SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: Team Redline's GTP mod for NASCAR Racing 2003 Season

Well, I can't help but thinking of a film-clip I saw once: Derek Bell drives a Porsche 956 around the Nordschleiffe commenting to the camera and viewers, on the various sections of that long, classic circuit. Coming out of the right-hander and going under Adenauer Bridge he is passed by Jackie Ickx as they race towards the famous compression known as the Fuchsröhre (fox-hole). Derek calmly says something to the effect of; "Oh, there's Jackie Ickx. Better let him through as he's on his qualifying run".

When I drive the GTP cars I feel that they move and react in accordance with the impression I got from watching in-car from Derek Bell's Porsche: They are agile and well balanced, and driving at 7 or 8 tenths of my limited ability is not that big a drama.

When I try to drive at 10, or even 11 tenths, things do become a little more difficult though! This is where I notice that the correct line into corners is absolutely vital in order to maintain speed. Coming out of the tighter turns I can feel and hear the rear-wheels fighting for grip, especially on the bumpy Sebring track that I brought into my install of the mod, because there is so much power and torque here that if I'm careless with the throttle, I have to be very quick indeed to save it from a sideways moment.

Sebring's bumpiness is a fact I am beginning to reappraise after taking my GTP car there. Going into the braking-zones in the bumpy areas there the car wiggles, twitches and bumps up and down. This is brilliant fun and once again I can't help thinking about real life drivers taking their racing cars to race for 12 hours on such a bumpy racetrack. Shake, rattle and roll!

The big physics debate these days centers around the question; do cars slide at all, and when they loose grip are they then recoverable or not?

Aerodynamically advanced cars. i.e. cars with ground-effect, and modern, ultra-sticky tires are reportedly no good sliding when they loose grip.

When the suction effect of an aerodynamically efficient underbody is suddenly lost, a car cannot take corners at the same high speeds that it can with a the vacuum effect intact. Also modern tires have a very narrow slip-angle which means that if they are overdriven, say by entering a corner too fast, they will suddenly and violently loose grip. But what if you keep close to the limit and only exceeds the limit slightly?

In his book, "My Story", Alex Zanardi surprisingly says that the Formula 1 cars he drove felt more slippery-slidey than the Champ Cars he was used to, and I've seen some footage where Alan Jones recovers from a huge slide in his Williams anno 1980, the quintessential ground-effect Formula 1 car.

If you watch Formula 1 in 2005, look carefully at Alonso, Montoya, and some of the other aggressive drivers, or look for cars that are struggling to go fast enough, and I'll wager you a beer that if you look carefully, you'll see some pretty neat slides.

Sliding is not doing anything beneficial in terms of improving your lap times or saving your tires, but IMO even modern Formula 1 cars can slide, especially if they are being overdriven, not setup properly, or are proving a bit of a handful for their drivers. What's more, slides that occur when the drivers are only exceeding the limits slightly, are recoverable. I find this to be the case in the GTP mod. If you are massively overdriving you'll leave the track no question about it. But if you are only slightly over the limit of adhesion you can correct and gather up your car, the lap time will suffer as will your tires, but you won't understeer helplessly off the track and into the gravel trap.

The slip-angle in GTP is very noticeable smaller than in the Trans-Am mods and coupled with the very powerful and lighter GTP cars, the result is truly impressive. What is neat about the GTP mod and the excellence of it's host; NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, is that you get a very good sense of what the car is about to do. Remember that us poor racesimmers only get perhaps 10% of the sensory input that the real life drivers get, so somehow a simulation must also attempt to convey some information that we would otherwise get through seat-of-the-pants only.

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