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[Ed. note: More and more people are staying home as a result of quarantines and social distancing. Car customization was the high-tech platform for many years. Then came computers where nerds had a different target for things to tweak and optimize. Car racing has perhaps even more followers today than ever before. Given the technical background and underpinnings, and realizing people may be looking for something to do this weekend, I thought to give this story a try. Are there any Soylentils who have any racing experience? --martyb]
Shortly after the US entry into World War 2, President Roosevelt requested that professional baseball continue to be played during the war because of its importance to maintain the morale of the nation. NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed similar sentiment after the almost complete shutdown of professional sports due to the coronavirus outbreak. Formula 1 and NASCAR are already taking steps to resume, though with virtual races instead of cars physically on track.
Last weekend, iRacing and Podium organized the Replacements 100, which was streamed on multiple platforms including YouTube. The drivers included William Byron, whose success in iRacing helped him find the opportunity to drive real race cars, retired fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr., and current cup series drivers Bubba Wallace and Alex Bowman. The race was 100 laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway, which was set to host all three of NASCAR's national series last weekend before being postponed.
This weekend, NASCAR's national series were scheduled to race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but these races have also been postponed. Instead, NASCAR has started the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, a series of virtual races using iRacing that will include current drivers from all three of the national series. This weekend, the race will be at Homestead and will be televised by FOX Sports 1. The race will include 35 drivers including current Cup Series champion Kyle Busch and many other drivers from NASCAR's top series. The race commentators will be Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon, and Larry McReynolds, all of whom are commentators for Fox's regular NASCAR Cup Series broadcasts.
Formula 1 will also be live streaming a virtual Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend with two drivers representing each of F1's ten teams. This race will be run using the F1 2019 game and the level of difficulty for each driver will be adjusted based on their skill in virtual racing in order to produce a competitive race. This is in lieu of the postponed Bahrain Grand Prix, originally scheduled for this weekend. Although many of the regular F1 drivers will not be competing in this race, Nicholas Latifi will drive for Williams and Nico Hulkenberg will be returning to F1.
None of these races are points races in their respective series. And professional esports races are not new at all. However, it is novel that they are being used as stand-in events in the absence of being able to have teams physically present at the tracks. However, the use of commentators from the regular broadcasts, the number of drivers from NASCAR's top series, and the expectation that each of F1's teams will select two drivers will certainly draw the interest of fans who might not otherwise want to watch esports. In particular, Dale Jr. has a large following among NASCAR fans and his participation will likely increase fan interest in these virtual races.
As a fan, if NASCAR races continue to be postponed for an extended period of time, I'd like to see North Wilkesboro Speedway return in virtual races. The North Carolina short track last hosted a Cup Series race in 1996 and is now in deteriorating condition, much to the chagrin of many of NASCAR's older fans. It was one of NASCAR's oldest tracks and a part of the schedule for many decades, with the unique feature of the track being on a small incline. With the backing of Dale Jr., the track was cleaned and scanned for its addition to iRacing. Hopefully this historic track will return to NASCAR's schedule, even if only virtually.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @02:14PM (6 children)
> Are there any Soylentils who have any racing experience? --martyb]
Behind the scenes there is a lot of engineering in NASCAR, I've worked there off-and-on since the mid-80s. It's interesting to compare to F1 where the engineering is front & center (we've done small projects with F1 teams too). In some ways the engineering is the same, cars all have four wheels and everyone is looking for more "grip" (F=Ma, more F gives higher a, higher acceleration means lower lap time) -- through many different approaches.
In other respects the two series are very different due to different constraints provided by the sanctioning body. Often, it feels like engineering with one (or both) hands tied behind the back. Rules that are intended to "save money" usually result in creative engineering end-runs. The long way around the problem winds up costing more.
Like a lot of things that look simple from the outside, when you get into the details there is a lot of complexity. Much of my experience has been humbling, the simple mental models I start with fall apart in the face of test data...when the teams are even allowed to test. NASCAR bans many kinds of testing and there is a general testing ban on now for the duration of the virus crisis. But analysis of past data continues at all the top teams. If you want to get ahead, by definition copying can't work, you have to do your own thinking.
I'll be watching the virtual NASCAR event on FS1 this afternoon--to see how my customers do in a different arena.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @03:19PM (2 children)
Gran Turismo has realistic physics for both the tracks and the cars. A Porsche handles like a real Porsche in corners when you step on the gas and the rear end squats down and digs in to the road. A Tesla handles like an overpowered 1968 Ford station wagon, going straight into a barrier instead of turning. A Fiat Abarth handles like a clown car, doing reverse wheelies when you step on the brakes too hard or going onto 2 wheels when you drift a corner. About 20 years ago GT players were banned from real racing in England because they had faster (real) lap times than the pro racers.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday March 22 2020, @03:33PM (1 child)
I read a magazine article years ago (probably Car and Driver) where they had a pro driver face off against a pro gamer in GT. I was expecting the gamer to come out ahead but the driver actually won overall, suggesting that his skills behind the wheel transferred to skills behind the screen.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @04:54PM
> skills behind the wheel transferred to skills behind the screen.
GP here again. I've seen this too. It seems to depend a lot on the person. For example, as the sim gets more immersive (larger screen, etc), some people are fine and others get motion sickness. I did a lot of test driving for an early game with a reasonable physics model, and was always fine (with a small screen). My driving skills transferred to the game fairly well (even in very early stage development) as did another tester who did a lot of autocross driving irl.
A number of pro drivers have turned to sims to keep current during the off season, or to learn a new track. And a few sim racers have tested (and gotten rides) in real cars.
