Britpoint

Anyone else see tonight's IndyCar race at Barber? Brilliant drive from Rahal, you're not supposed to be able to overtake at that circuit ^_^

Yes you have to be careful about how you apply your throttle. Not enough revs and you'll bog down, too many and you'll spin the rear tyres. So you'll need to find a sweet spot and then feed in more throttle as you get moving. The engine is more sensitive to overheating as well now which will compromise your performance if you sit on the limiter for too long.

What do you mean exactly?..., Do you mean put the car in 1st gear before the start or exactly when the lights go out? ...there isn't the use of any clutch so... And can you clarify that there won't be 'jump starts'(Penalties), as mentioned within an interview, he did mention you would be penalised for the jump start. Before the start, during the light sequence. You don't get a special boost to your launch if you time it for when the lights go out or anything like that, you just put it in gear and then the starts work like they have in previous iterations. I'm curious where this "quote" came from, as the guys who gave the interviews seem pretty convinced they didn't say anything about jump starts! So most likely they've been misquoted, or possibly someone misspoke but there are no jump starts this year.

The manual starts thing was a bit of a misinterpretation of what Lee said in the press interviews. In short you won't be jumping the start; that sequence remains pretty much the same as previous years (although the AI are better off the line these days!). You can however be left behind if you're in manual gears are you forget to put it in 1st.

@Britpoint  Can you comment on the duration for online practice? Is it the same as Championship Season where we can pick the duartion? If so what can we pick from for online? 30,40,50 & 60 minutes? Yes, just like that. If you're setting up your own lobby you can choose intervals up to an hour or so.

@mmpaw37  They're exclusive to Pro Season mode. Practice is set up in a slightly different way between the modes, so in Championship Season/Quick Race you select an amount of time for the Practice Session (which is a single session). Pro Season doesn't have different time lengths, but does have all three sessions. Sorry about the delay getting back to you I had to double check my facts on that one.

They did this because they kept changing sponsor so it was the best option Yeah pretty much this. The teams approve all our assets so that's what McLaren approved! Presumably because they were changing it race to race, but I'm not certain.

The engineer actually talks more now than ever before. Especially in regards to stuff like fuel and tyres, he's much better at giving you relevant information on those this time around, and he should be more useful in changeable weather too.

Aaaaah I knew there was something I meant to do today! Launch isn't till Friday or something, right? XD

There's a lot of stuff we can't do before the Australian GP. The cars are unveiled for the first time in January, but they can change a lot between that and the first GP. Some teams just run with interim 2014 cars in testing. Some teams have liveries completely different to their race livery. Sometimes teams aren't officially entered onto the grid until a week before the first Grand Prix, or maybe there are last minute driver changes or regulation changes. Sometimes entire Grand Prix fall off/get added to the calender! Obviously you can do some work with placeholders before that first GP, but to go into more detail? Modelling, livery textures, engine audio, handling - gotta wait 'till Melbourne. AI comes once the handling is nailed down; it isn't just a case of tweaking performance numbers to get the grid spread right. If you've changed the way the cars handle (as obviously happens between '14/'15) the AI start out confused. They need to relearn the tracks with the new handling model, then we can start doing the performance balancing for them. And of course with new content comes new sign offs and new bugs to squish. So yeah, there's a bit of a brief explanation of why throwing something together for the first race can't really happen :) We'd like to get out there as early as we can - I have no idea if that could be before June in the future, as cool as that would be. But it doubt it'll ever be March/April.

Crikey, great finish to race 2!

The handling guys have done a lot of work to that end. With the new engine they were basically starting from scratch on the system. Last time I got a comparison from them the difference was about 2 tenths in favour of the wheel. 

You haven't lived until you've taken Eau Rouge backwards in the dark ;) (Just so we're on the same page, I was referring to Autosport. There's no insanity like that in F1!)

Wow. Haven't been that excited since Laguna Seca 2008. Rossi is just incredible.

Well, if they can keep their current rate of improvement going, they'll be winning by Monaco! It could happen.. right? XD

Did you guys see Lewis talking through his lap on the Skypad at all? One of the finest discussions of a pole lap I've ever seen. http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/9779201/lewis-at-the-skypad

The coder implementing this system is German, and it seems to respond to his accent OK. It understands him better than I can at least ;)

I'll be going to World Series By Renault now that it's back at Silverstone, and also the Formula E finale in Battersea Park! Wish I could get to the US to see an IndyCar race. Or, even better, they should have an IndyCar race here! Preferably on the streets of Leamington Spa then I could just watch it from our second floor.

Why would they have their helmets on? How would they drink the champagne?  They have straws! For their water bottles ^_^

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY IN MAY!!!...WOW! So Codemasters, @justbiglee, that's 3 birthdays confirmed in May...Any chance of a present...? ;-) Mine is at the end of May! There's loads of us!  Mine is in the middle of May! I'm starting to wonder if it's one of our hiring criteria

We don't tend to tag our internal communications with 'Work in Progress'. It's kinda assumed by default. :)

How good was Scott Speed? The second half of the race in particular he came alive, absolutely great to watch.

My attitude to stuff like this is that it's OK for bad stuff to happen to the player, but they have to have some level of control over it. One example that we had in the past was the braking for your pit marks system in 2010, which would make your stop slower if you messed up. Stuff like that isn't out of the question, but I don't think we should ever implement anything that would ruin your race on a dice roll.

The community, and ultimately the ones who pay for your product, have asked for podiums since 2009/10. It has never been brought in. Infact the only feedback we ever got was Steve Hood saying 'I didn't feel it would add much'. Well that's all well and good if he's gonna buy  When he says that, there's a bit of a wider connotation. That isn't one guy looking at something everyone wants and saying "but I don't want it therefore we don't do it". It's more a case of: does the thing requested add enough to make it worth the stuff that would need to be sacrificed to make it happen? If that isn't a trade off we can justify, then that's as far as it goes at this point. I understand the frustration from your perspective when things you want don't make the cut (I am the same way with Tycoon games!) and it's frustrating for us as well when we can't. We know very well who we make the game for, and we get a much bigger kick out of seeing you guys post about stuff you like than stuff you don't, I assure you! I hope it's not too long before we can talk about the next game. I think there is some stuff you'll like.

That was pretty cool in general and the spin at 1:27 was great! Nice job