Bernie has been good for the sport, from a commmerical view, but he could have been much better for the sport itself overall. There's been quite a few times where "good of the sport" was more "good for Bernie".

It's funny is some ways, he's become what he rallied against so much when representing FOCA back in the 80's. You look at the "power base" within F1 over the years and it's been filled with his "people"....Max (his legal representation), Gordon Murray (his team designer/engineer), Charlie Whiting (an engineer) to name the most important ones. I just point to that time I mentioned as when F1 turned more from racing to a racing business is all.

One thing I've learned since I've been following F1...yes, I know usually strange for a Yank to be such a fan of it...Bernie will always take care of Bernie, and in excess, too.

I think in GTR2 it all depends on the car. Some of them - by default - are a real handful to drive. Good example is the G2 '911 Biturbo; very fast, but a horror to drive consistently, and really not setup well by default. It is difficult to get working without actually making it worse, too. I actually started out with that car, and was astonished how much easier some of the much faster GT cars are to drive.

Get the right chassis - the Elise is a great example - and GTR2 is amazing fun.

My tastes have changed in the last few years - I really like the slightly 'slower' cars. I think it started with the Papyrus Nascar series (Still think 2003 is an unbeaten Single Player experience, and part of the GPL lineage) and tintops are really very enjoyable.

I have read that the bias ply tires of the late 60s were so hard that some F1 teams used the same tires over more than one race weekend - or at least used the same tires over an entire race weekend. True there's no appreciable tire wear, or more to the point perhaps that there are no changes due to tire overheating, or damage (flat-spotting) of the tires - something only one racing title so far has attempted (LFS, or so I hear).

I started out on GPL and have fond memories of it. I recognize that it has its limitations now, as the state of the art of CPUs has advanced allowing higher fidelity (and frequency) physics calculations in a racing game/sim. For that style of racing, I've found a lot of enjoyment in the F1 '71 mod for rFactor. I think it's just a League Edition right now, but still loads of fun to turn hot laps in. Nice sounds, too.

I remember reading an article once about the great Jim Clark and the Lotus 49...one of the Lotus mechanics said something along the lines that when he came in after a race...the tires, brakes and pretty much everything on the car looked like they'd hardly been used. And as long as the car didn't break down, which unforumately happened frequently in 1967 after Zandvoort, they had little work to do to it after a race to get it ready for the next Grand Prix weekend.

He mentioned they used to put a tarp over the car after it returned to the paddock so Graham Hill's mechanics wouldn't feel bad.

My problem with participating - GTR2 or rFactor - is the requirement to install all these exotic mods, patches and updates for the mods, fixes for the mods, etc. etc., some without self-exes. Race a car series that comes stock with the sim and I'm in. That would make it easier for techno-noobs like me to participate---people who can't keep up with all the mods and don't know how to install without self-exes to just click on. Seems no one races the cars that come with the sims. Everyone waits for a new mod.

I have the same problem, Plainsman. But, in rFactor, you almost have to race with mods because the default cars blow.

The included cars in GTR2, on the other hand, are the dog's nuts. The ne plus ultra of badass cars and I can't understand why no one races them. So, I play mostly offline.