Everything Must Go

Testing my CLK-GTR around La Sarthe, Gran Turismo 4

One of the less realistic elements of racing games, particularly ones that brand themselves as simulators, is the short length of races. Two or three laps are common, whilst five or more is a rarity - imagine how long it would take to complete a real F1 season and how quickly the publisher would get sued after someone sits in front of a screen for hours until they have a seizure. These things are necessary limitations, balancing realism, accessible difficulty, and convenience. It's why you can set the length of play in Football games and the reason few racers feature a clutch.

I remember when F1 97 was the pinnacle of console racing, I once did a full length race of the Monaco Grand Prix (over 70 laps). That seemed like an astonishingly long time in front of the tv and I had to pause it and leave the PlayStation on whilst I went out. I was pissed off when I only managed 6th place or thereabouts. A real driver making 6th would have gained a championship point that year. I wasted ninety minutes. The casual gamer can extract enjoyment from all the two to five lap races and progress quite far through the game. It's only at the apex of the game that the challenge is increased beyond those limits all the way to a virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Nürburgring in Gran Turismo 4. After blasting my way through the leagues and championships of GT1 in August 1998, I had to wait a month until the October holiday to have enough free time to begin the three endurance races: Grand Valley 300km (60 laps = under 2 hours with the Castrol Supra), Special Stage Route 11 All Night (30 laps and a bit of a misnomer at under an hour with the Mistubishi GTO LM), and Special Stage Route 11 All Night Reverse (TVR Griffith/500). SSR11, I loved that magnificent bastard of a track... the bus stop chicane lives on in our hearts.

For thirteen years those were the only endurance races I completed in the entire Gran Turismo series. However, after finally starting GT4 in May after years on the shelf, I completed the Le Mans and Nürburgring 24 Hour events in June. Thankfully, and likely for legal reasons, there's an AI driver who can take over for you - which is actually realistic (because no driver is behind the wheel for more than a few hours) - and time compression. Obviously, having learned the importance of winning at Monaco, I wouldn't enter those simulated races without guaranteeing a win. I want the full prize money and the prize car, nothing less. You first require experience in the shorter endurance races, for both yourself and the AI driver. In a demonstration of how far we've come, the Grand Valley 300km is now the shortest endurance race. I've won it something like eight times because it pays well for the short distance. The next step is becoming familiar with your chosen car and the track. Intimately. For Le Mans I chose the Audi R8 (not cheap, hence all the GV300 wins) and did 300 miles of testing around Circuit de la Sarthe - just going round and round until you know where all the bumps are from the feedback, know all the braking points and what gear to drop down to at each corner. I raced the first four hours, learning not to do continual flying laps in order to preserve the rear tyres, until body warping made the car unpredictable and I became tired. I left it to the AI driver during the night and morning until I came in from work and oversaw the final few hours - even the AI was finding it difficult at this point, hitting the wall on Mulsanne straight. I (or we?) won it after 406 laps, thirteen ahead of the other R8. As the prize car was a red R8, I retired my atrociously-handling power-sapped yellow R8 with 4068.3 miles on the odometer.

I was much more apprehensive about the 24 Hours of Nürburgring. There's a reason why Jackie Stewart called it The Green Hell - well, he called it that for being extremely long and unsafe, but that isn't a concern in a game that doesn't model crashes so it's just left being bloody long. I didn't bother with hours of testing because I memorised the course in arcade mode when I first got GT4. I entered my (tuned) BMW M3 GTR to check out the competition and kept going after half an hour in the lead. I started with medium tyres and simply pitted at the end of each lap taking only enough fuel for two laps (as a precaution after running dry and subsequently losing one of my GV300 entries). Again, I raced the first 4 hours until handing it over to the AI for the night on a 3 to 4 lap hard tyre setup. I oversaw the last few hours but took the wheel for the final lap without experiencing major handling problems like the R8 had and won after 201 laps, eight up on the second place Audi TT-R.

The challenge of these endurance races is to maintain your lead over extreme distances. In the right car you can leave the competition behind at the first corner. In the wrong car you can be left behind at the first corner. If you can find the sweet spot between these two you can have a genuinely close and exciting race, rather than just pitting and lapping for hours on end, which is why I'm considering doing Le Mans again but in a lower competition class. Originally that would have meant the CLK-GTR (GT1 class), but I've fallen out of love with it because, despite hours of tinkering, it's just too twitchy for the high speed corners of La Sarthe. I then thought about the Oreca Viper GTS-R (GT2 class) after I won a 4 lap 151 A-spec point race against Group C sportscars. That turned out to be a fluke. In an hour long trial, the Audi R8 and PlayStation Pescarolo swapping second and third places had greater fuel and tyre economy. I was only able to keep just a pitstop ahead of the competition by doing hot laps - but one mistake would cut that lead for the next stop, forcing me to take the corners faster. And because the AI driver is an idiot at the best of times, it would require me to do the whole 24 hours manually, using only pause between stints, to have any hope of crossing the finish line in the lead.

How did a game become so complex? I really should get back to writing.

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