Introduction
Automobilista 2 has a vast array of content, but in the absence of a career mode it’s lacking a sense of purpose. I find myself jumping from one car class to another, and from one track to another, but usually ending up returning to a familiar car and track combo for ‘just one more quick race’, absent of any continuity or progression.
It’s very easy to fire up a racing sim and drive unrealistically, knowing that if you crash, the reset button is there to immediately give you another shot. However, it’s difficult to learn anything from crashing all the time. I think there’s a much greater reward to be had from behaving in the sim more akin to how you would if you were driving a real car on a real racetrack. First and foremost, I suggest that you make this a golden rule for yourself and stick to it from now on: do everything you can to not put your car into the barriers! You should turn off all driving aids, put the damage level up to max, and whenever you go out on track, take the first few laps slowly and carefully, letting the tires come up to temperature before beginning to push. Treat your ‘in-sim’ car as if it were a prized possession. Avoid damaging it as best you can and build your speed and confidence with the car gradually. You will definitely end up being faster if you make this a habit and keep doing it consistently.
While we wait for Reiza to deliver a career mode for AMS2, I thought it might be fun to create a series of roleplay scenarios, joined together with a storyline. My idea is that these scenarios can offer some structure and direction to one’s activity with the sim (hopefully resulting in some measurable progress and improvement behind the wheel), while at the same time being entertaining and engaging. These scenarios will be best enjoyed if you follow the advice given above. In fact, you should make another rule for yourself that, if at any time you receive a damage warning from the game, you should immediately end that particular session and come back to try it from scratch another time. Also, don’t forget that Reiza now models reliability, and there’s a remote chance you’ll experience mechanical issues or even a failure of some kind during the challenge scenario. Again, if that happens, you should end the session right there.
Subscribe to this thread to get notified as I add new Challenge Events!
The Caterham Challenge Series
The first challenge series of events will be based around the Caterham 7 360 R ‘SuperSport’. This is a great little car in which to learn the basics of road racing, and many real life aspiring race drivers start this way in the UK through the Caterham Academy racing program (although I prefer the Supersort to the Academy model in AMS2). The Supersport has a manual 5-speed gearbox, and with a top speed of around 130mph, it’s fast without being scary. It really should be driven with an H-shifter / manual clutch. If you have a shifter and a three pedal set, but haven’t yet learned the heel-toe technique, now’s the time!
Caterham Challenge Event 1 - Read This Carefully Before Launching the Sim
Your adventure starts early in 2017. You’ve been thinking about treating yourself to a little sports car that you could take to track days and as luck would have it, a friend has told you about one that’s for sale at a pretty special price. Even better, the owner, a Frenchman named Pascal, has high level connections in the racing world and lives not too far from the principality of Monaco. You’ve spoken with Pascal and he’s told you that, if you can get yourself down to the south of France sometime in the last week of March, there’s a possibility he can arrange for a test session around the famous streets of Monaco! You decide to take a week off from work and make the trip down there to check out Pascal’s Caterham and soak in the once in a lifetime experience of driving the Monaco GP circuit, which has been set up for a sports car meeting to be held in the first week of April. The streets will have been transformed into a racetrack and you are soon going to be on your way to meet Pascal and drive what will become your new ‘baby’ - a shiny red Caterham Supersport!
This challenge is best enjoyed by using Mr. Braindown’s excellent custom liveries along with my AI driver file: https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/caterham-supersport-skin-pack.52526/
https://mega.nz/file/uzw1TJJK#m4IIkJ1j6C2KYSRSPUJ-9PTo837DchIAfQfFS6MDaIc
If you’ve never installed these types of files for AMS2, do yourself a favor and learn how to do it. It makes a big difference to the immersiveness!
You’re meeting Pascal at the ‘Azure’ track, early on the morning of March 28th 2017. Launch a Test Session in AMS 2 and set the time of day to 6am on that date, with weather set to Historic. Choose the Caterham Supersport vehicle and select the red liveried #66 car.
