Post 10 * Sponsoring a Young Driver

In a break from talking about the game, but still promoting the game, I sponsored a young American driver.  Preston Stoecker drives the number 26 in America's Super Cups.  Preston is a young up and coming driver who races 1/2 scale NASCAR stock cars. http://www.americansupercups.com/

I am friend's with his father, and a friend of the game.  So I contacted the makers of the game and we got it done.  They let me use the logo and game's name.  So, Preston Stoecker now has My Racing Career as a minor sponsor on his car.

If you would like to give Preston words of encouragement, just post a comment.  I will forward them to him.

Had to ad a picture of our winner!  He has some heat race victories under his belt and I believe a top three finish in a feature event as well.  Good job Preston!

As always, until next time.
Happy Racing!

Post 9 * Creating a Private Series

Creating a Private Series

This is a new and cool feature in My Racing Career.  If you like a set of tracks and want to invite people to play in a series of your own design, now you can.  In this post, I am going to show you how I created a custom private series.

When you click on the Series link in your game, you will now notice there is an option to Create!  That is the button on the right hand side in the image above.

You will have to fill in the many options after choosing the create button.

In the image above, you can see I spent about ten minutes filling in all the data.  You can choose many options for your series.  You can choose from most car types in the race, and any available track or set of tracks are at your disposal as well.  This is a new rich feature in the game and is already being heavily used.  

After you figure out all of the settings, you will need to choose the create option at the bottom of the page.  Then they will ask you to upload your logo.  Beings I named the series the Play Zone American Sampler (PZAS) I uploaded the Playzone Logo from the game.  It is also worth noting that Playzone is one of my in game sponsors, so the name and logo are not original by any means, but a way I continue to thank them for sponsoring my in game driver.

Here is the finished product with managers signing their drivers into the series.  There is still room for a while to join this series.  I hope to see you in it soon.

I hope you enjoyed learning about Creating a Private Series.

Until next time. Happy racing!

Post 8 * Supporting an F1 Team

There are a few ways you can support fellow managers/team owners at the F1 level in this game.  If you are new, the chances of you being involved in team decisions and such are not really an option at the F1 level.

This is one of the F1 Teams in Season 16.  I like their Livery/paint scheme, so I chose to feature this car in blog 8.

Why would you support a team?

National pride.
Your friend or mentor owns a team.
You like that team for their livery or brand.

What ever your reason, any are just as good as the other.  The team owners would appreciate your support.  I support a team called HammerHedz, as the owner of the team is also a big helper to young drivers and managers in the game.  He is also very patriotic and tries to encourage American drivers often.

The easiest way to get involved is Voter Points.  you can go to the Promote the Game section of the site and choose to vote.  If you go to game ranking sites and vote for MRC every 24 hrs or so, you will get points that you can donate to your team.

In this picture you see a chance for seven points to acquire.  You vote for MRC at each of these sites and you will get one point from each site.

When you build up points, choose the team you want to donate the points to.

Your F1 Team of choice can see you donated to them in date and time stamp format.

Becoming a Driver in F1

If it is your eventual goal to become a driver, you must support a team, and show commitment to an F1 program.  Driver contracts are awarded by team owners.  Some teams are owned by multiple investors and some teams have a dominant investor with a few minor investors as well.  Either way, a season contract offer is the choice of the owners.

At other levels of series it is determined by driver points.  In F1 it is determined simply by; did a F1 Team Owner issue you a season contract or not, and do you want to take it?

Team Research

When you examine F1 Teams you can see tons of data.

Facilities

Research

Suppliers

Money

Sponsors

Employees

Drivers

Fan Club

Those are just a some of the many things you can look into.  Don't shy away from supporting lower ranking teams.  I believe there is a lot of fun and helping an underdog team out perform and grow in the ranks.  Also many reasons can land teams in lower rankings.  Change in ownership, bad luck, a risky gamble on an engine or development type.  All of these things can be corrected and recovered.  Pitch in and help.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little about the F1 Stucture of the game.

