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Topic: Elite Press |
1632 replies
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Awesome you picked Elite Press up, Brad. Happy reads!
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Good job guys, enjoyed reading this !
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Well done Martin, very nice read.
Thank you.
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Well Done Guys, good read!
Although that black text is not so easy on the eye on this blue background
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Was just a matter of time Martin got interviewed for Elite Press.
Raced together in 3 seasons with him, one recently in elite and his first 2 seasons in the game, rookie-282 :D
Quick right from the start!
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Excellent read! Keep them coming, Brad :)
And good luck thru the rest of the season, Martin!
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An excellent interview by Brad & Martin. Well done guys. 👍
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Great work Brad. Thanks a lot!
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With over 1000 races spanning nearly 60 uninterrupted seasons, few managers have seen more GPRO than Janne Väänänen.
We figuratively sat down with the venerable Finn who, with characteristic forthrightness, shares his secret to retaining Elite, pleas for a former teammate, and explains how—unlike their grounded namesake—the Flying Dodo remains extant …
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Janne Väänänen
Career start: S9
Elite since: S66 (additional stints S31 and 41)
Current standing: 16th with 5 points
Last season: 16th with 8 points
Victorious Secret
Established: S50
Highest finish: 9th (S59 and 60)
Top ten finishes: 3 (S59-61)
Current Standing: 16th
Last season: 26th
After two previous stints in Elite lasting one season apiece, you find yourself three seasons deep this go-around. What has been different this time? Do you plan to stay in Elite for a while?
The first time in Elite I didn't even try to retain so I guess that's the significant difference. Elite was a new, big scary thing for me in S31 and I thought my package wasn't quite enough, so I opted to instantly drop down and try to return stronger—retrospectively a mistake, because I didn't know that package was relatively strong given S31 Elite wasn't quite what it is now, and also because my return-stronger plan failed later.
My second and third attempts would be the results of emergency plans ending with the words "go full Sparta in Master and promote to Elite and, once there, use magic to miraculously retain somehow." So, the main difference with runs #2 and #3 was that the magic part just wouldn't work first time around (#2) but this time (#3), it did. And then, for last season, Vlad came up with this PHA change into which I kinda half stumbled at Avus.
By half stumbled, you mean you accidentally matched your car for the last race of S67? Was the podium there a big surprise?
Somewhat accidentally, yes. I mean I knew the PHA (matching) had been increased so my original plan was to build a competitive car that had a good match for the last few races so that I could potentially take advantage of good Conti weather. But mid-season, I had some difficulties with time and had to make a couple of emergency qualies & missed a race altogether so I couldn't follow my wear plan properly and only got my car together for Avus, really. At that point I wasn't quite aware of the effect wear had yet (my PHA was good but part wear was suitable for Avus purely by accident), so when I saw my driver's pace in praccy, it completely blew me away by surprise.
Ok, this season (68), making PHA work for me again was now less of a stumble and more of a controlled plan, but regardless, I've been just lucky since on merit I shouldn't be here. My entire package is extremely unsustainable. You would laugh if you heard when I last scored a sponsor. But here I am and I am fairly bored of everything else but Elite, to be frank, so I have no intention to stop lucking out for the next few seasons. :)
So just how does one sustain with no sponsors on the car?
I don't know the best way to do it but my method is always making a choice between going testing or going racing. (Low cost tyres / facilities / drivers also help to minimize the expenses.) So that's why I may have long uncompetitive periods, concentrating on clocking in the test miles to prepare for a good period, the only aim being to finish races. Then, when it's needed, I stop testing to be able to afford using CT again on the fresh test points I've gained. All this cause I don't find any financial sense going max CT every race, especially not in Elite, because without a good package the finishing position difference between 0 CT and max CT is usually just few places.
People may call my method OBP and unfair to those poor souls who finish 9th every race & relegate because of my one good result; and, if I went by their textbooks, I should have gone back to ammy long ago, because officially it's supposed to boring to play without pushing all the time and because racing without a large income is unsustainable in the long term. But I don’t really care about them anymore since, myself, I don't find playing the game like this any boring as this is how it seems to work for me.
Your record would suggest you enjoy taking on long-term driver projects when possible. Do you find the game more enjoyable this way?
I do, yes. Never really found much success with rental drivers, don't like the hassle of hiring a new driver every 2 seasons or so - and frankly, I probably wouldn't even know how to play the game with one anymore. :D
After an incredible 50 seasons racing with The Flying Dodos (originally United Managers) the team dissolved at the start of S68. What happened?
So yeah, in short, no drama really. As one of my team mates put it, "no matter how sexy the wife is, you will lose interest after 10 years."
