Old rFactor Articles (merged)

Bram Hengeveld · Dec 22, 2009

Welcome to the new Formula Pro Championship at RaceDepartment.com.

After weeks of speculations, the news is finally out. RaceDepartment and PrestoGP partnered to create a new fantastic Formula One league for all its members. The newly created series will feature a World and an European Championships regulated respectively by Racedepartment and PrestoGP. Both leagues will follow the basic same structure. Most importantly all will race the Mak-Corp (MMG) F1 2007 cars for Simbin Race series (GTR-Evo).

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In addition, we are pleased to announce some fantastic prizes for the top 3 of the Pro World Series division as well a nifty cash prize for the winning team.

List of all prizes:
FPWS: Drivers' Championship
• 1st place driver: Logitech G27* racing wheel or an Intel i7 920 processor (winner's pick)
• 2nd place driver: Logitech G35* headset
• 3rd place driver: Logitech Gaming Headset G330*

FPWS: Teams' Championship
$100 (US dollars) cash prize to the winning team (paid to the team owner)

Join us for the fun!!

For all league details visit -> link

League forum -> link

Stefan Werner · May 13, 2010

Sweetness! I remember watching touring cars there back in the days of M3's and 190E's.

Bram Hengeveld · May 13, 2010

Wow! That track looks stunning already. Especially in combination with beautiful onboard footage of the Porsche. Any clue from what mod that car is?

Austin Jordan · May 13, 2010

yeah i think we need to make sao paulo street course because a lot of series are racing on it. By the way is this for rfcator or race?

Ryan Callan · May 13, 2010

Compare this to the first picture

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Also this on-board video from a Lamborghini - in comparison to the one by Com8

Bram Hengeveld · May 13, 2010

Bah, racing cars with floppy paddles

Patrick van Driel · May 13, 2010

Brings back some memories from DTM Racedriver

Great looking track.

Dave Stephenson · May 13, 2010

Looks nice

ps. nice lap long setup for a pass in R2 of the lambo vid.

Bjorn de Haas · May 13, 2010

been there like 3 times for the dtm race .. great lovely track. imagine 75.000 racefans packed together on a small track like this

David Zafiu · May 13, 2010

Indeed looks nice and it's a nice ring as it is in town,those are my favourites. Really hope that someone make Bucharest Ring too.

Guys,for what game is this made?

Ryan Callan · May 13, 2010

rFactor first.

Kredo · May 14, 2010

What game is it? The track looks great =)

Edit: ah, rFactor ... my bad.

Will Marquez · May 14, 2010

FPWS Round 7 @ Silverstone, Saturday May 15th at 19:00 GMT

Known worldwide as one of the most famous motorsport venues, Silverstone Circuit is host to this weekend's Round 7 of the Formula Pro World Series. With the season dwindling down to the final 3 races and the Championship still up for grabs there should be plenty of action in the Pro Division. Ventis Didrihsons has the points lead but with Jamie Blewitt close behind, along with newcomer Fernando Rees and other proven drivers on such a fast and flowing track. There should be lots of battles to watch out for.

Please join us for our live broadcast on f1.racedepartment.com , Saturday May 16th @ 19:00 GMT and watch the action unfold.

Race Day time table:
18:00 GMT - Qualifying session 1
18:30 GMT - Qualifying session 2 (Superpole)
18:45 GMT - Warm up
19:00 GMT - Race 60laps (full F1 race distance)

Eric. K · May 14, 2010

This will be an epic race!! With Ventis, Jamie, Arno and Fernando on the grid!!

Dennis Hirrle · May 15, 2010

Next week-end (May 22/23) Formula SimRacing will be traveling to Turkey for Round 7 of the 2010 Season at Istanbul Park.
130€ are in the prize pot for you to win this time.
To increase your winning chances, you can follow all of FSR's latest news via Facebook!

Catch all the action live next week-end on MultiBC!

Dave Stephenson · May 15, 2010

indeed, can't wait.

Rhys Gardiner · May 31, 2010

The Formula Pro Pacific league still has one race to run, but driver Chris Hendrich has built up such a huge lead in the points that he is uncatchable coming into the final round. There is no doubt in anyones mind that he is the champion, and how. Winning a massive 6 out of 8 races run, a full 90 points separate him from second-placed man Peter Marshall, an unassailable lead.
I managed to grab him for an interview over the weekend, and his detailed answers to my quesions give quite an insight into what Chris has gone through. Enjoy my chat with the new Formula Pro Pacific champion!

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Rhys Gardiner: First off Chris, what does it feel like to dominate a league in such a way as you did?

Chris Hendrich: Well, I only dominated because of luck. Cody was fast in the first round, but then focused on another league. Then the Wilsons came, but they had a lot of technical problems. I wished I had more consistent competition to keep it interesting, but I hope this will be different next season.