Until next time. Happy Racing!

Post 7 * Employees

Employees are an important factor in this game.  They are most important in the fact that they will bankrupt your team if you hire them to early in your career.  Your assistant will help you hire, fire, and locate employees in the employee market.

Hold off on a group of mechanics/pit crew until you are in bigger series.  F3 drivers are developing and need all the money spent on training a driver that you can spend.  With that in mind coaches are valuable early employees.

My advise to young teams is, hire one coach only.  What ever you are going to focus on training first.  Hire one good coach and train that category like crazy.  When his contract is up for renewal, evaluate if you want to train up another area or keep training that category.  If you want to keep at it, renew his contract and keep at it.  If you want to train another category, let him go and hire another coach.  Paying multiple coaches at a time is a waste as you can only use one coach at a time in  your training focus.

Public relations managers do get you better sponsor deals.  These guys are worth hiring when you need sponsors.  Get three sponsors for 9 weeks, and let him go.  You have 9 weeks of good income now, and don't need another PR guy until the end of those contracts.  Latter in your career you may keep one employed full time, but early on, it takes to much money away from driver extra training.

Race engineers help young drivers.  If you want to dial in setups faster, a good race engineer can help.  Americans call the lead race engineer a Crew Chief.  This game calls them Race Engineers.  That is a good thing to know as you look for getting a guy that can help your team set up a car for competition runs.

As you grow into bigger race series, mechanics do make a difference.  Two to four seconds advantage per pit stop can be gained by having a better pit crew/mechanics.  I am running in the NASC Gold Cup Stock Car Series this year.  In a 500 lap race, we sometimes pit stop four to five times.  With my crew getting my driver out sometimes four seconds faster per stop, that is a twenty second advantage at the end of the race.  My driver can place a few spots higher per finished race based on mechanics and crew.  Sometimes I can look at the end of race results and see five or six finishing positions within a five second window.  Those mechanics make that difference.

Here is a look at my current employees to prove, I practice what I am typing here.  These employees will change out from time to time, but you can see a few things.

I currently have no PR Manager.  I am training driver skills as I have a driver coach at the moment.  I have a Race Engineer/Crew Chief and I have a pit crew or team of mechanics.  This team will change as contracts expire I try to replace with better, less expensive, or equal employees as I adjust budgets and continue training expenses.

I hope that helped.

As always, until next time. Happy racing!

Post 6 * Painting a Livery or Paint Scheme

In my opinion the coolest feature of the game for Super License holders is the ability to customize your paint schemes or livery.  You get no in game money or car boosts or anything with actual money.  So you can play this game for free and still stomp the competition.  I get beat regularly by free to play members.  You do however get cool features like the Livery design tool when you pay a small fee to customize the game. (So worth it for the fun factor!)

You can choose any of the free schemes that you see here for your first F3 or Formula 3 car.  I love to paint my cars as you see on my blog.  Here are a couple of examples and tips.

Template for the F3.

My basic editing with free tools.  Paint, Pengi, Gimp, and more will work at no cost to you.

Staci Evans is my driver's name.  Rage is my team of friends in the game.  The WonderWoman logo is an inside joke as Staci is my wife's name.

When you upload the design, the Dev Team at Myracingcareer.com have added the shadows, lighting, rims, and other details for you.  So you basically treat the template like a coloring book, and they make it awesome for you.

Template for Stock Cars.

My basic editing with free tools.  Paint, Pengi, Gimp, and more will work at no cost to you.

My stock car team needs big time sponsors to keep funded.  As part of role playing "Energy Drink" and that logo are currently my biggest sponsor in the game.  So to make it more fun for me and personal, I chose to make them my feature sponsor in the game design as well.

The finished product after the game designers  ad details is instant, and pretty cool.  This tool and in game feature is worth the price alone as you consider if you want to keep this game free or pay the dev team a little for the making of this game.