Pascal hands you the keys and tells you to go easy! If you crash it, you buy it, and because of the repair bill it will be even more costly than it already is! What’s more, you’ll also miss the next challenge event while the damage is being repaired, and you’ll be sad about that. So heed his advice and go very carefully until you start to get a feel for the car and the circuit. I like to ‘short-shift’ around the first lap or two while I’m learning the track and the tires are still cold. Monaco is tight and twisty. You’ll probably never reach 5th gear during a lap, and at least one turn (the famous downhill hairpin) will likely need to be taken in first so that you have more control on the exit. Be particularly careful with your downshifts, especially from 3rd to 2nd. You need to blip the throttle as you depress the clutch and don’t shift down too soon or the change in revs will cause you to spin and / or lose control.
Take as long as you need to get comfortable with the car in this first event, but make sure to run at least 20 laps or so (and remember, don’t crash it!!). You’re starting just before dawn, and although this Caterham doesn’t have headlamps, there are lights on around the circuit and in the tunnel, so you can see well enough. Before you hit the “Drive” button and start the engine, take a moment to listen to the seagulls and the waves lapping at the harbor walls (Reiza puts a lot of effort into the small details!). You might want to put the time acceleration on 5X so that you can enjoy the sunrise as you work on your consistency around this famous track.
The Caterham 7 will let you adjust a number of suspension parameters, as well as some basic differential settings. Once you’ve run a few laps on warm tires, try coming into the pits and experimenting with the diff settings. Try dropping the number of clutches and / or the preload and see how it changes the feel of the car. Only ever adjust one or two parameters at a time, otherwise you won’t know what is affecting what. This is a tight circuit and the car has rear wheel drive. It helps if you can get the rear end to rotate slightly with a little throttle applied (but not too much!), so it’s probably best to limit your tinkering to the diff and perhaps a tweak or two to the brake bias. I said it before and I’ll say it one last time: if you cause any damage to the car during this event, you should end it immediately and score zero points (so whatever you do, don’t crash!!). Otherwise, drive for as long as you like and score points for your best single lap time as follows;
Any lap time under 2 minutes - 20pts*
2.01 - 2.10 - 15pts
2.11 - 2.20 - 10pts
2.21 plus - 5pts
Crash - 0pts
* The current AMS2 leaderboard is headed by sci006 with a lap time under 1.50 for this combo!
I will post details of the second Caterham Challenge Event in a new thread here, coming up in a few weeks. Meantime, feel free to leave comments on how you got on with this one, what you think of this idea in general, etc.
Automobilista 2 has a vast array of content, but in the absence of a career mode it’s lacking a sense of purpose. I find myself jumping from one car class to another, and from one track to another, but usually ending up returning to a familiar car and track combo for ‘just one more quick race’, absent of any continuity or progression.
It’s very easy to fire up a racing sim and drive unrealistically, knowing that if you crash, the reset button is there to immediately give you another shot. However, it’s difficult to learn anything from crashing all the time. I think there’s a much greater reward to be had from behaving in the sim more akin to how you would if you were driving a real car on a real racetrack. First and foremost, I suggest that you make this a golden rule for yourself and stick to it from now on: do everything you can to not put your car into the barriers! You should turn off all driving aids, put the damage level up to max, and whenever you go out on track, take the first few laps slowly and carefully, letting the tires come up to temperature before beginning to push. Treat your ‘in-sim’ car as if it were a prized possession. Avoid damaging it as best you can and build your speed and confidence with the car gradually. You will definitely end up being faster if you make this a habit and keep doing it consistently.
While we wait for Reiza to deliver a career mode for AMS2, I thought it might be fun to create a series of roleplay scenarios, joined together with a storyline. My idea is that these scenarios can offer some structure and direction to one’s activity with the sim (hopefully resulting in some measurable progress and improvement behind the wheel), while at the same time being entertaining and engaging. These scenarios will be best enjoyed if you follow the advice given above. In fact, you should make another rule for yourself that, if at any time you receive a damage warning from the game, you should immediately end that particular session and come back to try it from scratch another time. Also, don’t forget that Reiza now models reliability, and there’s a remote chance you’ll experience mechanical issues or even a failure of some kind during the challenge scenario. Again, if that happens, you should end the session right there.
Subscribe to this thread to get notified as I add new Challenge Events!
The Caterham Challenge Series
The first challenge series of events will be based around the Caterham 7 360 R ‘SuperSport’. This is a great little car in which to learn the basics of road racing, and many real life aspiring race drivers start this way in the UK through the Caterham Academy racing program (although I prefer the Supersort to the Academy model in AMS2). The Supersport has a manual 5-speed gearbox, and with a top speed of around 130mph, it’s fast without being scary. It really should be driven with an H-shifter / manual clutch. If you have a shifter and a three pedal set, but haven’t yet learned the heel-toe technique, now’s the time!
