A Rookie wins at Monaco - SGroe on his spectacular victory

This interview was held by Reh on Wednesday 4th January 2012.

Question: SGroe, congratulations for your victory in Monaco! Who would have thought that? How was your race?
SGroe: Thanks. It is great to celebrate my first victory at this historic venue. My race start and the first stint were not good and I lost five seconds on the leader, but I managed to avoid hitting the wall. After the first pit stop I found the rhythm and drove good lap times. Shortly after my third and last pit stop, Mr. J had his crash at the tunnel entry. I have just driven through turn eight, when I saw fire sparks and a front wing sliding across the street in front of me. As a result, I overtook his damaged car just before La Rascasse. Two laps later I had a little problem by myself, when I took the curbs at the second swimming pool chicane too hard. Luckily, I recovered from that without severe damage. After Mr.J's incident, the last laps were settled and I raced to my first victory. Listening to the Austrian anthem was a awesome experience.

Question: You're a Rookie, but you're showing splendorous results, how is that?
SGroe: I play GeneRally since its initial release. I still remember the time of regularly game updates in the years of 2002 and 2003. Since then, I have driven races against the AI drivers on self built circuits using the default Formula car. But I have never been interested in participating in the community life. This did not change until last autumn. Fortunately, I found the call for drivers for the PGR Formula 1 Championship. I did not hesitate to join because of my interest in F1 and the fact that the series is based in Germany. Also the very detailed sporting regulation has been a big help for rookies. Overall, I want to express my admiration for the organizers. Their work is excellent.

Question: With 51 points you are 4th in the Driver's Championship within reach to the top, what are your goals for the season?
SGroe: Well, after the test sessions before the first race in Melbourne, my overall goal for the 2011/12 season was to achieve some points. Coming to Australia and drive to the fifth grid position was my favorite career moment so far. This was a bigger surprise than the victory here in Monte Carlo.
I got my first points in the following race, I stepped up the podium in Shanghai and I achieved my first win in the streets of Monte Carlo. Apparently, I have to adjust my goals. As I am only three points behind the McLaren of TuomoH in the championship, my revised goal for the season is the podium in the final championship standings. Also, I would be great to perform well in Montreal, which is one of my favorite tracks, and in my home race in Zeltweg.

Question: We're heading to America now, to Laguna Seca. What are the key elements of this track? Where do you think you can get most of the time for one lap?
SGroe: During the practice sessions I had most difficulties in the second half of the track. Especially the section between the exit of the Corkscrew chicane and the following two turns until the pit entry is important. In contrast, the first half is straight forward. You have to be aggressive and if you lose the racing line, you can recover without losing much time.

Question: What do you think will the pole position time be?
SGroe: In general, I seem to lack pace in qualifying, therefore I just have to reduce my best training time by a few tenths. I think the pole position time will be around 19:40.

Question: Thanks SGroe for the interview! Something says me, that this isn't your last interview, see you on track!
SGroe: Thank you. I really enjoyed to participate in the press conference. Finally, I want to encourage everyone to participate in the future sessions. It is much more fun with more than 20 cars on track instead of less than 15.

Happy new year 2012!

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Voices about the Lorenzo case

This interview was held by Reh on Sunday 18th December 2011.

On Tuesday the 13th of December Rudy Oosterndijk announced, that Lorenzo, dominating winner of the PGR F1 Chinese Grand Prix, has been suspended completely from PGR Formula One. Until this time Lorenzo had achieved 14 victories and 12 pole positions in international competitions and had been honored with the RoM (Rookie of the Month) title of November 2009.
So far, Lorenzo has not yet taken the iniative to comment on this case.

Question: Rudy, together with Majortom you said that you have proved the illegality of Lorenzo's races and shared "a detailed description of this technique with the relevant group of people". Why not with the whole community and who is relevant?
Rudy: First off all, please let me say that we were all shocked when our initial doubts about the performance of such a highly-decorated driver turned out to be reasonable. In the end and in retrospect, the question arises if all of these decorations were the result of bad sportsmanship. It would be a shame if this question mark kept hanging over his former performances in other GeneRally competitions.

