rec.autos.simulators

I know it will make some people jump but where is the fun ?

Slipstreaming. Oh, and never having to turn right.

How about a clockwise oval? That might make team owners think a bit...

--
David.
"After all, a mere thousand yards - such a harmless little knoll, really."
(Raymond Mays on Shelsley Walsh)

Well LL.....

It depends... if you are a fan at the track...  you get to see the entire
track, plus you are really close to the action.. and it goes on and on , so
you get to 'know' that you've been to a race..

                   ... as a 'driver'  .. it's always close racing.. you rely
a lot on trust with the other drivers... it's a regular wage..hehe racing
every week..
 It's a 'head' job because the races are so long and have to be paced..
unlike sprints..

                   ... as a tv viewer... well yes.. it does tend to put me
to sleep...but there is always the strategy side of things... ya gotta know
when to go for the 'stretch' run or the 'short pit'.... this stuff doesn't
come with the N3 manual...

And finally.. its a real slice of American culture... :-))...   and a fairly
benign one at that...

--
J.H.Vizoso..... ICQ..37209596
Even a blind squirrel  can find a nut ......'Buddy Baker'

The fun is in the crashes....???? Only thing is that crashes in real
life are not fun but tragic. I think that oval racing is for people who
doesnt give a d**n for driving skills. Its probably fun for the
engineers to see if they can set up a car that can drive a lap without
turning the steering wheel.

BR
Thomas Soerensen
GPL Enthusiast of Denmark
2-way turner

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

Subject: What is the interest of oval racing ?

I am not the most eloquent person on this topic, but maybe I can share with
you some of my observations as a person who enjoys NASCAR coverage on TV but
wouldn't bother to put on an F1 race (or would put it on and fall asleep or
ignore it).  Go ahead and call me names or tell me I'm ignorant or whatever,
but these are just opinions, so they can't really be *wrong*.

NASCAR races on road courses a few times each year and I find those races to
be very entertaining.  I make sure not to miss Sears Point and Watkins Glen.
On the other hand, I couldn't be bothered to see CART race on a road circuit
(or an oval), so that says there is something about the cars that attracts
me.

In the case of open wheel cars, they don't look much like cars to me and the
manufacturers associated with the vehicles often have little or no resonance
in my mind.  Arrows? Minardi? Sauber? Jordan? Benetton? Huh? A French person
may be able to get e***d about a Peugot, but to me it is a wheezy, ugly
little economy car where Chevy or Ford or Pontiac are cars I see every day
and have known my whole life.  Sure, they also make wheezy ugly economy
cars, but they also make performance cars that have been part of my cultural
experience since I was a little kid.  There is no such thing as a 'Williams'
automobile, so cheering for it to beat a BAR kind of loses relevance for me.
I will never own a Ferrari or a McLaren, so it's difficult to care about
either of them.  I just can't relate.

I also enjoy drag racing (which has no corners at all.)  Interestingly, I
would rather watch Funny Cars, ProStocks or even stock racing rather than
Top Fuel.  This would seem to follow the trend of closed-body cars being
more interesting to me.

My best friend is a big F1 fan and we have had our spats about NASCAR vs.
F1.  He seems to be very focused on the driver racing 'against' the track.
It is almost like F1 cars could run the races by themselves and just compare
times afterwards.  It seems that F1 is rarely about a car or driver racing
against another.  In NASCAR, the action is almost constant and in very close
quarters. Near the front of the pack, there is often driver interaction and
passing going on at a fever pitch. In some of the F1 racing I have been
exposed to, I get the impression that the biggest e***ment is from sitting
on the edge of your seat wondering if a car is going to break down when it's
15 seconds ahead of everyone else.

NASCAR is a spectacle.  The cars are flashy, the personalities of the
drivers and crew chiefs and car owners are thrust into the spotlight as
well.  They all speak the same language and the crowd can understand them.
The big sponsor graphics splashed on the cars add to the fun.  Many of the
products advertised are used by the viewers so there's another connection to
the viewers world.

Being able to see the whole race, rather than a series of seemingly
unconnected corners, is also important to sustaining the e***ment.  Cars
crawling around corners in the rain at 35 MPH is not exciting, even if they
are trying to pass one another.  Cars pushed to their limit, driving at 180,
190 or 200 mph for long periods of time are RACING, not just driving.
Sustained speed.

It seems like oval racing is a largely American fascination, too.  Part of
the lack of interest in F1 may be chalked up to the tracks F1 runs on being
too far away and not names anyone knows.   I have GPL and appreciate
everything about it that's excellent from a driving standpoint, but I don't
care about Kyalami and Zandvoort and Silverstone and Monza and whatever
because I can't relate to where they are and didn't grow up hearing about
them.  I also don't care about the cars or drivers in GPL, so the whole
thing loses fascination for me.  It isn't the road course aspect, either,
because I love SCGT (again, closed body cars.)

