Since 2008 I have kept the logs of almost every race I drove, either against the AI or other players online: thousands of sessions in GTR2, Automobilista, rFactor and friends, all sitting in the Racing module as tidy rows of positions, gaps and lap times. Tidy, accurate and completely silent. A 51-second win at Castle Combe looks exactly like a first-lap DNF at Bristol: one more line in a table.
Back when I first started racing online with my friends (hello Tib!), every race had a story, because someone always wrote one. So I decided to give the remaining races their press corps back. Every session can now get its own race report, written in the voice of the old Formula Duude blog: real numbers from the database, wrapped in absolute nonsense. This is the story of how that happened, and a collection of the best (worst?) things the press corps has written so far.
The inspiration: Formula Duude
Formula Duude was a league of a handful of friends racing GTR2 online on Thursday nights, from 2008 to 2010, with the odd, shortened return in 2017. The racing was real. Everything around it was not. We reported each round as if it were a big-money world championship, with sponsors, scandals, protests, contract drama and a governing body, and the staff around the drivers were borrowed from pop culture: Hugh Laurie as a House-style team principal who only says "People lie", Flavor Flav running Losel Racing, Magic: The Gathering cards working as engineers, Dr. Robotnik designing engines, and a council whose acronym changed every single time someone mentioned it.
All of it was written by hand: 435 posts of race notes, press releases, press conferences, council rulings, radio transcripts and the occasional song parody. The blog went offline years ago, but I recently brought the whole archive back home, and it now lives at /formuladuude. Reading it again was the spark. The jokes still work, the races are still readable, and the thing I missed the most was not the racing itself. It was the paddock.
Building the persona
Before any AI could write like us, it needed to know who "us" was. So I wrote a persona brief, distilled from reading the archive: a single document describing the whole Formula Duude media ecosystem as one character. It is the official website, the TV channel (FDTV), every team's PR department and the stenographer at every press conference, all at once.
The heart of the brief is one idea: the joke is the collision between two registers.
- Genuinely competent race reporting. Gaps, fastest laps, positions gained, who retired and when. A real sim racer should be able to read the report and know what happened.
- Absolute nonsense wrapped around it. Pompous team bosses, clueless team principals, pun-named journalists, fake sponsors, and a bureaucratic council that ends every ruling by going for a nap.
"Never let the nonsense erase the race. Never let the race make it dry." That line is in the brief, and it is the whole recipe.
The rest of the brief is the canon: who the friends were (tib, Dave, Liz, Mansell, Jens, Pippo, Rodrigo), which teams they raced for, the running gags (drive-through penalties, spins at the worst moment, "Ps. Dave, where are you?!"), the voice (English written by Brazilian friends, a little loose, with the occasional totozinho, Radial Leste traffic jam or '72 Brasília), and the post formats with real excerpts from the archive for calibration. There is also one hard rule: inventing the nonsense is the job, inventing the racing is not. If the data does not say who led on lap 5, the report has to joke around it, never make it up.
The offline races needed a cast of their own, too. The rivals are AI drivers with their real names from the results, and the "hero" is me, which comes with a strict instruction: keep him self-deprecating, even when he wins by a minute.
How a report comes to life
From the race screen in the admin (or a cron job), one button sends the session to an automation pipeline. It collects the classification (grid, finishing position, laps, total time, best lap, car and team for every driver), some pre-computed facts (winning margin, fastest-lap gaps, places gained, missing positions), championship positions when it matters, the two previous races for context and, optionally, my own notes about the race. Then it rolls the dice.
Literally. Language models are bad at being random, so a small script picks the shape of each report before the model writes a word: the format (results, team race notes, press conference, radio remix, press release, FDTV broadcast, council ruling or, rarely, a song), the guest cast, the opening move, any extras, and who gets the "Ps." line. It also remembers the last few rolls, so two reports in a row do not end up looking alike. The model then writes the report with the persona, the dice and the data, and the result is posted to the site as an article in the Race Reports category, linked to its race, with a button to the full results at the end.
