SRO E-Sport GT Series - Round 1: Monza Final (Live Stream)

[ears]

Just to clarify to everyone who watched the AM semifinal, I had the same amount of fuel (40l and I only needed exactly 36.85l so I had a bit of a buffer) as I did in the Silver race and I finished the race.
Perhaps due to a difference in air temperature, more slipstreaming in the first race, the car needed more in the AM race than I did in the Silver.

Thanks for clarifying, I did wonder!

At the start of the first race yours was the only name I recognised - or at least thought I did! I quickly had a search through the RD pages to make sure.

It would have been helpful, and made the races more appealing, if the commentators had referenced any racers who were RD regulars, whose RD monikers we might know, but as far as I know, they didn't.

Someone mentioned Murray Walker earlier in the thread. Murray was quite famous for, amongst other things, doing extensive research before races (these were the days before the internet) and making considerable amounts of notes about each driver, their background, history.

He'd then refer to them all through the race to give insight, narrative and context to the viewer.

There were wonderful stories about how Murray would be so careful and diligent in his preparation for each race, and how James Hunt would turn up a minute before the parade lap looking like he was recovering from goodness knows what. Murray would be put out by this and refuse to share any of his notes with James.

Here's hoping that if the RD commentators can follow Murray's example for the next event, they can perhaps take the positives and ignore the more negative aspects!

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

sounds good, but who should follow James Hunt's example?

 

[bgil66]

good job guys!
I would be really really drunk everytime Paul and Chris said 'Absolutely'

 

[Chris Haye]

Absolutely! Thanks for the kind words guys.

re: preparation & research - I couldn't agree more. Those that know my video work will know that I am keen to tell stories, to find the interesting narratives within a piece of content. There were limiting factors in play for this event, but everyone has lots of great ideas for how things can be improved going forward.

 

[apex11]

RD now being on the payroll of Kunos means any impartiality is gone, any reviews of the game will have no real credit as we know RD is being paid by them.
Which is fair enough and at least its clear even though there has been no disclosure which you should have on youtube...but anyway..

The only issue i foresee is the one which took down pretend race cars.
How happy will Ian Bell be for example, to see RD forum in bed with Kunos whilst allowing threads in which people compare PCars franchise with ACC and are negative about PCars etc.
That won't look good and it killed Pretend race cars... (some will say not a bad thing)

There is a real conflict of interest where by the forum could essentially fall foul of lawyers....or totally remove ANY criticism of a game even if that is a valid criticism.... soi to avoid any legal issues.
What we certainly won't see is Kunos's games being reviewed with impartiality, but we will continue to see PCars slagged off, Forza slagged off, rfactor etc etc etc...?

Watching with interest...

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

RD now being on the payroll of Kunos means any impartiality is gone

Oh the joy of the internet. What payroll exactly? We made a whooping 22 euro's on the live stream (and 24 on supporting subscriptions during the coverage) and 505 games paid for our trip, food and hotel. In exchange we busted our behinds for four days in a row with four persons. Why? Because we love to bring simracing and esports forward for the sake of the community. In other words we got paid less than a Chinese child-labor worker.

16 years of daily independently running this website obviously doesn't mean a toss to people like yourself. You should be ashamed.

In your next reply I expect you to proof your claim with evidence. If not, you can post a public apology or i'll show you the door for slander as I have absolutely enough of your ongoing bad behavior on this forum.

 

[ears]

As someone who's, well, not exactly an RD fanboy, I have to say I never once came to any conclusion involving RD being on anyone's payroll.

And I still haven't.

I think that's an enormous leap.

It was just some simracing on the telly, dude.

 

[Steve Worrell]

RD now being on the payroll of Kunos means any impartiality is gone, any reviews of the game will have no real credit as we know RD is being paid by them.
Which is fair enough and at least its clear even though there has been no disclosure which you should have on youtube...but anyway..

The only issue i foresee is the one which took down pretend race cars.
How happy will Ian Bell be for example, to see RD forum in bed with Kunos whilst allowing threads in which people compare PCars franchise with ACC and are negative about PCars etc.
That won't look good and it killed Pretend race cars... (some will say not a bad thing)

There is a real conflict of interest where by the forum could essentially fall foul of lawyers....or totally remove ANY criticism of a game even if that is a valid criticism.... soi to avoid any legal issues.
What we certainly won't see is Kunos's games being reviewed with impartiality, but we will continue to see PCars slagged off, Forza slagged off, rfactor etc etc etc...?

Watching with interest...

Hi mate,

I was one of the four that Bram is talking about. I got paid a grand total of £0.00 yes my hotel and flights were paid for but that's it.

I said that if I was charging it would be in the thousands but I'm doing it for free because I love sim racing, RD and ACC.