For the sake of clarity and our own peace of mind, we decided to examine the Formula One results on the Polish forums. The similarities are striking so we can assume that Lorenzo's Chinese Grand Prix was not a single case.
The whole process of developing theories, collecting evidence and, finally, proving him guilty in both competitions took us about 2 weeks due to the complexity of his cheating technique and the enormous effort he must have put in.

We do not plan to make details of cheating attempts available for public use. Why would we? This particular piece of information is useless for the honest competitor on the forums. In PGR F1, we are well-prepared for potential imitators but you cannot be sure that our anti-cheating standards are applied in every other contest out there as well.
So we only share our knowledge about the latest developments with, in my words, "the relevant group of people" like those who are sitting next to me at the moment. Additionally, we have been in contact with the game developers and we are working on solutions that will make it even harder to exceed the limits of fair play and, therefore, will protect the interests of the great majority of drivers on the forums.

Question: Ivo, What effect will this incident and maybe biggest case of cheating in the history of GeneRally have on the International GeneRally Community?
Ivo: At the beginning I'd like to mention, that I don't see these these things in so dark colours like maybe some others. Actually every similar announcement is welcomed by me, because in my opinion it's announcement of good news for every fair driver and indeed especially for all PGR F1 drivers, who now can be sure, that by entering the PGR F1 they're in hands of really skilled and precise organizers.

To core of the question, I doubt, that this is the biggest incident which ever happened. Nothing more happened, that a guy in a competition was trying to cheat and guys organizing it made good job with catching him, so he paid the prize by forced leaving the competition and his shame will be recorded below his name in GWR forever - not for first time, not for last time. People like JTarJ (aka James C.) in past proved similar or graver cheats of certain persons too, only noting similar happened in close past, so we forgot these stories. Even if we include the dimension, which these things had for confirming reasonable suspicions on local Polish level, I know, that they don't experience similar affair for first time.

So in sum I wouldn't over-rate the importance or impact of this single affair. It will certainly give some new experience to all related to competitions (thanks to Rudy's info for relevant people), so more organizers, especially those naive, who ''do just for-fun compo, their drivers also race just for fun, so no need to expect any cheaters'', will be able to increase their measures against these malicious actions - again. People were, are and will be trying to cheat and organizers were, are and will be learning how to catch them. It's natural evolution, we just did one more step forward.

Question: Jo, Lorenzo has raced in GWR 48 events to the day, is there a possibility to prove when he has cheated? How will this affect the GWR results of the last years?
Jo.sk: I think it's totally unfair to recalculate all the past results with the Lorenzo's DQs.
The more simple and fairer is in my opinion only to delete the Lorenzo's scores and results (turning them to "DQ") and keep the results of other drivers : then the ranking won't change (almost) :
- Lorenzo will fall down at the end of the classifications.
- The best hotlapper of January 2011 become : C. Bohessef.
- The best rookie of November 2009 become : Rudy Oosterndjik.

I've already did that with some drivers but it was only for 1 or 2 events (at most 5). With 48 events of a possible cheating, it's ... incredible! And a big danger for GR. If it's proved, the punishment must be high !

Ivo: If I can add something, I believe, that Lorenzo really is a skilled and talented GR driver too and it's his own fault, that he threw a dark shadow of doubts on every single achievement, which he ever made. Although some doubts about several of the achievements may be reasonable, let's keep in mind, that unless anybody can prove in each single case, that he did something wrong, the results will be kept, because must be considered as achieved by fair ways. As mentioned by Rudy, his results in last season Polish F1 were reviewed by him and Majortom (and AFAIK Polish administration already took measures to reflect it in standings) and a revision may happen in some other cases too, but any conclusions to other results based only on the F1 facts are premature and may be misleading. And BTW care about this is a duty of each us - particular compo organizers (and indeed our responsibility towards GWR), not a duty of GWR.

Question: Is there a possibility to prevent GeneRally competitions of cheating like Lorenzo did?
Ivo: No, you cannot prevent to people from realising of their taste for cheating into malicious acts, but you can reveal them and make them responsible for their abuses, like Rudy with Majortom proved right now.

If for example directly the development team will be willing to take measures to make harder to commit cheats like which happened in this particular case (based on detail Majortom's reports), then it will be good news for everyone, but you can be sure, that a bad guy will occur again later and will try something other for taking a benefit.

Thank you so much for the interview!

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