Review: The Power and Glory for GTR2

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Impressions

Chassis’ were less rigid and stiff in those days resulting in more flexibility and concepts such as aerodynamics were generally not very well understood. In that day and age, David Brown of Aston Martin designed the gorgeous looking lines of the DB series in his back-garden, because he wanted his cars to look good in natural lighting!

As the old saying goes; “it it looks right, it is right”; stunning looks at times had a beneficial effect in terms of low drag as is the case in point with the Lotus Elite and it's impressive drag coefficient of less than 0.30.

Where the pilot discusses angle-of-attack and flight envelope, the racing driver will go on about the slip angles, understeer and oversteer.

Any tire generates the most grip at a certain load within the slip-angle which is why you need to push the car to the limit of this load. This is true when accelerating, decelerating and when turning.

If you're not pushing, I.E. if you're not driving at the limit of adhesion, you're not going fast enough. If you push too hard you start to become ragged and inconsistent in your driving and you risk either losing control of your vehicle or abusing the tires.

The cars in The Power and Glory are shod with old-fashioned cross-ply or as is the case with the Porsches, bias-ply. These are tires which have a huge slip-angle compared to modern racing tires, so in order to use your car to the fullest, it is required to drift them ever so gently through turns maintaining good speed and all the time being careful not to overheat or overuse your tires.

The suspensions are softer than the suspensions we are normally used to from modern GT, sports car and formula racing, causing greater body roll generated by the weight transfer as the car shifts from one state, e.g. braking; where the nose of the car is dipping — to turning; where the body rolls along its longitudinal axis — to accelerating; where the front usually rises as acceleration is increasing.

Like a ballet dancer, or a man walking tight rope, you have to be able to drive the car as close to the limit as possible, lap after lap after lap, and optimize braking and acceleration at the same time.

I'm starting to think that the fastest drivers are the drivers who are able to do these tasks with the greatest perfection and consistency.

While the car is in one of these transitions from the weight shifting it becomes very important to make sure that the car is at all times balanced, settled and controllable. If you feel the car is about to tip over because of a misjudgment on your part, save it as quickly as possible — if it is not already too late.

Another way of describing all this would be by telling you about the Porsche RSR with the spine-tingling sound of the boxer engine. It's rear wheel drive and the sequence of switchback turns at Castle Combe. In fact, this is what I did in the opening paragraph of this review.

The Power and Glory mod team has taken great care to study the ISI physics engine and to tune it to a level where you will feel the car reacting as it should do, without the old "vices" from previous ISI-based sims and without the "driving on ice" feeling that has been almost second nature to a lot of our favorite sims. It is now "easier" to setup, hold a drift and correct the car's trajectory using input from the throttle. I use the quote-unquote marks in conjunction with the word "easier" because it is not too easy, and newbies will still have to learn how to apply and refine the required skills and practice the techniques. Even old hands of my own modest ability get it wrong from time-to-time.

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