SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Preview: Champ Car Challenge

After lunch I decided to have a go in Sebastian Bourdais' Newman-Haas of 2003. The cars feel a bit heavier than I am used to from the Champ Car Mod 2003, and the brakes are not as effective in this incarnation. It's also as if the cars are a bit more challenging to drive, which in my opinion is not a bad thing. It tends to keep you on your toes and makes you concentrate that little bit more. In any case, I was a good second slower in the iDT mod than in Champ03, and in the iDT mod I found myself going off the road more often as well. It's imperative to get total control over that right foot, and bad driving will be punished.

Exiting the Mid-Ohio pit lane I soon forgot about "taking it easy", despite the morning spins. In fact I delighted in applying a little excess power as I joined the track, and I felt the car stepping sideways a bit. It was very controllable; just by lifting off the throttle for a split second I had it reigned back in. And these are the moments in sim racing that are so precious to me, because it's all about how close you can got to the limit in a beast of a race car and still be in control. And you always try to push the limit, because there is always someone who's faster than you.

At Mid-Ohio the short pit straight takes you to a tight right-hand turn which leads on to the long and fast back straight where you should reach top speed in top gear, before getting hard on the brakes for the Esses. Then it's time to negotiate turn 11. Being careful this time, I went into the crest in 2nd gear making sure not to carry too much entry speed with me — which would have been the case had I selected 3rd gear. Then there's the Chute and the Carousel, which seems to turn in on itself forever. Finally I'm back on the short start/finish straight and it's time for left-hand kink that needs to be taken as fast as possible, as the speed carried through here will benefit the overall lap time. Good luck to you, while you're chasing a sub-one minute lap.

Mid-Ohio is a very technical track where you can loose a lot of time if you get the wrong line going into the technical sequences. Alternatively you can make up a lot of time if you catch the right lines. For the drivers who like to battle for positions there are several areas where it should be possible to attempt passing by taking an alternative line in; say a late braking maneuver on the inside, before going into the turn that leads onto the back-straight. There's also the chance that your exit speed will be compromised to such an extent that you'll be instantly re-passed in a cross-over maneuver.

It's a pity to learn that Mid-Ohio is currently not on the 2005 schedule.

My schedule was a busy one these intense testing days, so I left Mid-Ohio to catch a flight to Laguna Seca. There; the two Penske cars from ´01 were waiting for me!

As luck, or ill-fortune would have it, Laguna Seca is currently not scheduled for the 2005 season either!

The steering in these cars is precise and direct. What my testing did confirm was that even though the physics of the mod I was using for this preview had not yet been quite finalized, it feels to me as if these cars can be saved if you come in a bit too fast in the corners. In the Andretti hairpin I braked too late and was able to release the pressure on the brakes slightly, thereby regaining enough grip to steer harder into the turn. As a result, the rear of the car started to rotate and all four wheels broke traction at one point before I was back in control! Delicious, and I hope the finalized version of the physics will not change too much in this aspect as I find it very realistic, that as long as you are not using up 100 % of your grip by either braking, accelerating or steering, you should be able to divide the total amount of grip available, and then trade between grip for braking, accelerating or steering.

A quick test on the Twin Ring Motegi Oval confirmed that the cars seem to be less "glued" to the road, and they are more lively than seen in the 2003 mod. I tried both mods with very little downforce front and rear, to attempt to simulate a low drag - high speed oval setup. Unfortunately the team did not bring the proper oval aero-package to the track. There is less inherent, terminal and unrecoverable understeer going through the turns (provided you drive sensibly), and if you yank the wheel too much over while on the throttle exiting a turn, there is the distinct possibility that you might spin out, just as it happened to me when I was trying to pass a slower car out of turn 4.

I suspect once the setup gurus get their hands on this mod and the setups are optimized for speed and oval racing, the handling will come even more alive.

Alas! The tests were over all to quickly, and in conclusion I must be honest with you: I don't think I impressed any team-managers very much. Some of them wore small smiles on their faces; smiles of the sort that tells you they're not laughing with you, but at you, but are trying to be polite about it by hiding their true feelings. Some were shaking their heads or arguing with the people from insurance over who was going to pay for broken wheel-axles, bent wings and crushed bodywork. Some were just crying.

"Don't ring us, we'll ring you, they said". Must be a sign that I should practice a bit more on the PC!

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