With pit stops in this game having been recently changed in duration to now be akin to serving a life sentence, racers are now scrambling towards smaller, more efficient, and longer lasting cars in bid to minimise stopping mid–race as much as possible, almost as though we're having a retro, 1973 themed party on the racetrack; out with the big, heavy V8s, and in with the lightweight turbo four cylinders. Where powerful, heavy hitters like the Viper and Vantage used to dominate, now it's frugal pipsqueaks like the Mégane Trophy and GT86 that dictate the pace in races that necessitate pit stops, such as... oh I don't know... every FIA race in this game's history and forseeable future?
If one were to scour the list of racecars in Gran Turismo Sport, surely they would be hard pressed to find anything that's smaller and lighter, and therefore have more longevity on a racetrack, than an Alfa Romeo 4C Gr.4. At only 1,020kg (2,249lbs) before Balance of Performance applies, it's just about the same mass as an American spec 4C, which means that the puny, yet punchy 1.8L Inline–4 turbo engine only needs to output 295HP (220kW) to propel this thing through gaps in the competition. While Alfa Romeo has never been that strong a manufacturer in this game's lifespan thus far, is perhaps now the time to prove to the world what we Asians on the short end of the stick had known all along, that being how good things come in small packages?
Well... not quite. I mean, YES, good things do of course come in small packages; there can be absolutely no question about that. It's just a matter of making more people, especially pretty Singaporean women, realise this. However, I don't think the 4C is the car that best exemplifies that philosophy.
Even without Balance of Performance applied, I find the 4C to be a very odd car to drive and difficult to learn as a result. I've heard qualms about how the 4C is a very tail happy car to drive, but when I first pulled the wheel off centre in one, it felt about as tame and neutral as one can expect of a Gr.4 car. Worryingly, the aforementioned tail happiness of the 4C Gr.4 is something that isn't immediately apparent, but is very much there, waiting to rear its ugly butt out when push comes to shove. Initial turn–in is excellent, but the 4C Gr.4 really dislikes adjusting its balance mid corner. I don't quite know what it is with the car, but any attempt at shifting its weight or adjusting the steering angle mid corner just seems to upset it, either begetting understeer, oversteer, or both, making it quite challenging to trail brake for late apexes. The rear end of the car doesn't let go with any linearity or with much warning at all, feeling oddly inert and stable to a fault up to its limit, building confidence in its driver and egging them to push it harder, only to let go quickly with no warning once its limit is reached. This means that, instead of feeling when the car is about to break grip and slide, you instead have to pre–emptively correct the slide before it even happens, which requires prior knowledge of what would make the car slide, how much it'd slide, and precisely how much throttle and opposite lock to apply, which by the way is very little and a lot, respectively, shedding all form of momentum when going sideways and making the 4C Gr.4 a MR car you can't "tactically" slide like an R8 LMS or Cayman GT4.
Sure, you can keep it well within its handling envelope on the track, seeing as you're probably playing a conservative, long game when in a 4C preserving tyres and fuel, and the 4C is an extremely stable and no drama drive if you don't approach its limits, but that doesn't mean its rear end won't step out on you even then. Just like it's Gr.3 cousin, the Gr.4 4C is deathly allergic to kerbs and other road imperfections, with many seemingly innocuous rumble strips sending the featherweight, stiffly sprung car airbourne, and not just briefly either, which can break grip on the rear tyres and immediately send the car into the aforementioned slides, very quickly turning a low tempo, calculating drive into a frantic one.
This is Turn 2 of Dragon Trail: Gardens, by the way.
The 4C Gr.4 is a very situational car given all its handling quirks and... uh... features? It felt like a horrendous, sloppy (and slow) mess at the the wide open, kerb abuse mandating Dragon Trail tracks, but it absolutely came alive at narrower and twistier tracks like Brand's Hatch. Whatever the track however, the 4C Gr.4 is markedly more demanding than many of its Gr.4 competitors, differentiating itself from it's Gr.3 counterpart, which I said was easy to pick up and drive. In fact, I'd go as far as to liken the slow as hell 4C Gr.4 to the straight line missile R35 Gr.4; they're both cars that have their niches, but they both deviate so strongly from the median of handling characteristics of Gr.4 in their respective spectrum, and thus driving them well requires that you almost create a new "driving profile" for those cars in your head. It will take time not just to learn and adapt to the car, but speaking for myself personally, it's not easy to quickly switch between these "profiles" in my head when I hop from car to car for comparisons like I like to do in our weekly meets. Driving the 4C Gr.4 is a commitment moreso than simply signing a manufacturer's contract for a season of FIA for me; one that I'm not so sure is that worth it.
Yes, frugality may be the name of the game currently, but it hardly matters if, instead of burning off tyres and fuel, you burn off your brain trying to drive a difficult car. Perhaps it's because I'm not very good a driver and/or the car isn't a good fit for me, but be those as they may, I'm not entirely convinced that the 4C is actually any good in an actual, racing scenario, because the 4C fell completely flat the moment we enabled BoP in our lobby and started bringing wildcard cars into the mix. With the current BoP enabled, the 4C is the single least powerful car in all of Gr.4, while only being the fifth lightest after the four FF cars, and what it gains in the corners is laughably disproportionate to what it loses out on the straights, meaning that it will likely qualify near the back end of the grid. Once the actual race starts, the 4C will struggle to even maintain its gap to a competitor even with the full, close quarter benefits of their slipstream. And don't even think I'm being cynical and exaggerative for the hell of it when I say that, either (though yes admittedly that's half the fun of writing); I was in an underpowered, highly geared Cayman GT4 punching a hole through clean air when Vic's 4C could barely gain on me while it sat in my slipstream, which is the Gr.4 equivalent of saying that your sports car couldn't pull on a Miata in a drag race. Even with a vastly more skilled driver behind the wheel, the 4C is simply too slow in the straights to make any overtaking attempts feasible into any braking zones, making whatever cornering advantage it has a moot point when it comes time to overtake. As such, you don't race other racers in a 4C Gr.4; you race against yourself and the car to keep it on the track and planted in the right direction. You don't race other racecars in a 4C Gr.4; you run your own race and gain everything while others sit in the pits. It's an oddly isolating racecar, and seemingly the only way to get intense wheel to wheel action with it is if you run a one–make race with it... like us:
In conclusion, the Alfa 4C might be Alpha Dog due to prevailing circumstances, and perhaps even moreso at select tracks like Brand's Hatch or Toukyo Central. But while good things do come in small packages, the 4C Gr.4 suffers a fate I know too well: seemingly never a good fit, best thrown away after an initial trial session for something else less moody, more reliable, capable, and exotic, like a Mégane Trophy, 458 Gr.4, or even a Cayman GT4. And god damn how did this review get so sad and personal all of a sudden.
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