Misc. Auto Racing 2015: At least our criminals are non-violent

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > Misc. Auto Racing 2015: At least our criminals are non-violent

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njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Bentai posted:

Is every race there always on iRacing levels of lap one shitshow?

I've never seen a race at Macau where something stupid didn't happen because someone was way too aggressive. That's what happens when you have a 2-3 minute lap with maybe 4 passing opportunities. Also touring cars. I fully expect TCR to be the nail in WTCC's coffin within a few years.

# ? Nov 24, 2015 01:15

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 23:20

GramCracker: Oct 8, 2005; beauty by stroll

Sounds like I missed one hell of a WEC race this weekend! It's worth finding and watching, right?

njsykora posted:

I fully expect TCR to be the nail in WTCC's coffin within a few years.

Why's that?

# ? Nov 24, 2015 01:33

gret: Dec 12, 2005; goggle-eyed freak

Bring in the BTCC next year.

# ? Nov 24, 2015 01:49

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

GramCracker posted:

Why's that?

I've seen multiple stories about TCR this year and people talking about it while I've not seen any interest in WTCC except for the stories about Citroen pulling out. Granted a lot of that could very well be down to it being a new thing. I don't expect it to kill off WTCC by itself, but if the WTCC does end within the next 5 years I think the low cost of TCR participation will be something people point to.

# ? Nov 24, 2015 01:55

WindyMan: Mar 21, 2002; Respect the power of the wind

Bentai posted:

Is every race there always on iRacing levels of lap one shitshow?

When you have a corner like Lisboa and nowhere to go if one person makes a mistake, it's inevitable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzU3M-run0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM1DdHnnduM

And don't forget about the motos. This poor soul didn't make it, I'm afraid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9CbMwdo0-w

# ? Nov 24, 2015 02:18

Low Percent Lunge: Jan 29, 2007

Bentai posted:

Is every race there always on iRacing levels of lap one shitshow?

Even better, at Lisboa the marshals are so prepared for an incident that they can clear half a dozen cars before the pack completes another lap, so it doesn't require so many safety cars.

Dudes on two wheels die at Macau though. The only place worse to die would be frozen in a trench in world war 1 France. Macau is a poo poo hole.

# ? Nov 24, 2015 04:49

WindyMan: Mar 21, 2002; Respect the power of the wind

Whitey Ford posted:

Macau is a poo poo hole.

But it's a poo poo hole with character!

# ? Nov 24, 2015 04:56

You Am I: May 20, 2001; Me @ your poasting

Continuing on the theme of this thread title - the rise and fall of an Australian Drag Car team boss and his drug business:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/drag-racing-champ-brett-stevenss-drug-empire-a-crash-course-in-how-not-to-do-business

quote:

The supreme court judge who was about to send Brett �The Boss� Stevens to jail looked up with a realisation.

�He had a remarkable career,� Justice Peter Lyons said, interrupting Stevens�s lawyer as he ran through his background.

It was not just that Stevens, who now sat in a dress shirt, jeans and thongs poring over legal notes, was a three-time national champion in the high-risk, high-cost sport of drag racing.

As well as rising from apprentice mechanic to the pinnacle of the largely blue-collar motorsport, he had built a considerable business empire.

He had the country�s biggest drag race team � attracting sponsorship from Jack Daniel�s � was a manufacturer of car parts, had an earthmoving business, a cement haulage business with 14 trucks, a charter boat business and a tattoo shop.

He had 18ha in properties north of Brisbane worth $14m at their peak, a contract for a reality TV show and lived what the crown prosecutor described as �a celebrity lifestyle�.

Lyons said it was Stevens�s �capacity for hard work, [his] skill and energy� while having large numbers of people working under him that �might indicate a capacity to carry on� his shadow enterprise: a wholesale MDMA manufacturing and distribution business.

Stevens did not take drugs. But in the twilight of his racing career, tax and business debts were mounting up.

By the time of his last national championship in 2008, Stevens was orchestrating the sale of hundreds of thousands of ecstasy pills along the east coast. The pills, made up by presses in a series of rented homes across Brisbane, were meant to be a timely venture to solve his financial difficulties.

Through drag racing, Stevens knew a Sydney crime figure � a Serbian-born man who commands a formidable reputation throughout Australia�s underworld � and chalked up a $200,000 loan to him.

�That�s where all this poo poo has come from,� Stevens said last year.