To Pay or Not to Pay?

I rarely pay for any online game.  It has to wow me.  It has to make me think, I would be sad to see this game go away.  I see what the makers of this game have done, and I am there.  I also like that unlike many free games that have pay options, that I can play for free and still have the same chances of winning.  Many series leaders are free players who donate nothing and do not subscribe.  You get no speed boosts, no super secrets, and such for paying.  That keeps the game integrity for me, and I like that.

I choose to pay to play a little in this game for the role playing and design aspects.  I like the custom livery design tool very much.  I like it enough to feature it in my 6th post.  You can also customize your driver's helmet, uniform, and any car they drive.  It does make the game more fun in my opinion, but buys you no competitive advantage.

As always, until next time.  Happy racing!

POST 5 * Picking a Series

There are many series you can place a young driver into in this game.  For your first couple of seasons you may want to hang out in F3 or Formula 3.  Get as many quick races in as you can for track data, and focus on completing races, learning a few things, and seeing if you can sneak your driver onto a few podiums.

Series Considerations

• Driver points and rankings of drivers in the season or signed up for next season.
• Driver points your driver can gain in the series versus the next series up.
• Bonuses for drivers from certain countries.
• Your end goal for your driver's career.
• Money.

You can see what kind of competition is in a series by looking at driver points.  If there are 15 drivers with 3,000 or more driver points in a series, your rookie with under 300 points will not belong on the same track as them.  That should be a sign for you when picking a series.  You can also keep an eye on who is leaving or coming to a series next season by looking at who is signed up for the upcoming season.  This may help you decide if you want to stick it out in a lower level as you may be a top 3 driver in the series and have a chance to get a series trophy and title.

Sometimes you hurt your driver by staying in lower series to long.  If your driver can get 30 driver points for getting 15th place in stock car races, why would you stay in a series that gives you 30 points for a top three finish?  Answers may vary to that question, but that is a consideration for you when deciding, should I stay or should I go from a series.  It may be that as long as you don't crash you are confident you will always be a top 5 car in the lower series, and you don''t feel like learning a new car, setups, tracks, and all while training up your driver skills.

Some series want home town drivers.  Many series such as North America F3 or F2 may want local talent to keep sponsors happy, and thus give drivers a biased points rating.  It happens all around the globe, so check it out before you sign up a driver on an international circuit away from home.  Some USA drivers choose to go overseas anyway to develop. They see weaker fields and even without the biased points favor see a circuit they feel they can dominate.

What is your end goal?  My end goal for my current driver is stock car racing.  I saw an opening that my driver could be competitive in and took it.  My goal is middle of the pack and record as much track data as possible while growing skills.  Half way through the season and my driver only has one DNF and a couple lucky top ten finishes as well.  So far so good.  I was also concerned that no ranking USA drivers took root in the one race sport that is uniquely American.

Of-course you do nothing in racing without considering money.  Look at how you realistically think your driver will finish at the end of the year and determine if the risk in a bigger series is worth it?  Does the expense of the higher league cut into your training budget to much, or is the payoff good enough to keep you in and train as well?  Higher leagues also cost more than just an entry fee.  Pit crews are expensive.  Fielding a full crew is important in upper levels, and not needed at all in lower levels.  Weekly budgets to pay crews have to be weighed in that choice making skill set.  

I hope this post helped you decide series choices or at-least gave you an opinion on things you can consider when climbing the ranks or staying put.

As always, until next time.  Happy racing.

Post 4 * Driving Skills

Most of your money in the early part of your driver's career will go here.  Training is the most important factor in your driver's ability to do anything. In this topic we will talk more in-depth about training your driver to be competitive.

Regular training is what you get to do once per day, at no cost.  Depending on the staff you have hired and what their ability to train drivers is, you may or may not get larger training bonuses.  You also have extra training.  These training items cost extra.  You will need to balance your weekly ledger and keep track of your accounts to figure out the biggest boosts you can do in extra training.