RG: Did you think at the start that you would be the champion at season's end?

CH: I had hoped and was working towards winning the championship. I didn't think I would win so many races, because in the beginning I had difficulty setting up the car for my driving-style, but by just focusing on driving consistent I could stay ahead of the game.

RG: How did your season go? Were there any trials or difficulties you faced along the way?

CH: My season went better than I expected, even though I had some problems with a few tracks, like Bahrain, Malaysia and Istanbul. The main trouble was to understand how to set up the car which I still haven't figured out.
And getting the car to be smoother over bumps and curbs seemed impossible.
Anothre difficulty was to get a consistent race without dropping the laptimes after 10 laps. In the last 3 races I was more focusing on race setup and didn't really try put good laptimes for prestogp.com, which helped a lot in the races.

RG: Was the pressure on at any point in the season?

CH: Yes, definitely. In the middle of the season with the Wilsons getting faster and faster, I thought that it will be a very close fight for the championship, but unfortunately they started focusing more on the pro-division and got less consistent in the pacific division. That was great for me gaining points but it is not as satisfying as being 1st with a hard competition.

RG: Do you see yourself performing well next season as well?

CH: I hope so! Depending on where the Series goes though. I am also trying to get the other drivers and teams up to the pace, that's why I picked 2 team-drivers that are not already at the top but are consistent and definitely have room to improve and are willing to work on getting faster.

RG: What did you think of this season's calendar?

CH:There were some fun races but I hoped we would stay more with the F1 races. Some of the tracks had some problems which made it hard to drive with the MMG mod. Especially Istanbul was hard to drive and I am glad that Turkey is behind us. I wished Monaco would have been included but maybe next season.

RG: How does the Mak-corp F1 mod compare to the F3000s you drove when Formula Pro was in its PrestoGP guise?

CH: The F1 mod is fun, but I liked the f3000 a lot. They were fun to throw into a turn and I think the simbin track-versions work better with them as with the F1 Mod.
There are some things that I dont understand in the Mak Mod, for example that we run tracks where in reallife they run a lot of wings, we are running with almost no wings.
The cars are also everything but twitchy, even though we are running stiffer rear than front.

RG: How difficult are the F1 cars to drive and set up, in your opinion?

CH: I think they are very easy to drive compared to other F1 mods in rFactor and the F3000 .
Set up is always a challenge for me . I just adjust values randomly and see if it gains me a second or two.
I also annoy the top guys so much, that they throw a few tips for the setup in my direction. If I am lucky and Arno, Ventis or any of the other top guys is on the server I watch them to learn their line and see whats their topspeed to get an idea of what wings they are running.

RG: Is it hard work winning a race in these things, let alone keeping control of one for an entire race distance?

CH: No, I think as long as you have good throttle control, they are easy to run the whole race distance. My laptimes drop in the end of the stint because they are usually around 58% then, but I think it is the concentration that is the biggest factor in dropping laptimes. It helps, that as a musician (drummer) I have to stay focused for long periods of time at long gigs or recording sessions.

RG: What do you think of the PrestoGP league's new home at RaceDepartment?

CH:I think its great , all the admins like Eric , Nice, Rune, Steve ect. do a great job and I am very grateful that they spend so much time making sure everything is working flawless within the league. The only negative thing is that now with the new pro and semi pro divisions , the pacific division gets even more neglected

RG: Do you believe that the Formula Pro leagues will become the major platform for those who want to race in an F1 league with the RACE series of sims?

CH: Well, that depends if we are staying with the series or are switching to rFactor or to another game. The RACE series is great and I think if you wanna have a fun race without spending much time looking for a server that is running the mod in the versioin and the track you have on your pc, it is much better than rFactor.
But the tracks in the RACE series are not build for F1 cars, the curbs are horrible and the bumps are much too big in my opinion. If you want to take the same line they are taking in real-life you are going to en up in the wall.
I also like the fact that in rFactor you can determine what parts can and what parts can't be changed on the car setup. That would also help people that dont have as much time in developing a setup or like me who have no clue what to change. It would focus more the driving aspect, just like in real life the driver and engineer are two different people.

RG: How do you see Formula Pro/ PrestoGP evolving over the next few years?

CH:I hope it will get bigger, but not too big where it will be impossible to oversee all the divisions. It would be cool if we would also get prizes for winning the championship
Most important though is that everyone has fun and is looking forward to the next race.

RG: Is there anyone you'd like to thank, or give a shout out to?

CH: I would like to thank PrestoGP, RaceDepartment, my teammates and everyone in Pacific league for a fun championship.
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Thanks for your time, Chris! See you on the track!