July 5, 1998 - I'm hard on the brakes for Tarzan, going down through the gears, tires chirping on the edge of adhesion as they skitter over the bumps in the braking zone. Through the long slow right-hander, I use the throttle to bring the tail around, then get on it hard for the short run to the kink, lifting to settle the car as I flick left, then hard on the brakes again and down to first for the slow right-hander. Up to redline in first and then braking again for Hunze Rug, a slow hairpin to the left, where I use the power to keep the car up on the edge of adhesion, squeezing in more at the exit to carry the car out to the verge.
Now I'm in the roller-coaster back section of Zandvoort, storming through the sandy dunes. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the flags waving in the breeze, crowds standing behind flimsy wire fencing. The possibility of a mistake doesn't bear thinking about...
Up over the hill, going up through the gears, I lift at the crest to keep the rear wheels from spinning under the massive power as the car goes light, then I'm hard on the power again, breathing just enough to make the turn in for the fast left-hand sweeper, then hard right through an off camber sweeper with surprising grip, the momentum carrying me right out to the edge.
Suddenly I'm braking as I crest a little rise, down to second and easing the car in as the track falls away, then on the power, looking for the limit as the car loads up through the banking at Scheivlak and the increasing download as the track rises again. Flick left, up to the redline in third for a moment, then a quick lift for a fast left-right sequence called Earste Hondenvlack that has to be just right if I don't want a mouthful of sand for dinner. Here it's critical to get the car down to the apex for the right-hander, for the grip seems better there, and this time I get it just right.
Now I'm accelerating away toward the Tunnel turn, a fast kink where I must lift and turn in before I can see the apex. A mistake here will end against the butt end of a stone bridge abutment; anything less than perfection will ruin the lap.
Now a fast, hard right, almost flat in third, then a dab of the brakes, a hard left, and then down to second and a smooth turn-in to the right for an apex I can't yet see. Over the hump at Pulleveld, the car goes light and then settles down, digging in as the track rises. I feed in the power, looking for the moment when the car can take the torque, the car skittering sideways a little over the bumps, tires chirping as they load and unload over each little surface irregularity, the momentum taking me out to the very edge, and then I'm gone, up through the gears past the pits to almost 180 mph.
Later, my crew will signal me the news: 1:29.88, my best lap ever with the new tire formula.
As I back off for a cooling down lap, my heart is racing, my palms are damp, and I have a touch of butterflies in my stomach.
Talk about an adrenaline rush!
Zandvoort does it to me every time.
I'll bet this game is going to sell a lot of copies of Carroll Smith's Drive to Win and Paul Van Valkenburgh's Race Car Engineering and Mechanics. To get the most out of these cars, you need to really understand what is happening at the tire contact patch, and precisely what the effect of each possible setup change should be. See my Car Setup page for more details about how you, too, can learn to create setups to make your Grand Prix car handle like a dream. |
And what you haven't experienced is how gorgeous, how delightful, how absolutely joyous the handling of these cars can be when they've been tuned by the hand of a master. As Dave Kaemmer has refined the physics model and honed it to perfection, several sim setup wizards on the beta team have begun to turn out setups that make these cars handle so sweet, they'll make your mouth water.
But as terrific as the setup development process is, it's the experience on the track that really counts. And Grand Prix Legends comes through like no other sim ever before. The other night, I raced my brother Nate through the Belgian countryside, both of us driving fantastic 1967 Eagles. Nate and I have been racing each other for years, and somehow we never get enough. That night, sitting in our home offices over 100 miles apart, we battled it out like we had long ago, nose to tail, passing and repassing, fighting for every inch.
But this time, instead of driving dirt track karts, we were flinging 400 hp Eagles through the impossibly quick Masta kink, soaring over the little "yump" in the middle of Malmady, accelerating hard past trees, houses, stone walls, spectators, flicking up little clouds of dust as we touched the dirt at the verges through La Carriere, skittering sideways through the the agonizingly slow La Source hairpin, using great long sideways slides to scrub off speed through Stavelot and Burnenville, scrabbling for every particle of adhesion we could find.