Where reality ends (and the council begins)
The best reports are the ones where the facts are funnier than the jokes. In the very first report, the database showed that my average lap over 25 laps at Castle Combe, standing start included, was faster than the best single lap of all but eight of my 31 rivals. The press corps did not need to exaggerate anything. It just needed to print it:
Here is the stat that the Corvette Racing engineers printed and stuck to the fridge: Horta's average lap over the full 25 laps (standing start included) was 1:04.629. Only eight of his 31 rivals managed even a single lap faster than that. Sam Rolfe got in by one hundredth (1:04.619). Everybody else's personal best was slower than Horta's average.
When the data does not tell the story, the brief tells the model to hand-wave it as a joke instead of inventing overtakes. That is how we learned that the lap-by-lap timing screen at Castle Combe "was being used as a coaster for a pint of bitter".
My notes are where the real moments come in. At Adelaide I wrote down that I spun at Turn 13 right after taking the lead, rejoined five seconds behind and took the lead back on lap 6. The report kept every one of those facts, and still handed the microphone to President Luca di Guevara, who "only cares about WINNING". At Melbourne I mentioned that I had set the AI to 102% and still won by 43 seconds, which the press conference turned into a Losel Racing interrogation.
And then there are the data oddities. The brief says to report them honestly, in-universe, and the governing body has been very busy: missing grids, three drivers with the exact same best lap to the thousandth, a race with no third place, two different cars sharing number 29, a driver classified first after zero laps. Each one became a motion before a council with a freshly mutated acronym:
Motion 20260925/02: the triplets. Jon Wathen (Maserati Trofeo Light), David Poel (Spyker C8 Spyder GT2-R) and Chuck Carter (the other Maserati) all set exactly the same best lap: 1:04.915. Three different drivers, two different makes, the same lap time to the thousandth. The council suspects Vesuvan Doppelganger involvement and has requested DNA samples from all three cars.
The unexpected bonus: the council turned into my best bug tracker. Sometimes a "strange race" was really a problem with the import (a driver cloned into two entries, a ghost slot from an online log), and the motion pointed right at it. More than one of them sent me back to the importer to fix it. The ElderCouncil napped. The code got better.
The best of the press corps
Over seventy reports in, here is a selection of my favourite moments. All of them are real excerpts, lightly trimmed, and every one of them is attached to a real race.
The stopwatch was unfortunately entirely honest
R.U. Serious - Daily Weekly: Team Principal Laurie stated earlier that people lie. Was your race pace just an elaborate deception?
Fernando Horta: I wish. The stopwatch was unfortunately entirely honest.
Same car. SAME CAR.
Christian Hamilton (Corvette Racing, 16th): Same car. SAME CAR. I looked at the telemetry and the telemetry looked back at me and asked if I was okay. And then a Mustang beat me by three tenths. Please don't write that down. No comment. Fine, write it down.
A press conference held entirely by the Radaxian People
Kent Komeu - The Punning Herald: Can anyone explain how Fabrizio Gollin managed to win a 19-lap race at Hockenheim in thirty minutes and three seconds?
*Beep beep*
R.U. Serious - Daily Weekly: That does not answer the question about Gollin's Ferrari 550 GTS beating Tom Kristensen's Lambo by less than two seconds.
*Beep beep*
[…]
Serious Cat - Serious News: This is a waste of time. […]
*Beep beep*
Counting past two
Kent Komeu - The Punning Herald: Council, is there any truth to the rumour that Horta's car was simply parked because he forgot how many laps a 4.2-kilometer circuit actually is?
The Priest of the Temples of FD: *Adjusts ceremonial robes and squints at a piece of toast* We have consulted the ancient scrolls, and they indicate that counting past two is strictly optional in Rio Grande do Sul.
R.U. Serious - Daily Weekly: Does this single-lap disaster mean Team Maranello Concessionaires will switch to bicycles for the next round?
The Priest of the Temples of FD: *Yawns loudly and knocks over a mug of lukewarm coffee* Bicycles have too many moving parts. Next question.
— Motion 20260905/01: The Curious Case of the One-Lap Ferrari
Driving quickly versus driving winningly
Alan Donatellofson (Crew Chief): Fernando, I see you have recorded a 1:48.743. That is a very lovely number. Do they award championship trophies for mathematical beauty now, or are you planning to actually overtake the car in front before we run out of asphalt?