I dunno, sorry for the disorganized presentation.  The original question
seemed to come from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why people
would want to see cars driving in a circle.  I think the answer is that they
like the spectacle of the event, the close, competitive racing and can
relate to the drivers, teams and tracks.  I am really only speaking for
myself and making some broad suppositions about other people, so take it for
what it's worth.

~daxe

More advertising per second TV coverage. And even the backmarkers get
attention.

It's the money that does it.

JoH

========================================
Jo Helsen    EDP Operations BF Belgium

========================================

I'll borrow a line from the "F14 Fleet Defender" (flightsim).

"If you're not sweating these carrier landings, you don't understand the
problem."

There's more to it than meets the eye. You cannot appreciate something done
right until you truly know how hard it is.

Jan.
----

"The people at Nascar understand all aspects of racing very well" -Carroll
Smith

I think you hit the nail on the head there. I think it's almost impossible
to form a lifelong fascination for something wihtout having experienced it,
or something very like it, first hand. I.E. TV doesn't relate the full
experience. It's hard to empathise with drivers you haven't seen come
through the lower formulas (I bet Michael Andretti saw very few fan banners
with his name on it when he was in F1). I think it's equally hard to really
get "into" or stay into a form of racing you haven't been to see live. I
personnally got hooked to motorsports in general afterstumbling into a
European Championship Rally on holliday when I was a kid. You probably went
down to the local dirt oval in your younger years. It's something you grow
into, as real appreciation, IMO, comes with understanding.

Jan.
----

may i quote an explanation for why their are no roundabouts in the US - cos
giving way to the right is a worrying thought for your average american :)

maybe the same could be applied to your tendency to go round in left hand
circles?

The racing never stops!  On a roadcourse you can be stuck behind a slower
car for the whole race and never figure out how to pass, or at best you'll
have to wait for your one or two favorite passing spots before you can do
it.  On an oval, the passing opportunities come much more frequently.

Some say turning left over and over again is too easy, but nothing is easy
when you've got a whole slew of other guys who are trying just as hard to
win as you are.

My first love is road courses, because they're a better test of car control,
but ovals are pretty cool in their own way.

-A

On the following date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:44:51 -0000, said person(s)

I'm going to ignore the snobbishness of that remark.
...ok, I'm not.. I'm really starting to hate Brits with there arrogant
remarks.

Watkins Glen has right hand turns.
....Searspoint too..

And they biggest reason us "scared" Americans like Oval racing?
Because we like to go fast during the whole race.
Not slow down and breath for turns like you F1 folks do.

- James Wohlever
#98 Techware Motorsports

The way I see it is, Most forms of racing today is really the driver racing
the"track". Cars are spread out and it becomes drivers out there just
turning laps and only having to race another driver once in a while.
Where Nascar is just traffic, You are too busy racing the other cars and
dealing with traffic to worry about lap times.  You race the cars around you
first and the track second. You may move up through the field without taking
the ideal line.

--
Kevin Anderson

---------------------------------------------------
DK-Racing
#15 K_Anderson
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.awtech.net/

hmm sorry, i dont wanna get into international disputes here :(

personally i have very little interest in 'modern' F1 anyway, and while
nascar and the like looks entertaining, we dont get it on TV over here.  oh
and where in that post did i suggest that you were scared?

btw i know the glen has left hand turns, but then it isnt an oval is it.

dave

Also, don't forget that Nascar racing gets ZERO media coverage
in Europe, while you can watch training, qualifying, warm-up and
the actual race of F1 on almost every channel you like.
While all i was able to see of Rockingham last Sunday was Labonte
and Earnhardt passing the finish line, covered by CNN (25 seconds)
I was lucky i didn't have to sneeze or i would have missed that either...

I personally got to understand the rules and develop an interest in Nascar
through these Nascar games. Before that i also thought that it was just
hittin' the gas and turn left....
(That's also how for example N3 gets reviewed in Holland : "It's only
goin' in circles and there's not even background music...")

I believe that the original poster of this thread is from France, so i can
understand his point of view, it's a common European thought.
It's easy: Europe has F1, USA has Nascar and no discussion's ever gonna
change that....

-- XLjunkie--
"The Utility Pit"
-- http://utility-pit.homepage.com --

Door to door, nose to tail, lap after lap after lap... concentrating more on
the race than the circuit. It's not surprising many road racing fans don't get
it. But once you do it, you'll love it.

BTW, I love road racing too.

--
-----------------------------------
Morgan Vincent Wooten

http://members.tripod.com/~morganv/
-----------------------------------