You can't just assume you know what's going on mate.

 

[AJ McDaddy]

RD now being on the payroll of Kunos means any impartiality is gone, any reviews of the game will have no real credit as we know RD is being paid by them.
Which is fair enough and at least its clear even though there has been no disclosure which you should have on youtube...but anyway..

The only issue i foresee is the one which took down pretend race cars.
How happy will Ian Bell be for example, to see RD forum in bed with Kunos whilst allowing threads in which people compare PCars franchise with ACC and are negative about PCars etc.
That won't look good and it killed Pretend race cars... (some will say not a bad thing)

There is a real conflict of interest where by the forum could essentially fall foul of lawyers....or totally remove ANY criticism of a game even if that is a valid criticism.... soi to avoid any legal issues.
What we certainly won't see is Kunos's games being reviewed with impartiality, but we will continue to see PCars slagged off, Forza slagged off, rfactor etc etc etc...?

Watching with interest...

Openly questioning the integrity of RD staff - wow, just wow! where did you get this information from?

This is an ACC sub-forum within Race Department not an ACC forum! Even at the Kunos Official forum they allow comment / debate about other race SIMs, and I've even seen Kunos staff praising other games like iRacing and not allowing forum members to slag other games off! Additionally, they allow constructive criticism of their games - after all, how can they improve things without it?

I think the RD staff might take exception to your post, especially if your information is inaccurate.

 

[Davide Brivio Kunos]

RD now being on the payroll of Kunos

Hi dear -
I am Davide, in charge of marketing and business development for Kunos and helping out the team with some other dev tasks that I'll keep out of here.

Honestly: I'm happy to see that someone is performing some kind of "conspiracy" research, because it just exposes the fact that what we're doing with Bram, Paul and other key partners like AK Informatica is turning meaningful for every sim racer and discussed until the very last detail. I appreciate all of this, because it helps growing this initiative and, most importantly: improve it even more!

I'll be totally clear and direct on this: there is absolutely ZERO economic agreement for and from RaceDepartment and Kunos in the whole e-sport initiative, and I tell you: I like being honest, so I'll be even clearer.

When people see an activity like the SRO E-Sport GT Series, it is pretty easy to think and wonder about all the huge governments and companies involved, "wow! guess how much money they have! Kunos is buying RD!!"

Believe me: I wish it was that easy ahah

Reality is that I personally work with AK till ages, and our activities together grew like in the best partnership/friendship cases, until the moment we found ourselves working with a simulation being also the official one for a motorsports group like SRO is. They've been interested in e-sports from day 1 of development, and we started talking with all our contacts to understand what to do, how to do it, and where to find the money.

When I first met Bram, everything was already set (almost): a practical help from istitutional partners such as SRO and Pirelli to move a gaming arena across Europe and the trust of several partners from peripherals, to rigs, to monitors and all to support with material. We were missing a very important point: who's gonna tell this story to the world?

Now, we come to people like Bram and myself, dreaming for the sim racing to become JUST LIKE motorsports for our entire lifes. Bram was curious about the project, I explained it to him, he fell in love and we started understanding how to work together.
Well the result is that RD is the Official Media Partner for this series, and the funny part is that, just like us in Kunos, Ak guys etc: they are not on anyone's payroll and this is the best part of a story that we will (hopefully) be able to tell later this year.

Anyone here is cooperating on a much bigger picture: RD as the "sim racing television" of the series, having the exclusivity on the live streams and videos on-site, Kunos as the "game provider" so we help with dedicated features, promotional material and personnel on-site, AK with the arena's management, website and user management, SRO with logistics and locations, Pirelli with trophies (not prizes) and press, Lamborghini SC with a "dream" of being considered by them as real drivers. All other partners are equally placed within the rounds to support on their groundfloor (monitors, hardware etc...).
We have a sim racing "maniac" inside each company and let me talk about these heroes: RD (everyone), AK (everyone), Kunos (ehm...), Samsung (the italian marketing HQ), MSI (italian brand manager), Intel (the legend: Paolo), Cooler Master (the huge legend Alessandro), Pirelli (Lidia, so brave!) and I can't talk about wheel and pedalsets partners cause we have two brands involved, at different rounds.

This is our obsession, that ironically will not give us a penny this year, to any of the companies involved, but you know what? This is why I think we will be able to change and evolve once for all (in relation to e-sport sim racing turning into REAL):
we grouped the most skilled and passionate personalities in e-sports sim racing and all together we're trying to launch sim racing in something really new, something that will allow YOU to dream for a motorsport career and gueees wuuuut: F-O-R F-R-E-E (at least, this year, I don't like to promise future things that I don't know).