�The coppers had [the Sydney man and his brother] under investigation and when those two were talking about the money that I owed him, the coppers obviously thought, �Aw, it�s a drug debt.�

�My gently caress up. I wasn�t wealthy and I needed some money because I got a bill from the taxman and I had to pay it.�

Stevens proved a tough nut for police to crack. In a manner typical of those at the apex of drug rings, Stevens directed his syndicate from a distance, spoke in code on the phone and met associates only in public, knowing he was under police surveillance.

Other forms of pressure were brought to bear on him.

Investigators once played his wife, Kath, a tapped phone call in which Stevens purportedly ordered services from a sex worker. It was irrelevant to Stevens�s criminal conduct. The couple regarded it as an attempt to divide them through humiliation.

His disgrace was further compounded by the publicity around his arrest. Sponsors disappeared, he was stripped of his racing records, his business loans were called in and his assets unloaded in a fire sale.

While on bail, the ever enterprising Stevens tried to rebuild a business career, including as �chief executive officer� of a quarry venture with a former Rebels bikie gang member under the company name Defwom, an acronym for �Don�t Ever gently caress With Our Money�.

Stevens had earlier hatched a plan to unload one of his frozen properties worth $2.2m to his wife, then Defwom, which ended up occupying it rent free before it was evicted by supreme court order.

The quarry foundered after a dispute with the landholder, as did Stevens�s other attempts at a career in mining and the transport business. By the time he was found guilty of trafficking and producing MDMA, he was working in demolition.

For his part, Stevens refused to cooperate and proclaimed his innocence to the end, soliciting donations on Facebook for his legal fees when his own funds ran dry.

�Honestly, I get paid to work, I rent a house now,� he said last year. �As long as my missus and kids are all right, if [going to jail] is what happens. [But] I can�t afford to go doing appeals. I can�t even afford a solicitor.�

His wife continues to stand by him.

The precise scale of Stevens�s drug business was unclear.

There was the testimony of his associates � who rolled despite his recorded threats to them � one of whom claimed he cleared $600,000 profit in six months at a margin of 50 cents a pill.

Lyons concluded Stevens probably made at least this much himself.

But the judge found a better indication of the trade he was doing were the amounts of cash seized by police from his associates and an employee on three occasions. These ranged from $99,000 to the $200,000 that was slated to repay the Serbian crime figure.

Lyons noted evidence by a police forensic accountant that Stevens had $1.2m in unexplained income but could not rule out the possibility that some of this was cash from racing merchandise sales.

Even if every cent were from drugs, such gains rate as a trifle beside the incomes of many other trafficking syndicate leaders busted in Queensland and Australia � a trifle even beside Stevens�s own capital gains through legitimate businesses until he hit the wall.

But his sentence of 13 years � which Lyons indicated was heavily weighted as a deterrent to others who would turn to trafficking as a commercial venture � ranks among the harshest punishments meted out to a Queensland trafficker. Amphetamines trafficker Charlie Cannon, who the government pursued for $27m in a proceeds of crime case, was given just over 12 years.

Rarely has a public figure lost so much for so little gain as Brett Stevens.

# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:17

Norns: Nov 21, 2011; Senior Shitposting Strategist

You Am I posted:

Continuing on the theme of this thread title - the rise and fall of an Australian Drag Car team boss and his drug business:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/drag-racing-champ-brett-stevenss-drug-empire-a-crash-course-in-how-not-to-do-business

I want to see the movie

# ? Nov 26, 2015 18:18

Low Percent Lunge: Jan 29, 2007

Are the Bray family really tomato farmers anyway?

# ? Nov 26, 2015 22:26

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Self-driving cars are gonna be a support race for Formula E next season. Identical cars but teams will have to code the AI that drives them themselves. This is gonna be either really cool or a complete disaster.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 12:15

DEEP STATE PLOT: Aug 13, 2008; Yes...Ha ha ha...YES!

njsykora posted:

Self-driving cars are gonna be a support race for Formula E next season. Identical cars but teams will have to code the AI that drives them themselves. This is gonna be either really cool or a complete disaster.

I am totally behind this and it will absolutely be a disaster.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 12:22

orange juche: Mar 14, 2012

njsykora posted:

Self-driving cars are gonna be a support race for Formula E next season. Identical cars but teams will have to code the AI that drives them themselves. This is gonna be either really cool or a complete disaster.

Oh jesus that's going to be absolutely terrible, I must watch it.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 14:19

WindyMan: Mar 21, 2002; Respect the power of the wind

njsykora posted:

This is gonna be either really cool or a complete disaster.

