And it’s all Geoff Crammond’s fault.
I first became aware of Mr. Crammond in 1986. I was in Oman, on some fruitless mission for my employer, and was spending an evening at the house of my host. A dinner date with senior people, where pressing business issues would be discussed after pleasantries had been dispensed with. Exactly the sort of encounter that I loathed. But as I half-listened to a self-important Dutchman mouthing off about something irrelevant (an occupational hazard in the company I used to work for), I caught a glimpse of the son of the house in the next room, playing a car racing game on his BBC micro. Enough of the oil business, I slipped away to take a look.
It was Geoff Crammond’s Revs.
State of the art graphics, 1986
By present day standards, very basic; but for the time this was an amazing simulation of Formula 3 racing. I spent the rest of the evening playing the game, to the annoyance of the son who wasn’t allowed to have a turn, and the anger of my host who expected me to be talking to the grown-ups rather than depriving his son of his game. It was therefore not a very successful trip from a business standpoint; but it made me a member of the cult of Geoff.
Crammond turned to Formula 1 in 1992 with F1GP, to be followed by the imaginatively titled Grand Prix 2, Grand Prix 3 and Grand Prix 4; each of which gained cult status amongst those of us who liked to pretend we were Formula 1 drivers.
GP3, slightly more detail than Revs.
The release of Grand Prix 4 in 2002 was the last the world was to hear from Geoff Crammond; but that didn’t matter because we had already moved onto Grand Prix Legends (GPL). GPL simulated the GP cars of 1967; which meant loads of sliding and opposite lock; very different from driving modern GP cars. Plus it featured on-line play, which meant I could spend my evenings racing against other players from around the world; and that is precisely what I did, and it was you would do if you lived in Brunei because there is bugger all else to do at night. My team was called Team Borneo and our motto was “yes, we are crap!”. There was a website and a T-shirt and, in retrospect, I was slightly insane. Things reached an even higher level of insanity when I even bought a space-frame chassis so I could sit in with my wheel and pedals and pretend I was in a real Formula 1 car.
Then I moved to Thailand and work, plus the myriad delights of Bangkok, intervened. Plus, GPL was feeling rather tired and nobody else produced a Formula 1 game that was of interest. Until now.
Enter F1 2010. An eighteen month development by Codemasters, offering the opportunity to take on the likes of “moan-a-lot” Alonso, “toys out of the pram” Vettel and “race till I crash” Hamilton in a full recreation of the 2010 season. If you are nuts enough, and maybe I am, you can embark upon a seven year career, with full-length race distances and all the practice and qualifying sessions. Guaranteed to make your eyes bleed, and to make you crash when your other half disturbs your concentration by shouting “we have a serious water leak”. (For goodness sake, it was only ankle deep; she could have waited until the pit stop).
And you can’t do a Hamilton and just jump into a McLaren. You have to start at the bottom with either an HRT, Lotus, or a Virgin. Naturally, I chose a Virgin; because I have had a Lotus and it broke down on a daily basis, HRT sounds like a sexually transmitted disease, and a Virgin sounds like something that hasn’t had a sexually transmitted disease yet. Plus, it make for an excellent blog post title.
If I complete the tasks assigned by Virgin (“qualify 20th or better”, “make the tea for the mechanics”}, and consistently beat my team mate; I will not only be able to set the R&D direction by the team, but I can expect an offer from a better team for the following season. By year seven I will have the choice of a McLaren or Red Bull and a shot at the World Championship.
That’s the theory, but there’s one small problem; the T-shirt was right, I am crap. First practice at Bahrain and I spent more time in the sand than on the track. My engineer sounded increasingly frustrated as I was called in yet again to further reduce the team’s dwindling supply of nose cones. Penalties galore for cutting corners and causing accidents, if there was a penalty for being a total dick then I would have been awarded that one too.
Problem is, Formula 1 cars are hard to drive. Seemingly endless grip until suddenly there isn’t any and your car is reverting to component form against a wall. Massive braking until the downforce stops working and it’s sliding into the gravel time. I’ve knocked over my pit crew by coming into the pits too fast, gained drive through penalties by leaving the pits too quickly and been penalised for not obeying the blue flags as all the clever buggers at the front of the field lap me. So no surprise at my result in Bahrain: Last. Going to be a long seven years.
F1 2010 is available for the PC, Xbox and PS3. You will need a wheel and an understanding partner who doesn’t complain about broken pipes when you are about to pull an overtaking manoeuvre to fully enjoy the game.
Night racing at Singapore
Racing in the rain almost everywhere
Comments 🔗
2010-10-04| Billy saysAlmost inspiring enough to put my near redundant PS3 to work; must pop off to the pub to see if I can’t find a self-important Dutchman mouthing off about something irrelevant, shouldn’t be too difficult, the Shell office is just down the road ..
2010-10-04| Q’on sayslooks like nanotrax will have an interesting sunday… i wonder if we’ll get any r/c racing done?
2010-10-05| Antz saysWhich car did you “borrow” the steering wheel from?
2010-10-05| Spike saysQ’on, it’s all racing, pimp slapper (am I getting the hang of this language yet?).
Antz, Microsoft wireless wheel and pedals for Xbox.
2010-10-06| TheSon saysShame you don’t have a PS3, Logitech will sell you the G27 for £350 ..
2010-10-06| Spike saysI used to have those for the PC; sold them to a certain fat man for what could be described as a profit.
I don’t have a PS3 cos one of my offspring told me that Sony sucked.
2010-10-06| Billy the Brush saysWell, go on then, what is a G27 and why should the Boy Wonder have one?
2010-10-06| Spike says