Mine came during the Brands Hatch G40 Junior Cup round among juniors, collecting Druids and watching a field of 19 other Ginette in an assortment of liveries falling down the legendary first corner of the track, Paddock Hill Bend, at dusk.
As a baseball fan, it reminded me of the first time I was playing MLB The Show on the PlayStation 4, contemplating the Yankee’s immaculately new stadium in all its splendor, hearing the fresh and stormy roar of the crowd with depth and fullness. that no other sports simulator ever came before.
I played many racing games in my life, and some of them were very good at simulating the driving experience. No one, however, was so good at modeling race events; The grandeur of motorsport. None of them made me feel what I felt when I went to Brands Hatch and watched how Ginette was flying on the track between the BTCC rounds. Project Cars did, and this is not a small feat.
It is likely that your first experience with Project Cars will go something like this if you use a gamepad: you get into a low-power car, perhaps a Renault Clio, which seems harmless enough. You will leave the pits, apply the brake pressure with sufficient space before the first turn, turn and immediately turn off the rail.
This probably happened for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that you are new. In addition, the second most important reason you spin was because your tires were cold. You have never had to plan this at Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport. But you do now.
You will have to think about many things that used to come to your mind only on Sunday morning, as Lewis Hamilton’s armchair engineer. This is what makes Project Cars insanely useful and at the same time inaccessible to most people. If you are not the majority of people, welcome to racing nirvana.
-Jack Wilson