Driving Skills

Aptly named skills that directly relate to your drivers ability to drive the racecar.

Pace

Does your driver keep pace with the lead pack?  Can the driver decide a safe pace that can keep the car intact while finishing the race?  Does your driver understand the pace to set the car at for different parts of the event?  Pace is knowing when to pull away or hang back.  Pace management is also not getting pulled into a race that does not benefit your team.  Let the lead car get way out ahead in the early race.  Save your tires, a caution flag will be out and erase that huge lead to under 1/2 a second in a few laps anyhow.  Save the car for the end.

Racing Lane

Can your driver apex the corners?  Can your driver choose to go high on the corner or low if needed? Can your driver figure out when there is a middle lane or when to avoid getting sandwiched between two cars heading into a corner?  The lanes your driver chooses in a live race can cost many positions at a time in a packed and close race.

Overtaking 

Overtaking is a fancy word for passing.  Increasing this skill lets your driver determine safe ways to make a pass.  Can your driver setup a pass heading into a corner for an out-breaking maneuver?  Does your driver know when best to overtake another without doing damage to either car?

Blocking

This word and skill are pretty self explanatory.  Blocking is the ability for your driver to shut down someone trying to pass.  using the mirrors, voices and the radio, and more need a driver with skill to know how to safely shut down a pass.  In the final laps when another driver is less than a second behind you, you are going to want this skill.

Wet Weather

This skill will be needed.  It may be needed in less that 20% of your races, but there is no substitution for this skill when it is raining.  Can your driver handle changing track conditions when it rains?  As you advance in your career, you will notice some series can be won or lost with this skill.  Two drivers have been battling for the top spot in a series and getting on the podium for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd every week.  Then you notice on the wet tracks or rain those two events; one of them did not even get a top ten finish.  You can be pretty sure it came down to wet weather training.

Mental Skills

Is your driver's head in the game.  Even the best driving skills cannot overcome stage fright.  The butterflies in the stomach, the shacking hands, or a driver who about wets their race suite every time another car is less than an inch away at over 100 mph.  Your driver needs mental skills to accomplish tasks as well.

Bravery

It takes courage to do this.  Anyone in an open wheel car driving like a bat out of hell, needs to crazy or brave.  Teams prefer brave.  Crazy costs money as these cares are not cheap.  Passing skills don't matter if your driver is afraid to try it in a pack of 20 or more cars.

Concentration

Lapse in concentration leads to driver errors.  Does driver keep focus while many things are going on around the car? Pit-stops, restarts after a caution car, and longer races all test this skill some.

Composure

Your driver needs composure when things do not go your driver's way.  Going a lap down, getting nudged, seeing a wreck, having a crew member cost your driver a few spots after a bad spot; these are all things that can make a driver loose their cool.  A hot headed driver with low composure will wreck out.  In the final five laps in a lead pack a driver needs to forget all the bumps, all the slights, and be there mentally at the end for a clean fast finish on the podium.

Reactions

Things happen at a face pace out there.  When your driver dives into a corner and finds a mess on the track coming out of it when they normally throttle back up, what is your driver's reaction?  Reactions to situations are instinctual unless trained.  Not every instinct is good in a race car.  Your driver has to train and plan to react even against his or her own nature at times to stay competitive out there.

Patience

The most underrated and overlooked skill in any aspect of life.  Patience, the ability to let things come to you, to work for a longer term goal, and know when to let things go for now, as you will be there in the end.  Drivers who lack patience will wear there equipment down.  That obsessive need to be a front runner all day in a long race may not be possible.  The ability to hang in there, keep the car clean from damages, and have a good set of tires on for the last 20 laps, could be the difference in many positions or a podium.

Technical Skills

The ability to talk tech.  Does your driver know that loose means the car is fast but on the edge of swinging out from under him or her?  Does your driver understand why redlining the tack is not healthy for endurance races, but can be done for tactical advantage in a short sprint race? Tech skills are needed in any industry, especially this one.

