You do realise that the vast majority of drivers out there do not get paid but would still drive anything , anywhere if given the opportunity?
Vast majority?
Err, no.
Unless you're the most ardent hobbyist, with time and, more importantly, money to burn, most drivers get paid one way or another. For hobbyists that may just mean sponsorship from local businesses thats just about enough to feed their habit, getting them and their car to the next meet. For pro-ams, in proper racing series, that may mean sponsorship and,
if they're good enough, prize money. (However, you'll probably find most pro-ams usually have enough spare wedge to play racing driver and not worry about sponsorship/prizes anyway; see
Paul Hollywood of The Great British Bake Off for instance.)
Yes, there is going to be fringe cases where a driver may get called up at short notice to drive a track he/she doesn't particularly like, with or without the prospect of getting paid, but it could very well be that the driver owes / or is doing a team boss/owner a favour, or is looking to make a name for themselves and break into something more permanent, so will take the rough with the smooth. (Hell, I'd drive a ride-on lawnmower with no suspension on a track made of cobble stones if it meant I got more regular drives in
real racing cars!)
In motorsport, as in life in general, nobody operates at a loss (for too long at least) unless they're independently "wealthy" outside of motorsport or they genuinely believe they're good enough and envisage
big pay days in their future. This is as true for hobbyists, dragging their car on a trailer behind a battered old van around the country, as it is for F1 drivers (and teams).
I don't like stupid little Japanese cars
or Tsukuba, I love Suzuka and like Gr.4 but I'm not a fan of that combination, and I think St Crock is awful.
What if next week is another stupid little Japanese car (and I guarantee it will be!), a Gr.1 first-corner-SR-destroying-wreck-fest at Monza, and dull-as-dishwater enduro at Blue Moon, all of which I'd avoid like the plague?
Like I said, WEEKS.
So this gives you more time to play the combos you enjoy. I work late on a Monday and only really get a chance to do a BMB 24 mile "marathon" to get my daily car. I do a league race on a Tuesday night. I can't recall the last time I did a Sport race on a Monday/Tuesday, yet those could have been the best races ever.
No, it does
n't, because the chances of combos you really enjoy coming round have been exponentially
reduced. Lets take Race B or Race C as an example:
Those are (usually) Gr.1 - 4 races. With the addition of St. Crock there are now 51 tracks/layouts but as PD don't seem to use every one for Sport Mode lets be generous and say they only use about half that, which, for the sake of simplicity, we'll call it 25. To run through every combination of on a daily schedule would take 100 days. However on a weekly schedule to run the same 25 tracks and every class combination would take 700 days (nearly 2 YEARS!).
Congratulations, you got to do that one combination you really enjoy for a week, or get to do on Wednesday that combination you saw on Monday, but kiss goodbye to it because you may
never see it again before GT7 (or 8, or GTSport 2, or whatever its going to called is released) and the servers for GTS are switched off.
Meanwhile those of us who are fortunate enough to have jobs, or lives, which afford us a little more time than most (or the unemployed, or students, etc) potentially have to put up with
weeks of stuff we don't like. Brilliant.
What PD
should have done is publish proper schedules in advance so people can plan ahead (shift/swap days off, send the significant other / kids on a day out, not do that DIY project you've been promising your significant other you'd do for months, fake illness/death etc) if it
really mattered
that much.
Or, better still, they could have simply added two weekly races to the current line-up, so:
- Race A - One-make weekly, track change daily.
- Race B - Daily sprint.
- Race C - Daily endurance.
- Race D - Weekly sprint.
- Race E - Weekly endurance.
This would have satisfied
everyone, but oh no, thats waaaaaaaaaaay
too simple for PD.
If PD was one of those companies that has a strap-line/motto on their logo it would be this:
) (from a researching point of view I suggest googling "hot latina wife", the results are intersting
, weekends included. I'm desperate to have a space for training (here is a post in which I'm looking for a garden shed or room to share for practice)
