixing it in sim racing. Who says you get too old for gaming!! Are there mobility scooters on iRacing?
The Race have a different format to most of the other series, their typical stream involves a mix of short elimination races and with the top 7 or 8 from those heats progressing to some sort of final. This results in the Legends getting the chance to mix it with the committed simmers and vice versa. They don’t put out a polished production with TV like quality but they do have an insightful commentary team with Jolyon Palmer and Jack Nicholls, who is that guy who does the commentary voice overs in ‘Drive to Survive’, if the voice sounds familiar. We get some good interaction with the drivers in between races, in particular, Dario Franchiti adds some colour utilising currently unused Formula-e commentary skills.
Because of their format ‘The Race’ streams are long. Usually 2 but sometimes up to 3 hours I haven’t watched much of this live. Although it is often at a convenient weekend breakfast timeslot in NZ. As I’m here for a bit of a substitute for real racing I tend to skip most of the races to focus on the All Star racing.
‘The Race’ use the rFactor sim platform which focuses on driving authenticity over visual effects. None the less the cars are excellent and sound great we’ve seen them use old Tyrell F1 cars and the M23 McLaren. Drivers can apply their own livery to an extent but these are more basic than some of the other sim formats. Luckily for us we did see Jenson Button with a beautiful 2009 Braun GP livery applied to his M23. It is a good watch for the star power and nostalgia.
Rating: Three and a half Hartley's
Platform available: You tube live and replay
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