The full-on racing simulators in F1 (and more recently NASCAR) are at least an order of magnitude more detailed than any game in terms of the description of the car and physics details. Maybe two orders of magnitude. Usually there are several engineers full time involved in the care and feeding of the simulator, and often a "simulator coach" as well. The coach's job is to help the race driver separate things that are "common to sim and real car", from things that are "artifacts of the sim". The idea is to ignore the latter...not always so easy to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)
The constraints on engineering cut costs with the goal of allowing smaller teams with less resources to be more competitive. NASCAR and F1 both have a few large well-funded teams and a number of smaller teams. Even the larger teams have finite budgets, so if they have to spend more to achieve the same result, they might have less of an advantage than without any restrictions at all. F1 is starting to implement spending caps to impose more restrictions on the advantage for larger teams, especially Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull.
Another solution is technical alliances. Go Fas Racing has a technical alliance with Stewart-Haas Racing. Leavine Family Racing has a similar alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing. Furniture Row Racing also had an alliance with Gibbs before that team went under. That certainly helps the competitive balance and gives smaller teams a better chance, sometimes with the agreement that the smaller team lets a junior driver for the larger team use one of their cars. That's why Christopher Bell drive for Gibbs in the Xfinity series but is now with Leavine Family Racing this year.
F1 rules allow for similar arrangements between teams. The new teams around a decade ago like Caterham and Marussia weren't financially viable and folded, partly because they tried to develop their cars mostly in-house. They spent large sums of money but never managed to be particularly competitive, which would have allowed them to secure better sponsorship deals. Haas F1 has an extensive technical alliance with Ferrari, which allows Haas to reduce development costs. Haas was pretty competitive during the first couple of years in F1 for that reason. The agreement with Ferrari also resulted in Haas giving a spot to one of Ferrari's young drivers, Esteban Gutierrez. Haas has been more financially viable and the alliance stayed within the letter of F1 rules, but other teams and drivers objected loudly anyway.
You're considerably more familiar with the engineering operations in NASCAR than I am. I know that for the Daytona and Talladega races, the three manufactuers (Ford, Chevy, and Toyota) request their drivers work together in larger groups than each of the teams. Would it be feasible to institute larger technical alliances, like between all of the Ford teams, all of the Chevy teams, and all of the Toyota teams, and then allow each of the manufacturers a bit more flexibility to be creative in the development of their cars? It would shift some of the development costs away from the teams while somewhat increasing competitive balance. And if Ford, Toyota, and Chevy take different approaches to developing their cars, it might also address the complaint about gen 5 and 6 cars that they look almost the same. Don't place significant limitations on Ford, Chevy, and Toyota on their development expenses, but place greater limits on what individual teams are able to do. Would this model be viable in NASCAR?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @11:17PM
> The constraints on engineering cut costs with the goal of allowing smaller teams with less resources to be more competitive.
Yes and no. Sometimes this works, but coil binding is an example from a few years back where it didn't. NASCAR mandated a fairly high ride height for tech inspection, but the teams slowly worked out how to get the cars lower, for better aero (drag and/or downforce). The easy way to do this is with soft springs and rubber bump stops to keep the car from crashing metal to metal (or car-to-track). Most other kinds of racing allow rubber bump stops. However, NASCAR didn't allow rubber, and also required constant rate springs (constant spacing between coils). I believe NASCAR saw this as an area for development that would be difficult for smaller teams--it does require some knowledge of rubber properties (which are not stable like steel springs) and a fair bit of testing to get the car settled correctly on the stiff rubber "springs".
The top teams still knew they wanted soft springs that would let the downforce (aero and banking) pull the car down close to the track. They also knew that when the coil springs bound (all the coils touch) this near-instant change to a *much* higher spring rate really upsets the car. So they invented springs that had constant coil spacing and were bent, like a banana (top and bottom ends of the coil not parallel). As the coils closed they touched on one side first, then there was a short distance of very steeply rising spring rate before the final coil binding. To make this work required springs made out of very fancy steel, like valve spring material, and the springs didn't last very long. The whole exercise (across the top teams) must have wasted millions of bucks.
Eventually NASCAR found out that the springs were so expensive, so they changed the rules and allowed bump stops. Since it's a dumb way to make a variable rate spring I don't think anyone sells these "banana" springs anymore.
> Would it be feasible to institute larger technical alliances,
I can't speak for the different manufacturers, but one basic problem with this is that the low bucks teams only have a few engineers. If they were given all the tools and data used by the big teams with 25-50 engineers (or maybe more, I haven't kept up) they would be drinking from a firehose. I think it's more common for the manufacturers to work closely with a couple of big teams and then pass along the most important stuff to the smaller teams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @11:38PM
> I'll be watching the virtual NASCAR event on FS1 this afternoon--to see how my customers do in a different arena.
Well, I watched the FS1 cable channel coverage of the virtual Homestead NASCAR race (iRacing). It was fun and the broadcast crew was clearly having a fun time too. Some of the driver comments were also interesting. Since the cars were all equal (no tuning except brake balance) some of the drivers that are normally at the back could shine--proving that they are good, just don't have the best car irl. Race report if anyone is interested:
https://www.jayski.com/2020/03/22/denny-hamlin-passes-dale-jr-for-victory-in-enascar-iracing-pro-invitational-series-opener/ [jayski.com]
Then I switched to Fox where they had a replay of the Richmond 400 from 1986 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Miller_High_Life_400 [wikipedia.org] . Short tracks make for a good race! Earnhardt led a lot of it until Darrell Waltrip unlapped himself and finally caught up. Nose-to-tail for lap after lap, Waltrip finally got by...and then Earnhardt turned down on him--both wrecked. Young Kyle Petty snuck through the mess for his first 'Cup win. None of this overtime stuff, they raced to the end.