Quitters

Well, besides all my other hobby stuff I am also Admin of the ESCC and am very very happy to see the toughest and fastest races so far ever in LFS. The Grid is prolly the best there ever was, all the fast names are in it and every race is tight and density is extraordinary. Well, that hits for Grid 1... Unfortunately - and for me not even understandable - Grid 2 lacks the continuity of the people to join and race. That's a shame. Now the excuses why people quit this league are even funnier... if it wouldnt be so sad.

"One league is enough"

"Yeah, EAS is too much for me"

blahblahblah... This behaviour is totally unfair towards the other drivers, and puts a bad light on YOU quitters, as it puts on your team. I for myself started a list and this list will be taken into account if you quitters wanna join any other league in ESL in the future. Maybe those guys arent lazy, but definitely they didnt thought this whole thing through, and that's a shame. I'm tired of this behaviour. So here goes: The list of guys who are just too lazy (imo):

• Dee
  
• ClioRacer
• FiredUp
• phight
• nesrulz

I gonna update this list, if needed. I'm just bored of this behaviour.

Why I'm Nick Heidfeld Fan now

Well, I'd like to go a bit more into detail of my ~15 minutes talk with Nick Heidfeld on the intel Racing Tour Finals. Just because this was my personal highlight and I was so positively surprised. Well, I was watching the race for the M6 on a balcony just above the racers, and then I saw Mario Theissen leaning over and watching the race too. So I went over to him and said, that he shall congratulate Nick to that marvelous overtaking maneuvre against Eyebrow Alonso. His answer was simple: "you can tell it to him by yourself, he's over there". A few meters away also Nick was leaning over and was actually watching the race all by himself.
That was my chance! So I approached him, congratulated him for the maneuvre as opening and we got into talk. After I asked him how he felt in the car his eyes really got lightened up and he had a nice smile on his face. He was also quite surprised how close it looked in the TV afterwards, cause in the car all felt full yunder control and nice. "Eh, that looked quite cool, doesnt it?" ;)

The ice was broken and we had some talk about Live For Speed and the scene and my two drivers down there. He was really interested that there is a gaming scene with semi-professional guys, competing for things. He had a lot of respect about the leader, and the pressure put on him, just because of the knowledge of having a M6 in his hands. I also asked him, why Robert (Kubica) was that slow compared to him, and he said he had some problem with not closing tank-lid, but that's basically costing NO time. Nick shook his shoulders, with a little smile on his face. Must have been something else then ;)
We were both leaning side by side at the balcony watching the race like two buddies from the (sim)racing scene. It felt so natural, totally normal. He was really into it, pulling air through his teeths when nils attacked in last two laps, or when Simon spun out almost hitting nils. Before last turn I had to leave him rapidly, cause I wanted to be with my boys down there, he grinned, knowing a bit how I felt and we said a short good bye. Man, what a great person (still so little :P ). I got someone to cheer for for the next races and seasons :)

M6 anyone?

There it is! It's decided and Danny "Husky" Engels from my team won that gorgeous BMW M6. WOW. What an event, what a race, what a party. First go check some of the pics in my picasa album:

IRT Finale

Well, now what can I tell about this great event? First of all we had a lot of strange happenings on our way to get there: Danny almost missed the train, Nils almost crashed in a plane and the second had another hour dealy, which added up to 3 hours delay on his arrival and I ran once more into the rev-limiter... Damn nice A9 Autobahn there.
We finally made it to the event in the "Lenbach" in Munich and the place was already packed with a lot of VIPs and stuff. And then, during the race, I had the coolest fifteen minutes, I could imagine. I saw Nick Heidfeld watching the race and so I approached him and started talking. And after one or two typical answers he got relaxed, realized that there were some guys here, knowing what racing means in terms of passion and we had a pretty cool conversation. We talked about his fabulous maneuvre vs. Alonso and he damn loved it. Some short quotes:

"How did you feel in the car, overtaking him there, outside?"
*with a huge smile* "I wanted to put my arms high up in the air, but next turn was already coming ;) "

"You sure know, that there was like no room between alos and your car?"
"hehe, yeah, from inside all looked under control and easy, but then I saw it on TV and gotta admit, that was damn close. Quite cool, eh?"

And we continued this way, watching and enjoying the tense of the race.

Nick: "Oh, he nearly shot him... damn, that was close... oh, now he spun, but that's not a guy from your team, no?" - "nope" - "well, then ok ;) "

Well, after Danny prolly had the best hour of his life, being driven by Nick in his own M6, we started partying and continued this up to the end of it, late in the night at around 3am. Damn, what a great event!

On the road ....

So I was on the road again and will be tomorrow. Today's a good day then to talk about it ;) My visit at the GIGA 2 studios was a lot of fun and we saw a really entertaining race too. My personal highlight but also somehow disapointing was reaching absolut TopSpeed of my Lancia Kappa. That sounds good at first, but when it's limited due to your rev-limiter, it's a bit annoying ;) So there is this one part on the Autobahn A3 from Frankfurt to Köln (Cologne), where it goes downhill for about 2 kms without speedlimit. The traffic allowed it to go with 200+ so I put the pedal to the metal and at about 235 km/h my car ran into the rev-limiter... Damnit.

What's the reason for this? Well Lancia delivered the Kappa with two different Gearsetups called "Power-Drive" and "Comfort-Drive". Now you can imagine, which one I have. Gonna have to find the ratio of my fifth gear, to calc a bit then ;)

So where am I going tomorrow then? Well, I'll head down to munich with Danny, to watch the IRT finals, meet Nick Heidfeld and Vettel and also Mario Theissen. And yes, we're going with my car and gonna have a nice drive down to munich. I keep you updated on how the race went and all that.

Me @ TV

Tonight you can see me commentating the todays race evening of the LFS EPS X LIVE @ GIGA2. I think, I'll have a lot of fun, cause the races promise to be really really entertaining.

The later Easteregg

Hi buddies, I'm back from my easter holidays and already deep into LFS betatesting stuff. Finally I have to say, cause it was a bit quiet around my favourite Sim. But I guess today or tomorrow there'll be a new testpatch out for everyone of you with a lot of cool new little features, making the whole Sim better usable and even more real :) Keep an eye on www.lfsforum.com for latest news about that.

SimBin  surprised yesterday with an announcement that they are developing their own gaming engine. Starting as a racing sim engine it will also be able to work as a FPS or other 3D engine. It's almost complete, from physics to rendering, network, menues etc.... I have to say: Finally we get something commercially new in the engine market, cause I am personally bored and annoyed of the all the time samefeeling of ISI based engines. Check out the details HERE.

Still here

As you might have guessed right, this was a little April-fools joke. So back to business. The FIA decided over the weekend to prohibit Traction Control systems in Formula 1 from 2008 on. That I call a good news, cause this way we see the real drivers winning again. It's only possible from 2008 on, cause all teams need to use the same electronics then, which can be supervised completely by the FIA. So, after this already really promising year 2007 in Formula 1, we'll get some more and better action in 2008. Realy something to look forward to.

Good Bye

Well, that's it. After about 4 years in LFS, I quit. Was a lot of fun, but center of Life changes, so I have to move on. Leep on racing, buddies.