Feedback

In practice sessions the driver will come back off the tack, and the crew will want feedback.  The Race Engineer will ask, how it went out there, how did the car feel and respond.  The driver better not shrug their shoulders and say, "meh, it was OK.  Can you make it faster?"  The Race Engineer needs details.  What is your driver feeling, is there a vibration at certain RPM levels, is the car tight or loose on turn three, can the driver hear the air coming off of the wings, or the rev of the engine?  Does it all sound and feel good or is something wrong?  If something is wrong can your driver communicate this in a meaningful way so they can fix it.

Technical

A technical understanding on how the car works makes the driver a bit more in tune with the car.  Understanding the technical aspects of any sport makes one a better technician in that sport.  Many veteran athletes lose physical abilities but make up fro it with technical know how in any sport.  Racing is no different.

Mechanic

It is a rare treat for a crew when they get a mechanical driver.  A driver who will work in the pits, in the shop, and learn about the inner workings of each part.  A driver that understands how the rubber on the tire wears, how the turbo forces air into the injection system, how points misfiring can lead to engine timing issues, and more.  A mechanical driver can ask for specific things that other drivers have no clue about, and crews love that.  Mechanics know how engines respond in different climates, track temperatures and more.  A driver who is aware of this can take advantage of that knowledge on the track as well.  He can smell and hear when a competitors engine is close to letting go.  He or she knows to avoid the mess as oil and debris are about to hit the track.

Personal Skills

As much as people hate to admit it, everyone's personal skills affects their job.  Some people have great personal skills and advance faster because people like them.  Sponsors want your drivers to have personal skills.  Want money to run a race team? Then you need a driver with personal skills.

Intelligence

I won't ever tell you what to train first or last.  I will drop a major hint here.  An intelligent person can learn all other skills faster.  The ability to use intellect is key to success in many aspects of life.  We have all seen a rock head athlete with all the physical skills in the world implode as they had no clue what to do and when to do it.  Do your driver and team a favor.  Make them intelligent sooner than latter.

Charisma

Want fans, sponsors, and endorsement deals to bring money to your cause?  You need a likable driver.  One who wins people over in interviews, knows how to smile and wave from the podium, and one that knows they are being watched on and off the track.  Charismatic drivers are liked by the press, the fans, and the sponsors.  Sponsors and fans bring money, and press gives you exposure to sponsors and fans.  Your driver needs to know how to win off the track too if you want money.

Man Management

The ability to manage others and work as a team.  How well does your driver work with other team members, coaches, engineers, mechanics and such.  The better the team chemistry, the happier everyone is.  If a team is going through a slump, it is always better if they can laugh and work their way through it.  How well your driver manage relationships on the team, can be the difference between a team that argues allot when things are rough, or how well the gel when crunch time is happening.

Physical Skills

A category all to itself.  Physical skills is basically, how often does your driver workout?  Is he or she in good physical shape?  This is huge for longer races.  Endurance races are not for the out of shape drivers.  They make more mistakes if they are wore out.  Early series are mostly sprint races, but if you join higher paying top ranked series, get ready for some long arduous races.

Special Skills

There are a couple of special skills.  They are for alternative style races, but may or may not come in handy for average series as well?

Balance

I think this is for the motorcycle drivers in the game.  Not sure it helps an open wheel or touring car driver much, but I doubt it hurts them as well.  I could see why balance would be huge for motorcycle drivers in the corners and the speeds they need to adjust to.

Drifting

I think again this is not a big skill for most series.  If you drift in an open wheel car or stock car, you are simply going to shred your tires and loose time on the track.  Another skill that won't harm you, but may be a skill that tips the hand of the Developer Team for maybe another event or series to come.

This one was a big read, so thanks if you hung in there for it all.

Until next time; Happy Racing!