Both. Gloriously both.

I think for the first few races it will play out like a (fun) shitshow where few teams know what the gently caress they're doing. Most everyone else will cause accidents at the start, accidents at the end of a straightaway, chicane-clogging spins where cars don't know how to react to one another, and cars that just sputter to a halt at the side of the road and give up.

By the end of the season, there will be obvious and noticeable progress, and people will go, "hey, this is actually quite cool" even though the Google car will have clinched the championship by the 7th race or something.

Formula E just gets more and more exciting. I approve.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 20:09

gret: Dec 12, 2005; goggle-eyed freak

WindyMan posted:

Both. Gloriously both.

I think for the first few races it will play out like a (fun) shitshow where few teams know what the gently caress they're doing. Most everyone else will cause accidents at the start, accidents at the end of a straightaway, chicane-clogging spins where cars don't know how to react to one another, and cars that just sputter to a halt at the side of the road and give up.

So it'll be pretty much indistinguishable from every other lower formulae racing series?

# ? Nov 27, 2015 20:20

Cygni: Nov 12, 2005; raring to post

The potential to be a hilarious poo poo show is the whole upside, but I can't see anyone programing their cars to ever take risks. If people do their jobs well it won't be interesting at all, so lets hope they gently caress it up bad.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 20:31

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Cygni posted:

The potential to be a hilarious poo poo show is the whole upside, but I can't see anyone programing their cars to ever take risks. If people do their jobs well it won't be interesting at all, so lets hope they gently caress it up bad.

There's going to be a car programmed entirely from crowd sourced code, so there is potential for nerds to be reckless because they aren't paying for the car.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 21:07

CactusWeasle: Aug 1, 2006; It's not a party until the bomb squad says it is

I like that WTCC has decided holding their races on a Friday evening is great way to avoid a TV overlap with forms of motorsport that are interesting

# ? Nov 27, 2015 21:09

WindyMan: Mar 21, 2002; Respect the power of the wind

Cygni posted:

The potential to be a hilarious poo poo show is the whole upside, but I can't see anyone programing their cars to ever take risks. If people do their jobs well it won't be interesting at all, so lets hope they gently caress it up bad.

There will be the two cars for each team, though. They could set up one to be the "slow and steady" car, and the other one to be a bit more aggressive.

I wonder if it could be like B-Spec mode in Gran Turismo. The paddock could turn up or down the aggressiveness on the car depending on race conditions and strategy and whatnot.

# ? Nov 27, 2015 22:57

Cygni: Nov 12, 2005; raring to post

I just imagine the people involved in the series will be people that want to sell or market self driving car stuff, which means crashes prolly aint what they after. Guess we will see!

# ? Nov 27, 2015 23:30

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Cygni posted:

I just imagine the people involved in the series will be people that want to sell or market self driving car stuff, which means crashes prolly aint what they after. Guess we will see!

But they're also going to want to prove that self driving cars aren't going to be stupidly slow compared to a human driver. Given that the state of racing game AI is still not great, I can't wait for every race to be red flagged because of turn 1 pileups.

Also we get to enjoy horrific crashes immediately without having to worry about whether anyone died.

# ? Nov 28, 2015 01:58

BMB5150: Oct 24, 2010; 2018 Indianapolis 500 Winner

I can see first year being a shitshow. Can't wait for one to BSoD and plow through all the cars through a wall.

On a completely different note, listen to this podcast because it's loving amazing. Dinner with Racers. Podcasts have had guests of all lights of motorsport from Bill Riley, to Jeff Braun, to Andy Lally, to the Taylor Bros., and to Bob Varsha and our quest to find young pictures of him.

http://www.dinnerwithracers.com/

# ? Nov 28, 2015 03:39

You Am I: May 20, 2001; Me @ your poasting

njsykora posted:

Self-driving cars are gonna be a support race for Formula E next season. Identical cars but teams will have to code the AI that drives them themselves. This is gonna be either really cool or a complete disaster.

I want to see hackers trying to break into the cars and insert the past0r_skillZ.exe into the cars mid race

# ? Nov 28, 2015 05:21

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

You Am I posted:

I want to see hackers trying to break into the cars and insert the past0r_skillZ.exe into the cars mid race

>put forza.m.Rossi.vbs
>send spike

# ? Nov 28, 2015 05:41

DEEP STATE PLOT: Aug 13, 2008; Yes...Ha ha ha...YES!

IOwnCalculus posted:

>put forza.m.Rossi.vbs
>send spike

I want to see Polyphony and Turn 10 program one car each.