Once upon a time, the Dodos were a brilliant GPRO team, active and a fun place to be in (which at least for me was the most important thing)—but for the past 10-20 seasons all that activity / enthusiasm had been steadily declining. We'd consistently start losing long term members due to their real life getting busy or just due to them getting tired with the game, and only found like 3 good replacements during the timeframe. The declining and getting lazy also reflected on that, as a team, we stopped being on the ball with the game changes, etc. and it just wasn't that much fun anymore.
I, as the ex-leader, bear much of the responsibility for it too because I had grown increasingly frustrated with recruiting people, to the point I just wouldn't do it anymore. We had, like, 3 good recruits for Dodos or, for our 2nd team, Koalas since S50, combined, but also about 15 failed ones, where after all our effort in trying to teach stuff and shit, the new guy would then just go AWOL and quit GPRO after a month or so. Maybe it was us as a core group becoming more "inside" and harder to "crack into" for the newbies, or maybe it was something else? I dunno.
So, the end result of the decline was that we had 6 guys playing the game at the end of the last season. I mean, we still were a close-knit bunch and I owe each of those guys a lot - but at that point I no longer thought the situation was gonna get any better with me having no motivation for recruitment anymore, and suggested a breath of fresh air would be a positive for us all. Cannot speak for the others but it has worked for me. Besides, we still have our communication channels up and alive & regularly keep in touch with many ex-members. So, while us mighty Dodos may no longer grace GPRO with our substantial presence, in spirit we will never go extinct :)
With the breakup of the Dodos came time to find a new team. Aside from the angel wings and pink livery, what attracted you to Victorious Secret? Were there other teams you considered?
It wasn't easy because I did receive several good offers and had to give 3 of them really serious consideration. Of them, I eventually chose VS in the end, partly because they were the most persuasive and very open to me about how they operated & partly because they had Matt (Kaser) who was a former Dodo as well. But mainly because of the pink livery, obviously.
Thank you for taking the time to interview with Elite Press. Is there anything else you would like to add before we close?
Yeah I would, thanks. Because I know opinions are more convincing and just generally cooler when they're said in the Elite Press, I'm just gonna use the space to voice my opinion about the recent PHA change since it is waaaay overpowered now. As you can probably gather from this interview, I'm surely one of the biggest beneficiaries of the change and I think my pace at Baku (R5) was one of the best examples of how ridiculous it has gotten. My car was like 27th best on level yet the thing was probably top 5 on track because of the good match.
I mean, I know Vlad has said he's happy and I do see the logic behind the changes, always thought the car match doesn't matter enough. But really, just please have another look at it. The impact of PHA/wear on pace has now gotten so ridiculously strong that in due time it will start affecting the game mechanics in a negative way. Hence, I would strongly suggest the admins to tone it down, and with a proper announcement about it, obviously.
Cheers
Janne.
p.s. Why won't any team have Mairo? He just keeps bothering me with his noob questions about max driver OA in Pro because he's a sad and lonely puppy with no one else to ask :(
And in the end, Janne traded his avian wings for those of a supermodel. We wish him good luck in keeping the retaining magic for as long as he desires.
For Elite Press, I’m Brad Marshall hoping you find your team (and partner) just as sexy in ten years.
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Another fantastic article. Good read.
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great article once more. good job!
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Good stuff! Nice to see you in Elite for a longer stint Janne, and in a good team as well. Was a good time in the Dodo/Koala crew.
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Quote ( Brad Marshall @ January 22nd 2019,10:57:03 )
p.s. Why won't any team have Mairo? He just keeps bothering me with his noob questions about max driver OA in Pro because he's a sad and lonely puppy with no one else to ask :(
Talk for yourself ! :D
All in all, Janne is a top lad, we went to GPRO Lithuanian meeting together.
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Mihail Morozov
Career start: S26
Elite since: S68 (previous stint S46-54)
Current standing: 14th with 8 points
Last season: 2nd with 83 points (Master-5)
MatrËshka
Established: S53
Highest finish: 9th (S66)
Top ten finishes: 3 (S58, 65-66)
Current Standing: 12th
Last season: 13th
Mihail, please tell us a little about the man who set Bremgarten on fire.
Hello! Let's start to talk from my personality. It's bad culture if you talk about yourself when you are not presented. I live in a far and huge Russia, exactly in Siberia, Omsk city. It's really far, it's -30C degrees outside the window today. My name is Mihail Morozov, I'm 34 y.o., I have two wonderful daughters. Also, I have a hobby called GPRO. Now it's time to answer your questions.
Well that was quite the spectacle at Bremgarten (R11), the mother of all OBPs. Pole position, start crash, pit, and 42 lightning quick laps later you crossed the line just eight seconds short of victory—all with a level 7 car and a driver judged to be average or worse. Could you walk us through your thought process in preparing for this race?
Yes, it was a glorious hunt! Bremgarten will remain in my memory forever. I saw an unimaginable action.
