Comparing racing sims to real cars driving on real race tracks has been a thing for a while now. Way back in 2006, Jeremy Clarkson went head-to-head against himself at Laguna Seca in real life versus Gran Turismo 4. And I've been known to use Forza as a way of doing some training ahead of going racing for real. Now, courtesy of Castrol Edge, you can watch two of the world's best racing drivers pit themselves against, well, themselves, in a pair of jaw-dropping hypercars at the Ascari Race Resort in Spain.
If you saw Top Gear this past weekend, you'll know about the Aston Martin Vulcan. It's a track-only hypercar (i.e. it's not road-legal), made from beautifully crafted carbon fiber and powered by an 800hp V12 engine. Just 24 Vulcans will ever be built, and if you wanted one, you needed to stump up more than $2.6 million. Exclusive stuff!
Darren Turner was behind the wheel of the real and digital Vulcans. Turner has a long background racing for Aston Martin's works team, having won Le Mans twice for the marque. And he's no stranger to simulators, either; when he's not racing for Aston Martin, he runs a professional simulator business that racing drivers use to hone their skills away from the track.
"Every aspect of the car and driver needs to be pushed to the limit when achieving the best lap times. When you’re racing one of the world’s fastest supercars using Castrol Edge, it gives you the confidence you need to push yourself and your machine to the extreme. Beating my best performance by 1.1 seconds gave me an incredible rush," Turner said about the experience.
But wait, there's more. If Aston Martin doesn't do it for you, how about Swedish hypercar merchant Koenigsegg? It's even more exclusive than the Vulcan (just six have been built) and even more powerful—how does 1,360hp (1,014kW) sound in a car that weighs just 1360kg? The One:1 was driven in real life and the simulator by Christoffer Nygaard, Kongisegg's test driver (Nygaard has raced alongside Turner for Aston Martin as well).
Nygaard was also able to edge out an advantage in the real world. "I always knew that being confronted by my ultimate best potential was going to be a challenge. I pushed myself harder than I might against any other rival. Beating my digital clone, if only by a hair's breadth 0.8 of a second, was incredibly rewarding," he said.
Castrol Edge worked with UK-based VR company REWIND to come up with a custom sim of the Ascari track and digital versions of the two cars. If you're interested in a look behind the scenes, they even put together a "making of" video. Pretty cool stuff.
Listing image by Castrol Edge
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