Faster cars, mid-race refueling returning to Formula One

Faster cars, mid-race refueling returning to Formula OneNoah Joseph

Critics have lamented a drop in performance, competition and spectacle in the modern age of Formula One. So to get the championship back up to the pinnacle of motor racing where it belongs, the parties involved have agreed on a number of measures earmarked revitalize the sport.

The first measure which the all-important Formula One Strategy Group has agreed upon is an expansion in the choice of tires that teams will be able to use in a grand prix weekend. That'll take effect already next year, but the bigger news is what F1 has in store for 2017.

Representatives of the teams, engine suppliers, the FIA and Formula One Management agreed that for the season after next, the sport will adapt its regulations to allow for faster cars. With more aggressive aerodynamics, wider tires and lighter weights, the 2017 entries are destined to drop a good five to six seconds off their lap times. That likely means the '17 challengers will be fighting for lap records on many tracks. The engines will also be allowed to rev higher and produce a better exhaust note than has been allowed by the current 1.6-liter turbocharged V6 hybrid power units and the cars will be designed to look "more aggressive."

One of the biggest changes earmarked for implementation in 2017, however, will be the reintroduction of mid-race refueling. The practice has been banned since 2010 in order to increase safety and encourage a shift in strategy. That's meant quicker pit stops where only the tires (and any damaged bodywork) are swapped, but critics point fingers at fuel-saving tactics that have impeded racing action in the years since.

Although no specific measures were agreed upon, the group also plans to reexamine the format of the race weekend, starting the engine from inside the cockpit without external intervention, and keeping costs in check. A proposal to increase the number of engines allotted to each driver this season, however, was rejected.

While the above measures were agreed upon by the F1 Strategy Group, they still need to be approved by the F1 Commission and by the FIA's World Motor Sport Council before they can be put into practice.

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'Mad Max: Fury Road' movie review: So many cars, so little plot

We see it so you won’t have to (but you'll probably still want want to)

The fourth installment of the Mad Max franchise, "Fury Road," could have been so good.

Crikey.

The design of the whole thing, from the cars to the characters to the magnificent sprawling sets scattered across the desolate Namib desert, make for such a starkly stunning setting that it really is too bad they couldn’t have made the characters say something more interesting. Instead, the movie relies on delivering an overpowering visual clobbering and forgets to try and add anything else.

There are a few well-timed pauses in the action that really add to the story but they’re almost accidental in nature and the best and funniest one is immediately stepped on by yet another ill-timed body-squashing.

But this ain’t Filmweek, it’s Autoweek, and there are some great cars here. Our favorite is the Gigahorse, two 1959 Cadillacs welded on top of each other and bolted to a Monster Truck. This is the ride of choice of His Imperial Excellence the Warlord Immortan Joe. Joe is a very, very bad man who has enslaved his people and even cruelly keeps a harem of wives he calls “prized breeders.” When our heroine Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa rescues the girls and makes a break for freedom, an enraged Immortan Joe gives chase, employing a battalion of War Boys who have all been promised immortality in Valhalla. That’s the premise and that is what launches a two-hour post-apocalyptic car chase.

Car Life Gallery: Mad Max Fury Road cars and trucks and...things

Oh yeah, the cars.

Joe’s army has a Dodge Power Wagon-looking monster truck called The Big Foot, which has a pretty good jump scene in the movie, as well as a low-range transfer case rock-crawling scene to rival anything on The Rubicon.

Our hero Mad Max’s Interceptor, an Australian-market XB Falcon Coupe, is the first car we see, rusted and properly post-apocalyptic itself. The Peacemaker is a Plymouth Valiant on tank treads commanded by a bullet-toothed madman made up to look, in a Mad Maxian way, like an English Lord. The Tanker is a gas-hauling big rig with an old Mercedes S-Class for a cab. And Furiosa herself drives an unstoppable 18-or-more-wheeler called The War Rig. There are motorcycles, too. And exploding harpoons. And buzz saws, cross bows, spears, spikes and spatulas. There is nothing missing in this wheeled arsenal of an action movie.

Except some good dialogue. The words spoken at the start, a voiceover by Max explaining how he got where he is and what happened to the thing formerly known as civilization, are pretty good, and make us hopeful the whole movie will have such an articulate story. But there is almost nothing more said. Just a massive, War Boy-blowing road race. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just could have been so much better. At least it doesn’t fall all over itself trying to give meaning like a "Fast and Furious" flick (“They ain’t nothing but what ya got when ya got nothing blah blah blah”).

