So the RNG happened on Discord a few days ago, but it's taken me a few days to distil it into a post for the forum. Here we are:
Sponsors
Caltex Oil Refineries has attracted attention from both NART and BMW.
NART might be more established in Formula One, but BMW is a German manufacturer who seem like a more reliable bet to turn up at the German Grand Prix.
1-40 - NART becomes "North American Caltex Racing Team"
41-100 - BMW becomes "Caltex Racing Team BMW"
(both of these will be considered close enough to meet the Basic sponsor goal)
63! BMW secures Caltex sponsorsip.
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Nobody has yet bid for Gunston sponsorship
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Kent Cigarettes have two big name suitors: Lotus and Brabham.
Lotus is considered the better bet by Kent, given that they have reigning F1 World Champion and Indy 500 winner Jim Clark in their ranks, but the name recognition of a multiple F1 World Drivers Champion does also have some clout.
1-67 - "Kent Team Lotus"
68-100 - "Kent Racing Organisation"
91 - And we have our first spicy RNG of the day!
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Now we move on to
Employees.
Colin Chapman and
Ron Tauranac are locked in at Lotus and Brabham respectively.
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We start our RNGs with
Frank Costin. He's a cheap date, with a desired salary of only £20,000.
His suitors are BRM, Ligier (who are offering an extra £5,000), and Parnell. Of those, BRM is by far the most established team, although the extra pay from Ligier is appealing.
1-50 - BRM
51-80 - Ligier
81-100 - Parnell
76 - We are already getting some big numbers; Ligier will debut in F1 using a Protos chassis.
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Next we go to his brother
Mike Costin.
He asked for £150,000, and Reg Parnell Racing have offered him exactly that. He has no other offers, so he accepts without RNG.
Reg Parnell Racing will have exclusive use of
Cosworth engines in 1967.
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Next,
Mauro Forghieri.
He waits by the phone in Modena, expecting a phone call that doesn't come.
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Now to
Jim Hall.
He has asked for a salary of £100,000 to do some engineering wizardry and also to drive one of the cars.
Honda have agreed to give him everything he's asked for, in what seems like a great deal for them; he accepts without RNG.
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Next,
Phil Irving is looking to shill some
Repco engines in return for an £80,000 salary.
Brabham are his only suitor, and they offer a round £100,000; he accepts immediately.
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Yoshio Nakamura was very disappointed not to be among the Honda staff receiving work visas for the Netherlands.
He is still looking for a job elsewhere, but nobody has called him yet.
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Roy Salvadori is looking to move into team management, requesting a £30,000 salary from whomever chooses to employ him.
He has three offers on the table: one from Lotus for £30,000, one from Rob Walker Racing for £30,000 and one from Tyrrell for £35,000.
Now, before we get to the odds, I think we have to talk about Tyrrell. Tyrrell in 1966 was not a big team: it was an F2 operation run out of a shed, and the £100,000 budget reflects this situation. There will be carneying opportunities later, but for now this is all that Tyrrell have to go racing with - it must include car costs, travel costs and entry fees.
For some reason, Shawn has committed bids to run two paid drivers and to employ Roy Salvadori as team manager for a total expected cost of between £85,000 and £90,000,
At this point, there are only two options: either I run the bids as submitted, and Tyrrell folds before the start of the season, returning later in the game, or I take over the team and submit new bids for the sake of the continuity of Alt-F1, and Shawn goes on the waiting list for a new team from 1967 (which would give him the opportunity to watch how the game runs for a season and coming back in with a bit more knowledge.
I think there is only one way to fairly decide this, and it's with an RNG!
1-50 - We let it all play out.
51-100 - I adopt Tyrrell for the time being.
99 - RNGesus is blessing us with some big numbers.
The revised Tyrrell bids are as follows:
Car 1:
Jacky Ickx (FREE)
Hermano da Silva Ramos (£25,000)
Chris Bristow (£15,000)
Car 2:
Chris Bristow (£15,000)
Pete Lovely (must pay at least £10,000 for partial schedule)
David Prophet (must pay full £10,000 in return for all British races)
Mike Taylor (must pay full £10,000 in return for all British races)
Jonathan WIlliams (must pay at least £10,000 in return for all British races)
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So, finally, we RNG Roy Salvadori's future.
1-67 - takes the Lotus meal ticket
68-100 - prefers the more relaxed climes of Rob Walker Racing
53 - Salvadori will work with Team Lotus.
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Now for
Len Terry.
His affordable price point means that he has no fewer than five suitors.
