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!

Post 3 * Setup Your Car

After you pick a race, you can run some practice sessions and play with you car setups.  There are off the track decisions that will really come into play when we talk setups.

• Training your driver's technical skills makes a difference.
• Hiring a race engineer makes a difference.
• Running as many laps in practice as you can, makes a difference.
• Adjusting your setup sliders logically, makes a difference.
• Don't run like a madman, until your driver has mad skills.

Your driver needs the ability to give Feedback to his crew.  Feedback is capitalized as it is a skill name in the game you do need some points in.  Technical and Mechanic skills are good to know to when it comes to dialing in a car during practice.  The better educated your driver is on these things, the better they can communicate and help in the testing process.

A race engineer to a Formula Car is as important as a Crew Chief in NASCAR.  That is the person who makes key choices in strategy and technical knowledge.  The better the Race Engineer, the faster the setups dial in.  You can't afford many if any employees early in the game, but the sooner you get a Race Engineer and some driver tech skills, the better practice sessions will go for you.

Experience trumps all.  The more laps you can run, the more data you get.  Look at fuel tank limits.  Look at what other drivers are doing.  If you get six practice sessions and you see drivers getting a little over 180 laps in, do the math.  They are running a little over thirty laps per session.  Follow suite and get some results.  Keep an eye on your fuel and tire levels between sessions, and make sure you maximize your data collecting efforts.

(This car is not dialed in on setups.)

Adjust your settings between each practice session.  You start with full red bars in each category.  You want all the color gone as much as possible.  Find a pattern of adjustment that works for you, and stick with it.  I use a binary sorter method.  I just keep 1/2 things until I eliminate possibilities.

I will never tell you what track this is or how many laps this took.  This is however a good example of having your car ready to qualify in a good starting spot.  It took me three seasons, a race engineer, and lots of driver training to get these settings dialed in.  

(This car is dialed in on setups.)

I see people talk about aggression, tire, and mechanical settings.  Some folks crank em up and run like a mad man.  Hey, more power to em.  I found what works best for my team is to start low, and work up.  As my driver and team get better, I turn up settings.  When it appears we crossed the line and get a few DNFs that are our fault, we back it back down.  That line appears to move with skills.  I could be wrong, but the better the skills, the higher the settings you can run with.  That is my opinion, based somewhat on trial and error.

Warning

Trading data is honestly no good in this game.  I have a firm belief that no two teams are identical.  What works for one driver, the engineer, and car they use, will not necessarily work for your team.  Drivers have so many variables in skills.  The same is true of the engineers you hire.  It is that combination skills combined with track data that forms what your settings are.  That math is different for each driver style as well.  You have to develop and record your own team data.

Post 2 * Picking Races

I like to look at available races, and select races based on a few pieces of criteria.

• If a track in my driver's series is up for a race, I take it.
• If a quick race has less than five highly rated drivers in it, I take it.
• If my fellow teammates and friends invite me to a race, I take it.

There are so many reasons to take extra races outside of your series.  I see some managers post that it is distracting, or they don't want to confuse setups.  I think part of the fun in the game is non-series races.  It could be personal cars, motorcycles, or just meeting up with friends on a track; either way, it gives the game more dynamics and an extra level of fun.  It is also recon work.

If you are a super license member, you can save setups for tracks.  This helps for future events at that same track.  Races often come up that are in your driver's series.  This gives you a chance to race it in a sprint like feature, and gather info on your setups, and allows you to be experimental without worrying about messing up your series standings.  If you are not a super license member, get a tablet or notebook.  Take a couple of seconds to write your setups down, and store them for latter references.

If a quick race has less than five highly ranked drivers, you are nearly guaranteed a top ten and maybe a top five spot if you don't wreck out.  This helps your driver points, rankings, and possibly sponsor income.  More podiums is good for any career in racing.  You get on the podium for a top three finish.

I find being social in the game makes it more fun.  I race with a clan.  You may see RAGE Motorsports cars from time to time in the game.  Those are my teammates and friends in the game.  We have personal series that we start from time to time, and we meet up at many single races to have fun.

There are a few times I avoid single races.

• If there are ten or more drivers with well over 1,000 drivers points.
• If the race is less than ten minutes from starting.
• Sometimes I let weather dictate if I am interested in a race, or avoiding it.

Driver points are better for you if you finish in the top half of any event you enter.  You lose driver points for bottom half finishes.  So not finishing a race and entering a race that your driver is so out classed in is challenging.  You will see red print in your driver rating tab for lose of rating any time you fail to finish in the top half.

If the race is less than ten minutes from starting/qualifying, you may not finish your practice runs and setups.  This will greatly harm your ability to qualify well for the event.  I like a little cushion in case of internet slow downs and such.  Also I want a little time to think, research, and not feel rushed when doing driver setups.

Sometimes I seek wet weather tracks, and other times I avoid them.  It depends on what I am training the driver for, and what kind of setup tests I want to perform.  Just a quick warning for new team managers.  Using the wrong tires for weather kills speed.  Also not having skills for wet weather will eventually hurt you in series and National events.  I would not train it first, but I would also not neglect it throughout your driver's career.

These are just the ramblings on how I pick races at times.  I hope it helps.  Leave comments if you do it different or want to discuss it further.

Post 1 * Brief Game Overview & How I can Help

So, your rich uncle leaves you some money to realize your dream of owning and running your own race team.  That is the same premise we all start with in this game.

You start with the ability to design your first basic F3 or Formula 3 car.  You create a driver, hire some employees, select some races to practice and qualify for, try to get noticed by sponsors and build your way up to a championship level team.  Well, that is the idea anyway.

This blog will guide you some to make your own choices and encourage you to stay active and get involved in the racing community at MyRacingCareer.com This blog is to help you make the best choices while being entertained and finding your own way.  I dislike walk through and how-to guides that take all the discovery and fun out of the game.  Most of the fun is learning features and secrets others may not know.  (Pssst) Secrets win races and give competitive advantages over other race teams.

What this blog will not do:

• You will not get setups for tracks.
• You will not be told what to train or not to train first.
• You will not get a cookie cutter template or cheat guide for how to be successful.

What this blog will do:

• I will encourage you to take notes as you try things.
• I will tell you some of the things I like to do.
• I will give you tips on Livery Designs, and gamer personalizing techniques.
• I will give you interviews and stories from other people in the game as well as a real race. industry expert every once in a while.

Warning

This game takes time to get good.  Even with the best teachers, guides, and friends helping you; your driver and crew have to get experience before you can go dominate a series or start bringing in the big sponsors.  Everyone, and I do mean everyone, has to grow over time in this game.

I will try to post one or two bits of information a week and build a comprehensive tips list over time on what has or has not been enjoyable for my race team.  There will be some starter tips for the new players as well.

Bookmark this site, send me a note, and enjoy.  I hope you follow me and work with team USRA in MyRacingCareer.com !

If you stumbled onto this blog and are inspired to open an account; please click my referral link here.