When you learn to drive a street car, there’s a process. You start on something small, something slow - maybe you never even learn how to use a manual shift. You build up; you usually also have someone by the side of you, telling you not to drive into the wall.
But in race sims there’s an expectation that we can jump into a high-powered racing car and immediately be on the pace. And more importantly, enjoy the experience. But, the more accurate the sim, naturally the more difficult some cars are to drive.
In Raceroom we’ve got some monsters: 1970s Group 5 cars that have so much turbo lag you could get a good night’s sleep before their ferocious power kicks in; we’ve got 1990s DTM racers that you have to push to the edge if you want to extract the ultimate lap time; there are the fearsome 2000s GT1s, all firepower, that you have to bully round the track; and how about modern prototypes and Formula cars, awash with technology and switches, that require your brain to be operating on as high a level as your hands and feet.
Everything happens more quickly in a racecar. Everything is more exciting. But everything is less forgiving.
The worst thing is to jump in a sim, pick your dream car and then fire it off at the first corner. Sure, you can always press reset in a sim, but sometimes the experience will be better by slowing things down. By taking a breath and concentrating on progressing and learning. And enjoyment.
So for our annual big December release, we present the Drivers Pack. It’s not specifically a beginners pack – although it will serve perfectly in that guise, if you’re looking to start your career – but it is supposed to present a sensible progression through a set of cars that deliver very different performance levels. Most importantly, these cars are fun to drive. Really fun.
We’ve included the latest version of a modern classic - the go-to starter car for drivers all round the world, Mazda’s iconic MX-5 (or Miata for old school North Americans).
Next up are two actual classics from Crosslé, a manufacturer you may not have heard of, but who have a history stretching back to the ‘50s. We’re presenting the modern continuation versions of models that have been in production for decades, but still deliver thrills - and occasional spills if you don’t get them right.
Directly linked to Crosslé is the circuit included in this release: the epic twists and turns of Charade, buried deep in France’s volcano country – and home to Crosslé’s driving school.
Finally, a pocket rocket where you have to balance the power of a modern mini prototype with belief in the magic of downforce: Praga’s R1.
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll bring you more information on each of the four cars included in the release: how we’ve modelled them and brought the physics to life, plus some recommendations on how to drive them. And just enough history to not bore anyone!