Review: Power & Glory v. 2.00

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Physics

First, a word of caution from the members of the GTL Workshop:

“This is a hard driving sim. No compromise, no prisoners taken. Some cars are a delight to drive, some are hard to drive, some are scary and some are plain 'trucks'. Our team and beta testers love them all, but we love the real ones too and we got used to them. If you drive this mod, right after a session with any modern car sim, then you might get ready for a 'hard slap in the face'".

"These cars have the same power to weight ratio as modern racing cars. Some of them are even much more powerful and weigh much less. The problem is that while modern cars have tons of downforce, these cars have lift. While modern cars have big fat slick tires, these cars have skinny treaded tires. Finally, when modern cars have enormously big brakes that resist fade, these cars have old, 'wooden' like braking pads, with small brake discs or even occasionally... drums."

Certainly I had to re-adjust my driving style to allow for greater braking distances and far less, nay- no downforce in the turns.

Braking is a small art and cornering speeds are way below what we’ve become accustomed to when driving sims rendering modern cars to the extent that we sometimes forget that these old cars were created and raced in the day where ingenuity, sliding rules, craftsmanship, a can of grease and good old testing were the main assets of any car manufacturer. No wind-tunnels and no CAD/CAM in the design and manufacturing process back then.

And this is exactly what is so charming and at times downright frustrating about driving these old cars.

White Monster

Each car has its own unique feel and individual handling characteristics, as true to their real life counterparts as can likely be achieved almost half a century after they were raced in anger for the last time and confined to museums or taken back to run in the historic races, albeit with more modern tire technology and “improvements” to chassis and set ups that were not available when these cars were front line state-of-the-art racing equipment.

To test them all would be impossible within the confines of the time and space allowed for this review, so I’ve settled for testing a few of the cars quite extensively:

I’ve found one of the “trucks” mentioned by the development team and it is the Shelby Daytona Coupé. It has lots of muscle, a gloriously sounding engine and a beautifully shaped body but setting this brute up for a turn is something which takes quite a lot of planning as you have to slow it down quite a lot, let off the brake as you beat it into submission by yanking the steering wheel in the direction you wish the car to take, approximately one week before ever arriving at the turn. Then, keep the steering wheel turned as you test if it will accept some throttle without under steering off the corner until you finally can find use for some of all that power in the engine to pull you onto the straight as you unlock the wheel. Serious sideways is how this car corners.

A delight to drive is the Renault Alpine A110, a classic small-engine (1100 or 1300 cc) rear-engine car built by the small Alpine company and adopted by French car manufacturer Renault for rallying and road racing as the company was desperate for a more sporty and successful image than bestowed upon it by the ageing and boxy Gordini’s. Described by Autosport Magazine in a road test as being a difficult car to handle and get the best out of, it demands your attention at the controls and on the gears.

The beautiful A110 interior

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