1-30 - Honda
31-50 - McLaren
51-70- Rob Walker Racing
71-90 - BRM
91-100 - Ligier
(all offers are for £30,000)
76 - Terry goes to BRM! This is quite tragic really, I was hoping that he'd go to Rob Walker and they'd run one of his "Terrier" chassis.
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Next,
Giovanni Volpi.
He has one offer from Scuderia Centro Sud that gives him everything he could ask for.
He accepts the offer, setting into place a cascade where SCS become home to
Serenissima engines and
Giancarlo Baghetti as their lead driver.
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And our final employee in waiting,
Harry Weslake.
He's been talking to his new neighbours from Anglo American Racers (literal neighbours, they bought the premises next door), and he's really very keen to sign up with them. However, he also has a proposal from French manufacturers Matra that can't be dismissed out of hand.
1-80 - supplies Weslake engines to AAR
81-100 - did somebody say Matra V12?
83! This is already completely wild, and we've not even got to the drivers yet.
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Drivers
The first and most important driver is
Kurt Ahrens. He's locked in at Caltex BMW, as his sponsors wished.
Guy Ligier is of course locked in at Equipe Ligier.
Jack Brabham is of course locked in at Brabham.
Dan Gurney is obviously locked in with AAR.
Bruce McLaren is locked in with McLaren.
Carel Godin de Beaufort is obviously locked in at his own team
Doug Serrurier will also drive for himself.
And
Jim Hall has already signed a deal with Honda.
Now onto the drivers who actually have to make decisions.
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Next,
Lorenzo Bandini.
He has only one offer, for £25,000 from the only team he really wanted; Bandini signs for Ferrari without an RNG.
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Next up is
Jochen Rindt.
The inexperienced Austrian was always going to be one of the biggest bargains available, and plenty of suitors have noticed. Ferrari, Cooper and McLaren are all offering him the paltry £15,000 he asked for.
1-50 - Ferrari
51-85 - Cooper
86-100 - McLaren
50 - Rindt thinks long and hard and
almost goes to Cooper, but ultimately the allure of that shiny red car is too much to ignore.
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Denny Hulme has only one offer on the table, and it's not from Brabham or McLaren. Instead, he has an offer from NART.
They have offered him the salary he was after so he accepts, but holds out hope that he might get a call from someone more likely to offer a full season.
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They also offer a drive to
Bernard Collomb.
The monied Frenchman brings with him a budget of £50,000, but he's used to self-entering for races and absolutely not used to leaving Europe if he can help it.
1-30 - accepts NART's deal because life is an adventure
31-65 - declines NART's offer, intending to self-enter some European rounds later in the season
66-100 - declines NART's offer, but remains open to other offers that might come his way
71 - Collomb heads to his local boulangerie, but he will still check the answering machine when he gets home, because he's rich enough to own one of those.
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That brings us to
Peter Revson.
Remember, this RNG is "first choice first", which means that NART haven't contacted him yet. The two teams who have are BRM and Cooper, who would both like him to come along and be their second driver.
Given their relative success in Alt-50s, these odds are going to favour Cooper a little bit:
1-67 - Cooper
68-100 - BRM
42 - Peter Revson is a Cooper driver.
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Chris Amon has an offer from BRM as well, this time as their first driver. They offer him everything he's after, and with no other offers he accepts without RNG.
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Next up is
Jo Bonnier.
The wealthy Swede has attracted offers from Scuderia Centro Sud and Reg Parnell Racing. It doesn't get any more carney than this:
1-50 - Pizza
51-100 - Pie & mash
48 - After significant difficulty deciding, Bonnier decides that Italy is the place to be.
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Next up a couple of very easy decisions: both
Stirling Moss and
Jo Siffert came into this hoping for offers from Rob Walker Racing, and they received them. At market rate no less. They accept.
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Now
Mike Hailwood has a £25,000 offer from Reg Parnell Racing. With no counter-offers, and the offer being at market rate, he accepts.
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David Piper also has an offer, this one from Anglo American Racers. He brings his admirable wallet down to East Sussex to help Dan Gurney build a car.
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Johnny Servoz-Gavin has an offer from Matra to make his Formula One debut.
The houseboat enthusiast has no qualms about driving for Matra, despite their request that he brings some funding.
How much funding will he bring?
First RNG:
1-40 - £10,000 or under
41-70 - between £10,000 and £20,000
71-90 - between £20,000 and £50,000
91-100 - between £50,000 and £100,000
38!
Second RNG:
1-10 (thousand pounds)
Johnny Servoz-Gavin brings £
9,000 to Matra.
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Gerhard Mitter has only one offer; that is as Brabham's second driver, and they're happy to let him tune their new Repco engines. He gladly accepts.