It was so real that for a few moments I forgot I was driving a racing simulation.
It was thrilling, satisfying, delightful; gut-level, insanely wonderful. It was one of the best racing experiences of my life.
Make no mistake. Grand Prix cars in 1967, like the Grand Prix cars of today, were incredibly difficult to drive. GPL is realistic in this way too. Do not expect to jump in your Lotus or Brabham and start breaking lap records after a lap or two or twenty.
As a beta tester, I've been driving these cars an average of an hour a day for five months, and I'm still a long way from getting the best out of them. If you're an experienced sim racer, you'll still need to spend a lot of hours before you can take one of these cars to the limit consistently. If you've never driven a good racing sim before, be prepared for many more hours of seat time. The best sim racers all have spent hundreds of hours honing their skills, and you'll need to do the same to match them.
The realism has its reward: the immense satisfaction that comes when you've achieved a degree of mastery that allows you to command a monstrously powerful, electrifying race car with precision and authority.
But the challenge doesn't stop there. With seven chassis and eleven fabulous circuits to learn, this sim will keep the dedicated sim racer busy for a long, long time.
If it were just a great physics engine, wrapped by mediocre graphics and suffering from middling design, GPL would still be a groundbreaking simulation. But in almost every way, GPL is a stunning accomplishment. Gorgeous, stylish menus are beautifully designed to give you ready access to all necessary functions in a most logical and elegant fashion. The replay mechanism is brilliantly conceived and executed, and a joy to use, far surpassing the replay function in any other racing sim to date.
And the graphics. Ohhh, the graphics! In my first preview, I said the graphics did not quite measure up to those of F1RS. Well, since then, Papyrus has made me a liar, bless them. Though weather effects and certain other niceties are not found here, in total effect, GPL's graphics simply bury the competition. Beautiful, deliciously detailed circuits run through picturesque countryside settings, with trees, buildings, fences, walls, spectators, signs and billboards, low-flying clouds, haybales, waving flags, and assorted other objects scattered around. Frame flow on a P-233 with a Rendition 2100 card is silky-smooth, and the colors are gorgeous.
The cars are intricately drawn, with slender suspension bits moving, working up and down as you thunder over the bumpy parts of the circuits, driver's arms sawing away at the wheel, reaching over to flick the gearlever into the next gear. Drop the clutch from a standstill in first and you lay great black streaks of rubber, smoke pouring from the tires. Go off into the dirt and clouds of dust follow you. Roll the car and a shower of sparks trails behind your roll bar as you skate along the asphalt upside down. Abuse the engine too much and it will suddenly explode in a gout of flame, and you'll roll to a stop trailing a plume of black smoke.
The complete visual experience is simply stunning.
It's difficult to overstate the excellence of this wonderful sim. Although there are a few things in terms of gameplay options that I would have done differently, in every other way I believe that GPL is a product almost any racing sim designer would dream of developing. It's innovative, beautiful, superbly executed, and, at the bottom line, delivers a supremely real and compelling experience.
We can't all have a Lotus 49 or a Brabham BT 24 in the garage, but GPL is almost as good as having one - and in some ways better. Sometime this summer, you'll be able to drive your own Grand Prix car as hard as you like, without worrying about where you'll get the parts to fix it when it breaks, or whether you'll survive the next crash.
Better yet, you'll be able to race with your buddies - possibly even if your buddies live hundreds or thousands of miles away.
In 1967, as now, only a very few people of transcendent ability were able to drive the best cars that could be wrought from the technology of the day. While the rest of us could only enjoy them vicariously, immortal talents like Clark, Hulme, Gurney, Bandini and the others experienced intense and marvelous sensations, and the incredible satisfaction of driving these wonderful machines to the extreme limit.
We are indeed a fortunate bunch of mortals, for soon we will have within our grasp the playthings of the gods.