WoMR Pt 1 Grand Prix Scene

The game includes the most recent available replay data

THE CONCEPT

In many of the Lambourne range of replay games the ’highlights’ system is used – ‘soccer Replay’, ‘Union and League’ and ‘Championship Boxing’ are examples – enabling the games to play quickly, recreating all the important action and avoiding the unimportant ‘non-action’ mixed in with the excitement.

Applying this idea to motor racing requires a slightly different approach. For example , in a football match a ‘highlight’ is an attack that ends with a shot just wide, or a timely tackle by a defender which is recreated and is then of no more importance. What comes after is not affected in any way by the ‘highlight’ except in so far as a goal obviously affects the final result. Subsequent ‘highlights’ owe nothing to what has gone before, they have an independent existence without reference to anything else.

The same is not true of motor racing. Here a ‘highlight’ may be a car spinning and losing time but with no other effect – that is similar to the soccer examples quoted. More often the ‘highlight’ may be a change in the handling behaviour of a car (for better or worse) or some form of on-going mechanical problem which will affect the car’s performance thereafter. Whilst these changes can be recreated in ‘highlight’ type incidents the effect has to be monitored and simulated throughout the subsequent periods of non-action so we need a rather different modus operandi.

To replay every individual lap of a 60, 80 or even 200 lap race is not only impractical but also unnecessary. Assume car A is 1 second faster per lap than car B, which in turn is 0.5 secs. faster that car C. Whilst the status quo remains unchanged every 10 laps A will pull 10 seconds further ahead of B who will open a gap of 5 secs to C. That principle can be applied to any number of laps provided the performance of the respective cars stay constant. ‘The World of Motor Racing’ therefore concerns itself only with identifying the moments to change (the ‘highlights’ from now on referred to as ‘Incidents’ and simulating large chunks of the race in what we call Race Sections. These Race Sections can vary from 1 to 15 laps and are the ‘non-action’ spaces between Incidents. By this method a full Grand Prix can be staged in about 1.25 hours without missing out on any of the excitement or interest and without wearing the spots off your set of dice.