Spreadsheets for calculating car/driver performance values for F1ED.
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To use these spreadsheets you will need (a) a spreadsheet program
capable of reading .WK3 files, (b) Microprose Formula 1 Grand Prix
(aka World Circuit), and (c) F1ED.

Getting the necessary values is a trial-and-error process.  To add a
new spreadsheet, proceed as follows:

1) Insert a worksheet before the last (Season Averages) one (or
before the first one if you're adding a race before Silverstone).
Copy A:A1..A:X33 to A1 in your new sheet.  Set the column widths and
hide columns to match sheet A: (this is exceptionally tedious, but I
don't know an automatic way of doing this).

2) Type in the qualifying times and the fastest lap times in the
columns provided.  If a car did not finish the race, I estimate a
fastest lap time based on the times of the cars immediately ahead of
and behind its position in the field when it retired (I use a '*' in
the next column to indicate this); this is not a hard-and-fast rule,
you can adjust the estimated times so the results look reasonable.

3) Entering the values at the top of the sheet, set the fastest car,
slowest car and worst driver to guesses.  750, 500 and 34 are
suitable starting values.

4) Enter the computed values in the CAR and QUAL columns into F1ED,
start up GP, select NO drivers, non-championship race, the circuit
you are entering data for, qualifying, and go into accelerated time.

5) Considering the times you got in the game, adjust the fastest and
slowest car ratings until the game qualifying times for the drivers
rated '1' match the actual times.  This will probably require looping
around steps 4 and 5 a few times.

6) Take the driver with the worst qualifying rating, and adjust so
that the gap between him and his team mate in qualifying comes out
right in the game (the margin for error here is rather worse).  If
the worst driver is worse than 34, pick the worst one that's 34 or
less.

7) Enter the values from the next CAR and RACE columns into F1ED,
fire up GP, select NO drivers, non-championship race, the circuit,
race, and accelerated time.

8) Adjust the fastest car so the race finishing time matches the
real value, adjust the slowest car so the spread of finishers is
about right (i.e. last car was 4 laps down at the finish), and
adjust Worst Drive to taste (do this so that the order of the
first few finishers is as close as you can get it).

9) Enter the values from the rightmost 3 columns into F1ED, and
race!

The formula for car performance vs. time is actually quite accurate,
based on some testing I've done.  There is a linear relationship
between the time and the inverse of the car performance.  The min Q
time and Q perf mul (and likewise substituting R for Q) show the
origin and slope of the line on an imaginary graph.

Unfortunately, testing various values for driver performance did not
reveal any sort of obvious curve, so it is approximated by a linear
function (the actual shape was two shallow wiggles, so it's not too
far off).  Q pts/sec and R pts/sec show the number of driver skill
points spanning 1 second of lap time.

If you enter any of the data for circuits which I don't have, I'd
appreciate it if you sent me a copy!  I'll release as much as I've
got at the end of the season, and I intend to enter all the
remaining races, so I'm mostly interested in ones before
Silverstone.

        Have fun!

                - Craig @ SCO near London (craig@sco.com)