It would have also been nice, from our perspective at least, to have some lingering closeups or even some longer shots of the cars themselves. They looked really cool in the pre-release stills we saw a couple weeks ago. Instead you have to peel your eyeballs for fleeting glimpses of them as they whir and blast past before getting blasted to smithereens. Pity.

Should you go see it? Yeah, go see it. It is a sweeping vista on the end (and rebirth?) of civilization. But we wish there had been more.

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Play 'Project Cars,' channel your inner James Hunt

Slightly Mad Studios delivers the racing game we need for next-gen systems

We’ve been itching for a new racing simulation game to take on established players like “Forza” and “Gran Turismo” since we bought our next-gen gaming system. After several (dozen) hours of playing, we can safely say we have it with Slightly Mad Studios’ “Project Cars,” on sale May 12 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. We gave you the breakdown of cars and tracks last week. Now that we’ve had some seat time, we can tell you what it’s like to get behind the (fake) wheel.

Beginning with the obvious, this game is gorgeous. From this gaming generation on, that will be a given. You can see the black marks on the track, you can see fans stand up and sit down, and you can see the impossibly bright sunset through the gaps in the trees. It would actually be annoying, if it wasn’t so realistic. Both the exteriors and interiors of the cars are rendered beautifully, which also plays in with the light and shadows on the racetrack. Going toward the sun, you can barely see your gauges. Going away from it? They’ll be lit up brightly through your rear window.

There are a lot of good things going on with “Project Cars” not least of which is the fact that you can jump into the fastest cars on the hardest tracks right away. You want to start in Formula A, the game’s equivalent of Formula One? It’s your funeral, pal. There are no levels to work through or cash to earn, just seasons and seasons of racing. The first two tiers -- of eight -- are karting, which we skipped, jumping straight to open-wheel Formula Rookie, which sort of represents Formula Vee.

Car Life Gallery: Project Cars

We’re using a Thrustmaster T80 wheel now; as far as we hear, PlayStation isn’t supporting Logitech wheel controllers anymore. The T80 has no feedback and less weight, which we thought would lead to a less enjoyable experience. Thankfully it did not, both because the customizing options are insane, and because we added some simulated resistance on our home-built rig.

“Project Cars” has several areas where a player can tune how the driving wheel feels, how much dead zone there is, how much traction control to dial in and probably hundreds of other adjustments, including stuff we don’t even understand, let alone know how to adjust. In that respect, it almost bests "Gran Turismo" -- you just need a track engineer to explain it to you.

You can change the race length, opponent difficulty and damage options, and add the option of restarting before each race. Those options are good, but you have to discipline yourself not to bring everything down to easy when the going gets tough.

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Right away, we got lost in the open-wheel action, alternately pretending we were James Hunt and Niki Lauda working our way up the ranks. Project Cars works through a calendar system where you can participate, skip or simulate the year’s events. It reminds us more of Codemasters’ “Grid” than Polyphony Digital’s “Gran Turismo.”

The handling model is great, much closer to a simulation than an arcade game. The Formula Vee cars switch direction on a dime; they rarely spun out, unless we really got things wrong. If you touch open wheels with another racer, it’ll toss the car in the air. It gives you even more respect for those open-wheel guys, today and in the past. You might not even see it coming and -- bam! -- you’re upside down.

PC does a really good job with the screen movement. When you hit the brakes, the windshield gets a smidge larger, like your head is moving forward, and when you bang over the curbs the whole car shakes. If you hit just the right groove in a corner, the car bounces ever so slightly but doesn’t slip. Turn the lights off and the stereo up -- the sound effects are almost as good as the graphics.

Of course there's an online component as well, where you can race your friends and set up a race weekend with strangers. We didn't mess with it too much, the game just came out and the opponent pool hasn't quite filled out yet. We also haven't signed up for PlayStation Plus, but that's another story for another time.

The next Formula One game comes out in June. If you’re purely a fan of that series, then maybe you can hold off on this game. But anyone else -- "Gran Turismo" fans, "Forza" fans, "Grid" fans -- you should probably go get this game now: It should keep you racing at least until the next serial title comes out, and maybe long after.

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