Caterham Challenge Event 1 - Read This Carefully Before Launching the Sim
Your adventure starts early in 2017. You’ve been thinking about treating yourself to a little sports car that you could take to track days and as luck would have it, a friend has told you about one that’s for sale at a pretty special price. Even better, the owner, a Frenchman named Pascal, has high level connections in the racing world and lives not too far from the principality of Monaco. You’ve spoken with Pascal and he’s told you that, if you can get yourself down to the south of France sometime in the last week of March, there’s a possibility he can arrange for a test session around the famous streets of Monaco! You decide to take a week off from work and make the trip down there to check out Pascal’s Caterham and soak in the once in a lifetime experience of driving the Monaco GP circuit, which has been set up for a sports car meeting to be held in the first week of April. The streets will have been transformed into a racetrack and you are soon going to be on your way to meet Pascal and drive what will become your new ‘baby’ - a shiny red Caterham Supersport!
This challenge is best enjoyed by using Mr. Braindown’s excellent custom liveries along with my AI driver file: https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/caterham-supersport-skin-pack.52526/
https://mega.nz/file/uzw1TJJK#m4IIkJ1j6C2KYSRSPUJ-9PTo837DchIAfQfFS6MDaIc
If you’ve never installed these types of files for AMS2, do yourself a favor and learn how to do it. It makes a big difference to the immersiveness!
You’re meeting Pascal at the ‘Azure’ track, early on the morning of March 28th 2017. Launch a Test Session in AMS 2 and set the time of day to 6am on that date, with weather set to Historic. Choose the Caterham Supersport vehicle and select the red liveried #66 car.
Pascal hands you the keys and tells you to go easy! If you crash it, you buy it, and because of the repair bill it will be even more costly than it already is! What’s more, you’ll also miss the next challenge event while the damage is being repaired, and you’ll be sad about that. So heed his advice and go very carefully until you start to get a feel for the car and the circuit. I like to ‘short-shift’ around the first lap or two while I’m learning the track and the tires are still cold. Monaco is tight and twisty. You’ll probably never reach 5th gear during a lap, and at least one turn (the famous downhill hairpin) will likely need to be taken in first so that you have more control on the exit. Be particularly careful with your downshifts, especially from 3rd to 2nd. You need to blip the throttle as you depress the clutch and don’t shift down too soon or the change in revs will cause you to spin and / or lose control.
Take as long as you need to get comfortable with the car in this first event, but make sure to run at least 20 laps or so (and remember, don’t crash it!!). You’re starting just before dawn, and although this Caterham doesn’t have headlamps, there are lights on around the circuit and in the tunnel, so you can see well enough. Before you hit the “Drive” button and start the engine, take a moment to listen to the seagulls and the waves lapping at the harbor walls (Reiza puts a lot of effort into the small details!). You might want to put the time acceleration on 5X so that you can enjoy the sunrise as you work on your consistency around this famous track.
The Caterham 7 will let you adjust a number of suspension parameters, as well as some basic differential settings. Once you’ve run a few laps on warm tires, try coming into the pits and experimenting with the diff settings. Try dropping the number of clutches and / or the preload and see how it changes the feel of the car. Only ever adjust one or two parameters at a time, otherwise you won’t know what is affecting what. This is a tight circuit and the car has rear wheel drive. It helps if you can get the rear end to rotate slightly with a little throttle applied (but not too much!), so it’s probably best to limit your tinkering to the diff and perhaps a tweak or two to the brake bias. I said it before and I’ll say it one last time: if you cause any damage to the car during this event, you should end it immediately and score zero points (so whatever you do, don’t crash!!). Otherwise, drive for as long as you like and score points for your best single lap time as follows;
Any lap time under 2 minutes - 20pts*
2.01 - 2.10 - 15pts
2.11 - 2.20 - 10pts
2.21 plus - 5pts
Crash - 0pts
* The current AMS2 leaderboard is headed by sci006 with a lap time under 1.50 for this combo!
I will post details of the second Caterham Challenge Event in a new thread here, coming up in a few weeks. Meantime, feel free to leave comments on how you got on with this one, what you think of this idea in general, etc.
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