Low powered Formula ISI = awesome fun!

I love the way the Formula ISI looks, sounds, handles and feels, but it's so bloody fast that my half-century old brain can't keep up with it. The Formula Renault 3.5 is right on my reaction time limit, and the Formula 2 handling is woeful. That means I spend a lot of time in historic Formula 3 cars. Beautiful cars but it'd be nice to hammer around in a more modern open wheeler.

So as my intro to rF2 modding I decided to acquaint myself with the various config files and MAS, and came up with a new "improved" F ISI that drives approximately like a modern F3. That allows someone without the reaction time of a hummingbird (me) to drive it enjoyably and competitively - just not realistically of course.

Basically I fiddled it such that the engine now has 1/2 the power at any given revs (about 150Nm @ 16.5K rpm). To accommodate the lower power I gave it a 6 speed gearbox and adjusted the default ratios to give a flat out top speed of about 230km/h (maybe 250 downhill with DRS) without neck breaking acceleration. Because the less insane speed needs less powerful braking I also adjusted the brake pressure down.

And that's it. The car looks like the beautiful F ISI, same liveries and drivers, has the same screaming engine note, same glued to the road handling and feel, same fuel consumption, same setup parameters etc etc. It just goes slower! The AI still give a good race, and I get to indulge my fantasy of piloting a multimillion dollar carbon fibre and alloy sculpture around a GP track without ending up in the grass every 250m. Obviously the lower speed means tyres run cooler and wear less, and there's less engine cooling and downforce. You get the picture.

If anyone is interested in driving or further modifying my sedate Formula TPW: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/481663/FORMULA_TPW_10.rfcmp
I made everything self contained so that it doesn't require or interfere with any existing F ISI files or setups.

Cheers.
 
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I love the way the Formula ISI looks, sounds, handles and feels, but it's so bloody fast that my half-century old brain can't keep up with it.
If anyone is interested in driving or further modifying my sedate Formula TPW please let me know and I can upload it. I made everything self contained so that it doesn't require or interfere with any existing F ISI files or setups.

Cheers.
I'd certainly like to see it. I surprised myself by being extremely picky about the cars I want to drive. Ideally, I'd like to find a 1990s era F1. There is a set of them out there, but I don't like the graphics and to me they sound like 22 children scratching a blackboard at the same time. Like you, I find some way too fast for my meager skills. And I just can't make myself fit into anything other than an open wheeler. So I'm running the Eve and Spark F3s and set a personal best last night of 2:42 at Longford last night, but that's a long way away from being competitive. Something with a governor on it might be just the ticket to get me out of the 60s.
 
Have either of you tried the Skip Barber? Use the one with better tires for racing and use the trainer for sharpening skills. Once you can handle the trainer, then you can handle anything in rF2.
 
I've put in lots of time in the Skippy. For me at least it's astonishingly challenging to drive. Very rewarding 10% of the time racing, very frustrating the other 90% where a single misthrottle has me backwards in the grass and out of the race. No doubt it's improved my driving, but the aim of my ISI mod was just to make something of roughly comparable speed but easy and fun to drive for when I don't want to grind my teeth and swear too much. And also to have some fun modding and sharing the results. But by all means people, keep on telling me which other cars and aids I should be driving instead :)

EDIT: Download link in 1st post.
 
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