Consistency is everything. Nailing one hot lap is fine - the real trick is stringing together a succession of scorchers all within a split second of one another. That's the essence of endurance driving, really, and it's something that's baked into Assetto Corsa Competizione, a racing-focussed spin-off from Kunos Simulazioni's sensational driving sim Assetto Corsa. It's an officially-licensed take on the Blancpain GT series, which itself feels quietly remarkable; racing games rarely look beyond top-flight series such as F1, but when they do - as in TOCA or GTR 2 - the results can be incredible.
So that's the developer of one of the most satisfying driving sims of recent years picking up the faint lineage of some of the greatest racing games of all time. That's setting some expectations...
And Assetto Corsa Competizione comes so close to delivering on them. It helps that its subject is one of the most vibrant, healthy motorsport series around at the moment - there aren't many places you can see marques such as Aston Martin, Ferrari and Porsche going toe to toe - and Kunos plays to the strengths of GT racing. The cars are sublime in sound and vision, modelled with an enthusiast's eye for detail. Assetto Corsa Competizione has so much of what makes GT3 racing a joy nailed down pat; the door handle-to-door handle racing, the assorted barks and bites of engines, the slapback reverb when coursing down the enclosed concrete walls of the pit straights, and the astounding sensation of pushing a squat GT car to its limits and feeling the heavy splash as it rides out over kerbs.