F1 Fanatic

I only have a controller, and not a wheel, so I’d expect my ‘style’ is kind of peaky and pretty aggressive.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to where I’m good and where I’m not in F1 2011 as I seem to be slow on some tracks and fast on others, rarely do they have similar characteristics – except I suck at slow hairpins, all I know is that I’ve never lost a race around Korea.
I load up on downforce everywhere – I think Monza is probably the only track I don’t run the wings at 10 or 11 – makes me pretty quick through the corners, but slow down the straights. Always seem to be able to break later than the AI though.

I take A LOT of kerb – think Massa at India last year, without the bang.

I don’t tend to play F1 sims since I don’t find them too exciting. I know that might be a bit of a contradiction, but in terms of what I find enjoyable, I like a sim where I have a car which moves around a lot underneath me, whereas an F1 car by definition has huge amounts of grip and is very stable. Yes, you can slide it around if you want, but it’ll always kill your laptime, whereas sports car sims often require you to drive the car past the limits of adhesion in order to set the best laptimes. Usually a fairly low specced rear wheel drive car with the engine in the front is my favourite sort of car. I enjoy releasing the brakes a little over speed and turning in on the nose before the weight shifts back to the rear, in order to let the rear slide. This is a great way to counter the initial understeer on turn-in. Then I like to use the throttle to adjust the angle of the rear, with the ultimate goal to be regaining traction at around the point I hit the apex, so that I can then exit the corner at full speed. This doesn’t equate to huge angles, simply allowing the rear to slide naturally into the line of the corner with little to no countersteering and just using the throttle to correct the slide and maintain the line. It’s this style of driving which I find most enjoyable.

In terms of more exotic machinery, prototypes are generally good fun and I enjoy the twitch experience of keeping them planted while trying to maintain the best possible cornering speed. Timing your braking with these is essential, although it’s probably more critical that you release the brakes at the right moment than trying to brake as late as possible. Braking too deep results in locking and understeer, while releasing the brake at the right moment keeps the car balanced. Sweeping corners where the downforce is really working are the most rewarding, whereas slower corners where the car wants to snap into oversteer are very frustrating since you feel like you’re waiting forever just to get on the throttle. This is why I prefer the lower powered sports cars on road tyres which you can drive on the throttle almost the whole time. 4WD cars are also great for this, since you can unsettle them at the corner entry and then simply keep the throttle planted and the steering straight, to drift the car through the corner with all four wheels sliding. Great fun.

I think I prefer titting about to full on racing.

I am good under breaking, trying to late brake and have worked a lot on trail braking all the way too the apex. It usually makes me very fast under braking, but I am not very consistent with it. I will on several occasions in a race end up braking after the apex and running very wide just in order to keep the car under control. That means my exit is very poor.
But when it does go well its very fast and people have a hard time to keep up.
I am also quite good at chicanes. I have always had a hard time to get on the power when I am putting in a lot of steering lock and can’t actually see the exit of the corner. I am simply scared to drive straight off the road. So I have started to brake later then normally, and take a very late apex. That means I am at risk of getting overtaken on the inside, but it gives me a good drive out of the corner which is useful when I am behind a slower car.
My biggest weakness is fast open corners. Silverstone for instance is a track where I am quite weak. I just can’t get my lines right and I always end up either braking too much or running off the track.
I am also quite prone to making stupid overtakes and simply rely 100% on the car I overtake to give me room, which they wont and I end up crashing or getting penalized. Which is annoying. So I am working on being more patient and waiting for the right opportunity.

A perfect example of the ridiculous difficulty in F1 games. On the hardest difficulty, you can drive a backmarker into Q3.

I like to see myself as a very aggressive driver when i need to be, but i am good at saving tyres and knowing when to change fuel mixes, with these skills i find myself very consistent and can find decent racing lines in different weather conditions

I play the CM F1 series (both 2010 & 2011), using no aids, against legend AIs, 50-100% race distance.
I spend most of the time with car setups, and usually get a perfect one, but sometimes it takes more than two hours and 3-4 sets of tyres. When I have the right balance, I am usually 2-3sec/lap quicker than the AIs, for the first half of the stint than I have a huge dropoff, so I have to make an extra pitstop, but by that time my advantage is enough to make 1-2 drive throughs :) I set my car up for very high downforce, “low” topspeed, stiff suspensions, low rideheight, setting the gears to match most of the corners on the track. I brake late as the high downforce helps stopping the car, but becaouse of the low rideheight I cant really use the kerbs. The hours spent with gear ratios help to take the high speed corners flat out, I like the quick direction changes, but I hate the Singapore sling (T10-13). I am pretty bad with the tight corners as I play with a keyboard on PC and it has only two states of throttle, either full power or none, so I cant step on it early out of a hairpin.
I like to overtake in unexpected places, as my setup only allows that, in defence I only have to keep the car on the racing line in the fast corners, but in the hairpins and 90 degree bends, I choose the widest possible line break early let the car behind outbrake me, than power out as early as possible, usually it gets my place back.

This is how I drive, if its agressive or smooth I cant decide, its up to you.