# ? Nov 28, 2015 05:45

Uncle Jam: Aug 20, 2005; Perfect

Cygni posted:

I just imagine the people involved in the series will be people that want to sell or market self driving car stuff, which means crashes prolly aint what they after. Guess we will see!

Not crashing and easy to avoid crashing are already huge marketing points for OEMs now yet human driven cars at tracks still crash a lot so who knows!

# ? Nov 28, 2015 18:17

BMB5150: Oct 24, 2010; 2018 Indianapolis 500 Winner

Can't post on my phone, but Audi showed their next lmp1... It looks like utter poo poo. Burn it down, revive GT1.

E: http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122045

BMB5150 fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Nov 28, 2015

# ? Nov 28, 2015 21:23

jammyozzy: Dec 7, 2006; Is that a challenge?

BMB5150 posted:

Can't post on my phone, but Audi showed their next lmp1... It looks like utter poo poo. Burn it down, revive GT1.

E: http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122045

Reminds me of :frogdowns:

# ? Nov 28, 2015 21:49

CactusWeasle: Aug 1, 2006; It's not a party until the bomb squad says it is

At least we only have to look at 2 of them for LeMans

# ? Nov 28, 2015 23:29

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

BMB5150 posted:

I can see first year being a shitshow. Can't wait for one to BSoD and plow through all the cars through a wall.

On a completely different note, listen to this podcast because it's loving amazing. Dinner with Racers. Podcasts have had guests of all lights of motorsport from Bill Riley, to Jeff Braun, to Andy Lally, to the Taylor Bros., and to Bob Varsha and our quest to find young pictures of him.

http://www.dinnerwithracers.com/

This is really good, especially the Tommy Kendall one.

# ? Nov 29, 2015 14:32

Kilonum: Sep 30, 2002; You know where you are? You're in the suburbs, baby. You're gonna drive.

Cubey posted:

I want to see Polyphony and Turn 10 program one car each.

Also Codemasters, ISI, SMS et al.

# ? Nov 29, 2015 16:13

Lord Crapulus: Feb 12, 2003; About as successful at Le Mans as Toyota

I don't pay all that close attention to prototypes besides for a bit of Le Mans, but :barf:

When's the last time someone built a P1 car that didn't look like butt?

# ? Nov 29, 2015 20:52

Sneaks McDevious: Jul 29, 2010; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

BMB5150 posted:

Can't post on my phone, but Audi showed their next lmp1... It looks like utter poo poo. Burn it down, revive GT1.

E: http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122045

Looks like something from Ridge Racer and for that reason it owns

# ? Nov 29, 2015 23:51

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

That looks horribly ugly and I like the current Indycar.

# ? Nov 30, 2015 00:20

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

Lord Crapulus posted:

I don't pay all that close attention to prototypes besides for a bit of Le Mans, but

When's the last time someone built a P1 car that didn't look like butt?

oddly enough, the closest thing to a good looking prototype this century was built by Panoz lol

# ? Nov 30, 2015 00:45

You Am I: May 20, 2001; Me @ your poasting

Cubey posted:

I want to see Polyphony and Turn 10 program one car each.

Polyphony would take 7 years to program one, and release it with the previous generation's setup

Turn 10 would rush one out, then ask for micro transactions to keep it running

# ? Nov 30, 2015 02:10

orange juche: Mar 14, 2012

VikingSkull posted:

oddly enough, the closest thing to a good looking prototype this century was built by Panoz lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVYPuWPpAU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUNEc3cHfCg

The GTR1 really was a beautiful car and fast as gently caress until it got regulated out of existence.

The LMP1 was the same everything as a GTR1 with a different body cover and the top lopped off, and it competed and won a fuckton even in the P900 class. Panoz hasn't made another car in that vein in a long time, but when they did they were amazing. Too bad they are chasing that Delta Wang dream atm, they need to build another GTLM eligible version of the Esparante and win some races finally.

orange juche fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Nov 30, 2015

# ? Nov 30, 2015 08:12

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

People over in Europe go nuts over American V8 sounds, and man did the GTR1 have a great sound.

# ? Nov 30, 2015 14:13

Cygni: Nov 12, 2005; raring to post

Yall are clearly thinking of the Abruzzi!!

# ? Nov 30, 2015 17:29

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 23:20

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

look at it killing those LMP's

# ? Nov 30, 2015 17:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > Misc. Auto Racing 2015: At least our criminals are non-violent

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