Let's start from order perhaps. All it started not before this race, it happened much earlier - in seasons 50-53. In these times I found a difference between the car with different PHA balance. I researched a lot, tried to test several things, and made some mistakes. Then I was forced to go down [relegate]. First of all, it was because of driver energy introduction. I couldn't adapt to it in time. I thought about retiring as my friend and team mate Stanislav Frolov did in S59. I'm glad that he returned to us after few seasons. By the other side, we have MatrЁshka team with Konstantin Sobolev who is our captain, real leader and ideas generator.
At that time, we started to move up and our results improved. And then S67 started, admins wrote black on white that influence of PHA became even higher. It was my promotion season to Elite so I didn't concentrate on it, but my team started to research an influence. The Avus race (S67 R17) confirmed our thoughts. My team mate Dmitry Nechitailo finished only 2nd having a great all-balanced car and very fast driver on FT. I failed to hire a decent driver in S68. That's why I started to prepare for the particular race. I did a lot of testing sessions to increase H, prepare car for the race. Oh, I almost forgot that a day before I hired a super driver, who for some reason has been considered slower than average. By my opinion, the community just doesn't know how to manage with him. Plus, I finally hired a TD who I hunted for two seasons already. He helped me a lot. BTW, it's not only me who got a great result, a few of my team mates scored also, you can find it by yourself.
Your performance has inspired an interesting philosophical debate as to the long-term effects of managing your car parts to match the very unique character of Bremgarten. How do you think your car will do the rest of the season, or is this not even a concern of yours now that you have eight points?
The trick question but we are used to answer on such kinds of questions. Philosophy is a very interesting subject: “If we consider this global problem from the point of view of typical erudition, then each clearly expressed individual of critical, metaphysical abstraction can't ignore the critique of sentimentalism built on the basis of utopian subjectivism ...”
Ok, let's get it started. I'm able to calculate consequences not worse than others. I advise especially observant people to take a look at the calendar. How much H races left to the end of the season? 5 or 6. It means [more] points are possible but I will not guess. Also, I can't promise that I will get 20 more points. As I wrote, H CCP from testing will help me. Will I score or not - it's a different story. This extravaganza that happened to me in Bremgarten is the main thing for me.
The forums are abuzz with chatter as your performance has added fuel to PHA fire. There continues to be strong opinions for and against the new track suitability rule. How do you feel about the rule now that you have benefited from it? Is the effect too strong or does this make GPRO even more interesting?
I read forums. I write not often, I'm sorry that I don't know English well enough. People talk about me, it's good. It means that community has an interest. The truth is born in a dispute. With regard to my participation in this dispute, I have learned from this innovation a maximum at the moment. The effect is different from this rule, you just need to be able to use it. When someone works on something, it usually regards you. From the point of view of the game, this has brought its own interesting detail. Everyone has a chance, with a competent approach, to take his own in this game. I wish everyone good luck in that.
Do you think this rule will change how managers approach OBP-type strategies or retaining a group in general, especially with lesser packages?
Someone on the forum believes I wasted all the money after spending such an expensive repair. Really it wasn't so expensive, I did it in terms of my planning till the end of the season, so I'm absolutely ok with that. All it means is that you have one more way to get a retention. It's not hard for me to get a retention by different ways, I already did it on Contimental, Dunnos and BY. You should just be able to make a good plan, bring the car in a good shape for key races: maybe FT or PHA-friendly track, maybe high temperatures for Conties or wet race for BY. If you have a low level car, it doesn't mean that you have to pick Pipirelli and relegate. You can get all your experience and be ready for these races where you will be unbeatable, or at least where you can score some points!
Few words from myself. You can see some things on the first glance, but it doesn't mean it's true. Get the heart of the matter and you will find the truth.
Thank you Mihail for your philosophical answers. We hope to see more from you and your team in the future.
For Elite Press, I’m Brad Marshall hoping you always find your car track-suitable.
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Thanks again for anothee great interview Brad and Mihail
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Read, comment, participate in the discussion
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Quote ( Mihail Morozov @ January 29th 2019,11:39:48 ) Read, comment, participate in the discussion what a nooby English
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Quote ( Alexei Malkin @ January 29th 2019,11:57:33 ) Quote ( Mihail Morozov @ January 29th 2019,11:39:48 )
Read, comment, participate in the discussion what a nooby English
that's why I asked you to translate this text
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Interesting read :) Congrats on your extravaganza Mihail, looking forward to see what else you can achieve with that driver as he matures.
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Nice interview Brad and congratz Mihail for the achievment. You will definitely change the way people play the game for the following seasons, never i would imagine something like this would have happened in Elite.
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Brad, you set the bar really high with that meme but the interview was solid enough to beat it :D
Finally we got to see Mihail's POV. It was interesting :)
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Quote ( Yug Desai @ January 29th 2019,12:34:54 )
that's why I asked you to translate this text that's why this English so nooby
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