[…] Effective immediately, Horta's post-race catering privileges have been revoked. He will spend the journey back to the factory studying the geometric differences between driving quickly and driving winningly.
— Barcelona: Marlboro Condemns Horta's Futile Velocity After P2 Finish
One lap, sung to the tune of My Way
And now, the end is near
And so I face the final chicane
One lap, my friend, is clear
We crossed the line and caught a bollard strain
I planned a full race run
Each twist and turn along the Autodromo
And more, much more than this
We got DQ'd.
A correction
Correction: An earlier version of this report stated that Ian Jolicoeur was driving a tractor equipped with aftermarket spoilers. He was, in fact, driving a BMW M3 GTR.
— Ian Jolicoeur Wins Ten-Lap Sebring Sprint As Horta Exits Early
Mortality, according to Goth Sips
Trevus Belmort - Goth Sips: The shadows over the Lesmo curves whispered of your despair, Fernando. Did you feel the cold hand of mortality touch your rear bumper as the laps ticked away?
Fernando Horta (Driver): I felt a pigeon hit my windscreen on lap four, Trevus. Does that count as mortality? Because honestly, that bird had a better afternoon than I did.
Winning by surviving
Juliano Flores sat in the gravel pit at Turn 4, staring at a Swedish seagull, while the chequered flag remained safely rolled up in a cupboard. He had won the race. Or, rather, he had ceased to function slightly later than anyone else on the circuit, which under local municipal ordinances counted as a victory.
— Anderstorp Race Notes: BMW Motorsport Survives Its Own Success
The shortest interview
Luigi "Apex" Rossi (Gazzetta dello Skidmark): Caspita! Did you bribe the timekeepers or did the Mosler just drive itself?
Fernando Horta: Yes.
Cleo on the pit wall
Cleo (#63 crew): You are currently 26th, sitting right behind Chuck Carter. If you get lapped by a Maserati, I am legally joining JMB Racing.
[…]
Fernando Horta (#63): Chequered flag. P18. I am coming in. Don't say a single word.
Cleo (#63 crew): Don't worry, your driving spoke volumes today. We've already packed up the motorhome and left. See you at the airport.
— Red Bull Ring Radio Remix: Horta Leads, Beach Party Ensues, and Cleo Spills the Tea!
The silver medal of the damned
Horta (#63): Oh, the absolute cruelty of the fifth lap! I have slipped to fourth behind Hromin and Lidkea. The tires are turning to dust, just like my youth.
Sandro (#63 crew): Your youth ended in the nineties, Fernando. You missed your braking point at Turn 4 because you were looking at a helicopter. Focus.
— Sakhir Sorrows: Horta Clinches Melodramatic P2 in Bahrain Radio Remix
Post-race analysis, complete
Fernando Horta (Driver): The car was red. It went fast. I am happy we did not hit a pelican this time.
— Estoril Results: Horta Dominates as P3 Vanishes Into the Aether
What I learned along the way
The first batch taught me the most. Read one Castle Combe report and it is great; read six in a row and you notice that every single one ends with "Next time, the saga continues…", every Ps. begs Dave to come back, and the timing screen is always a coaster. The model was not wrong, it was just doing the same good thing every time. That is what the dice are for now: different formats, different casts, different openers, different Ps. victims. Variety had to be designed; it did not come for free.
The other lesson was about honesty. The temptation, for the model, is to make the race more exciting than it was: invent a last-lap pass, a duel that never happened. The persona's hardest rule, inventing the nonsense but never the racing, is what makes the reports work. Dr. Robotnik can blame the sandy Italian air for an engine failure, because nobody will believe it. A made-up overtake for the lead, people would.
And some quirks are just part of the charm by now. The council dates its motions from the wrong decade, Dave keeps getting blamed for races he did not drive, and the press corps misses tib almost as much as I do.
Building this felt a bit like hiring a sports newspaper staffed entirely by my old friends' imaginary characters: they get every number right, and they still find a way to make me the punchline.