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Which brings us to
Richie Ginther, who has the offer of a Honda meal ticket 4 lyf. They are happy to pay him at the market rate, and with no competition from anywhere else he too signs without RNG.
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Jacky Ickx has an offer to step up to Formula One with the Tyrrell team, but they're not actually prepared to pay him.
1-50 - Agrees to be paid in exposure
51-100 - Will keep collecting tin-top pay cheques for another year
6 - Jacky really wanted to make that step up to F1, and now he will.
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Tyrrell have also offered a seat to
Chris Bristow; the fast idiot has been offered a market rate salary (which I'm sure impresses Ickx no end) and signs without RNG
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Jim Clark of course accepts an offer to continue with Lotus, who will pay him the market rate.
Mario Andretti also has an offer from Lotus to join their ranks.
The Italian-American is the reigning National Champion in the United States, driving cars with amazing names like "Elder", "Meskowski", "Blum", "Kuzma" and "Hawk". He's not completely sure whether he wants to leave the United States behind just yet, but being paid £100,000 to drive for the reigning Champion team might make his mind up.
1-60 - Crosses the pond and would like to run a full time schedule, but would still like to run the Indianapolis 500
61-100 - Decides to stay and dominate Stateside for the foreseeable future
53 - After much consideration, Andretti agrees; Lotus will field the all-star pairing of Clark and Andretti both in Formula One and at Indianapolis.
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Jochen Neerpasch accepts the opportunity to do a one-off at Zeltweg; it remains to be seen whether that will be alongside Carel or instead of him.
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Now we move on to
second-choice bids;
Wolfgang von Trips has an offer to drive for NART. They have asked him to pay for his drive, but the best he will do is to drive for free. Getz agreed to this, and so von Trips is a NART driver.
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Bernard Collomb has another phone call, this time from Reg Parnell Racing.
They are reassuringly European, but British and not French so he lays down his conditions: he would like to enter all of the non-championship events, as well as France and Monaco at a minimum.
If Parnell fails to deliver that, he will withdraw himself and his funding from the team,
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Piers Courage has been approached by BRM; they say the seat is his if he can bring some money in.
RNG 1:
83 (£20,000 to £50,000)
RNG 2:
45
Piers Courage brings in £45,000 to the British team!
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Dickie Attwood has an offer from Bruce McLaren to be his number two.
At the £15,000 market rate, it's an offer he can't refuse. So he doesn't.
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Now to
John Surtees.
The former BCMA race winner must have been worrying that he (like so many others) might never get a phone call. But he does, and it's John Cooper offering him the market rate for his services.
He accepts the deal, but makes it quite clear to Cooper that he expects a top-tier car.
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And now onto the
Late Bids
Mike Parkes has an offer to become a Honda engineer, coupled with test and reserve driving duties. This is the same role he has previously been employed in at Ferrari, and it is the exact role he was trying to get away from; at the same time, £30,000 is a not insignificant amount of money.
1-33 - Accepts the deal, on the condition that he is the first reserve driver if anything happens to the two main race drivers
34-67 - He is almost prepared to accept the deal, but he would like assurances that he will race in all the British races
68-100 - Declines the deal, choosing to hold on in hope of a race drive somewhere
27 - Mike Parkes is now a Honda employee.
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Jackie Stewart has an offer at market rate for Brabham
He accepts the deal, but there is the small matter of Mitter, which leads to two RNGs
Firstly, is Stewart happy to be the driver benched for the German GP?
1-40 - No, Stewart demands to drive every round
41-70 - Yes, Stewart is happy to sit out if that's what's best for the team
71-100 - Stewart is only happy to sit out the German GP if he's behind Brabham in the WDC
39 - Stewart thinks about being the team man, but decides he has to look out for himself.
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The next RNG is whether
Gerhard Mitter is completely happy being demoted to such very part-time driving duties, having initially been promised a full-time seat.
1-33 - "I only set out to drive the German GP, so it's okay" (but in German)
34-66 - "As long as I'm the first reserve if anything happens to one of the main drivers" (but in German)
67-99 - "I'm not happy at all, and I'm thinking about leaving the team unless you pay me a salary" (but in German)
100 -
(universal language)
37 - Mitter isn't bitter; takes the matter in his stride.
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Graham Hill has not really attracted any attention, apart from one phone call from Doug Serrurier.
Serrurier has asked if Hill would like to drive the South African Grand Prix. It'll not be a competitive car, and it'll not be well-paid, but it would at least be a drive.
1-5 - "Throw in a braai with that £100, and I might even turn up."
6-100 - "I'm sorry, who is this?"
71 - I'm afraid Graham Hill will not be driving an LDS.
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So concludes our first round of RNGs; details of bidding for car bits will be posted shortly.