Then, finally, I can tell you Bram: after this e-sports adventure we're living together, please be also WORSE and more critic on our games' reviews, we'd like to improve even better than we are with ACC

 

[Kenny Paton]

apex11
You appear to have a very jaundiced view of so many things judging by your previous posts in a variety of threads, but your last one is just full of crap.
I know how hard the volunteer staff here try to run a good friendly site and provide something good for the community, we may not be perfect but people like you who constantly bring a negativety just hack me off.
So as Bram says, put up or shut up.

 

[Paul Glover]

There is a real conflict of interest where by the forum could essentially fall foul of lawyers....or totally remove ANY criticism of a game even if that is a valid criticism.... soi to avoid any legal issues.
What we certainly won't see is Kunos's games being reviewed with impartiality, but we will continue to see PCars slagged off, Forza slagged off, rfactor etc etc etc...?

Watching with interest...

Joe. You sound very bitter, your posts stink of negativity. I'm sorry that you seem to have a negative outlook and think it's ok to throw accusations around like that.

I want to highlight your point above, because it's a load of rubbish. I personally have always loved arcade games, recently we have posted articles about new arcade games coming out and spoke about this heavily in of our podcasts. They are great social games, many hours were spent playing Forza, Project Gotham in my younger years.

These days I do tend to play ACC, AC and RF2 but I do not dis-regard other games. I own many of them, I just like what I like. I do not belittle others for having other views.

Opinions are more than welcome, it's just that constantly you seem to like dropping grenade into a conversation and walk away. Leaving a mess behind.

I have recently bought a house so my funds are limited at the moment, if I could afforded to fly myself out etc and be there to support this great event I would have! It's not about the money Joe, it's about what we love doing and the passion that we have for it.

Sim racing is a great community, it's lovely and welcoming, you are more than welcome to join us.

Things will get better like a fine wine, I'm sure they would love to be able to deliver the slickest production ever but Rome wasn't built in a day and things have to be done within a budget.

 

[melanieuk]

Great race and great commentory very professional, and thumbs up for bringing Chris Hayes on board, love his Youtube channel.
I actually sat through all 1 Hour and 25 Minutes watching the race without a cup of tea break, and very much looking forward towards the next ACC Esports GT3 race.

 

[apex11]

You had a paid trip out to Monza.
Therefore you can't be impartial about Kunos products IMO.
What good is say a youtube games critic for example if you then find out they are getting free stuff from devs etc?
You even have to disclose on steam if you got a bloody game for free.
That was all i was saying.
If Kunos pay for someone to be somewhere it has to have a footprint (or at least should do) for tax reasons, receipts , invoices etc...so hence 'payroll'...

But as you were...

 

[Team DTO]

Cool racing. What size are those monitors and who makes them?

 

[Steve Worrell]

You had a paid trip out to Monza.
Therefore you can't be impartial about Kunos products IMO.
What good is say a youtube games critic for example if you then find out they are getting free stuff from devs etc?
You even have to disclose on steam if you got a bloody game for free.
That was all i was saying.
If Kunos pay for someone to be somewhere it has to have a footprint (or at least should do) for tax reasons, receipts , invoices etc...so hence 'payroll'...

But as you were...

You haven't got a clue mate.

 

[Steve Worrell]

Cool racing. What size are those monitors and who makes them?

Can't remember what size but these particular ones were made by Samsung.

 

[Kenny Paton]

You had a paid trip out to Monza.
Therefore you can't be impartial about Kunos products IMO.

The trip was paid for because the staff are unpaid volunteers, it would be ridiculous to ask them to stump up for this, and RD is providing the TV coverage which involves a heck of a lot of work behind the scenes, not forgetting they had to use holidays to do this.
Do you really think that RD would throw away its integrity or reputation which it has earned in over a decade trying to serve the sim racing community.
If you think so little of us why don't you just go somewhere else.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

Can't remember what size but these particular ones were made by Samsung.

and comparing them to my humble one, I now know why the writing in the HUD is so small I can hardly decipher it, lol. On a screen like that, my problem certainly is not a problem at all.

 

[Davide Brivio Kunos]

You had a paid trip out to Monza.
Therefore you can't be impartial about Kunos products IMO.
What good is say a youtube games critic for example if you then find out they are getting free stuff from devs etc?
You even have to disclose on steam if you got a bloody game for free.
That was all i was saying.
If Kunos pay for someone to be somewhere it has to have a footprint (or at least should do) for tax reasons, receipts , invoices etc...so hence 'payroll'...

But as you were...

Ehm, I see it's not clear at all: Kunos didn't pay travels or services to any of the RD staff members.
The championship organizers are SRO, AK Informatica supported by Pirelli and the whole series is using ACC as a simulation. Maybe it's even clearer now