The #11 Honda RA272 that raced in the 1965 season of Formula 1 might just be the most historically significant racecar to ever come from the land of the rising sun, being the first Japanese car to ever win an F1 race in just Honda's second year in making four–wheeled vehicles, establishing themselves as one of Japan's top three carmakers with boundless innovation while making themselves a household name in the highest echelon of motorsports, all with just one win.
It's just too bad I can't drive it for worth a crap.
Style edited from Replica GP Mexico 1965 by blue-screen74
#mexico #bucknum #replica
https://www.gran-turismo.com/us/gt7/user/mymenu/f197e664-c96f-40e4-a396-fa757274d799/gallery/All/19422402050114394
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/car-of-the-week-week-58-honki-honda-honda-ra272-65.418000/page-6#post-14043885
The RA272 is an old car—it was raced and retired before downforce was "invented" by Chaparral, and so driving it with modern day habits is akin to trying to operate a rotary phone by tapping it repeatedly. It doesn't mesh with my stupid millennial brain, and so instead of a review, I'm just going to share my experience and thoughts in writing, okay?
Let's start with the parts that are easier to understand: numbers. The RA272, despite its name, comes to us producing only 228HP (170kW) from a naturally aspirated 1.5L V12 engine, which goes through a rather clumsy shifting (by modern standards) 6–speed manual gearbox. Scoff at it at your own peril however, because this bathtub on wheels weighs in at a belief–defying 498kg (1,098lbs), giving it a power–to–mass ratio surpassing that of most unrestricted GT3 machines in the game!
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/car-of-the-week-week-58-honki-honda-honda-ra272-65.418000/page-24#post-14242849
The second most prominent number is... well, it's a set of numbers, actually. To say that this tiny NA V12 engine is peaky wouldn't even begin to remotely hint at just how high–strung this engine is: the tachometer in the car starts at 5,000rpm. We've tested cars here in COTW that can't even GET to 5k! The tach spans 10k rpm, going from 5 to 15k, and fuel cut in–game is set to 12k. The RA272 idles somewhere in the sub 4k range, but if you ever feel the need to see that represented on the tach, you might as well go back to huddling in a futon back home. Peak power can only be found just 500rpm below fuel cut: 11,500rpm, ditto for peak torque. You know how common knowledge says that the power and torque curves will always intersect at 5,252rpm? Yeah, me neither. All I know is that this engine needs its nuts revved clean off, and failing to do so bleeds both hours and valour.
So, all these numbers, both big and small, paint a rather fearsome picture of the RA272, but yet, once it hits the track, this thing with a better power–to–mass ratio than a GT3 car sets lap times slower than even an unrestricted GT4 Cayman Clubsport! While the RA272 has incredible numbers even by modern standards, the areas that aren't usually quantified by numbers can be summed up simply with "1965". It's an old car, and as such, didn't come with Anti–Lock Brakes. While ABS is enabled for every car by default in this game, it's immediately obvious that the RA272 was never set up for that black magic; brute–forcing the car to bite into an apex with aggressive trail braking will simply break out the rear end in a sloppy slide. I actually turned off ABS to learn the car first before turning it to "Weak" in our lobbies so as not to kill anyone too many people. Driving this car without ABS made me realise that a full rearward brake bias of +5 still locks up the front tyres without locking the rears, and was therefore utilising more of the available grip than the default, stupidly front biased brake balance. This car does come default with a fully adjustable brake balance controller, so I don't feel bad using it. Driving the car with ABS Weak after, I realised it had to be driven exactly like it had to be driven without ABS; it just made the shaving off speed part easier and more consistent.
Even if you (for some reason...) have experience driving with ABS Off in this game, the RA272 is still not an easy drive. Once the car is adequately slowed for a corner, it comes time to turn the steering wheel, and the RA272 has all the chassis rigidity of a wet cigarette. Now, I know my whole shtick is that I'm a Chris Harris and Tsuchiya Keiichi wannabe, and I get nerdy and wordy about how a car feels to drive, but chassis rigidity is something I have no confidence in pinpointing in a video game, let alone describing in writing. It's just not a problem modern cars have anymore. I'll try to describe what it feels like, but take everything with more than the usual pinches of salt, okay?
In a modern racecar, the brake pedal is almost a potentiometer of "how much stress do I want to put on the front tyres", and it's usually pretty proportionate to how much grip the front tyres have. Press the brakes harder, the car stops quicker. Need weight over the front? Dab the brakes a slight bit. It's a very simple cause and effect. In the RA272 however, the chassis is so structurally weak that the front tyres just stop responding any further past halfway into the brake pedal travel, with any further attempts to shift weight up front henceforth being used to warp the body instead. That is to say, this thing will NOT adjust mid corner if I misjudge the entry into a corner, and using any more than half the brake pedal is just an instant lockup.
It's not just the brakes that can exert stress on the chassis, of course; so can the steering wheel, which can have equally disastrous effects on the car.
Past a certain stress threshold, there's a palpable, yet inconsistent delay between input and feeling said input register in the car, both from the steering wheel and the pedals. Putting the RA272 through the stresses of brisk driving goes something like this: I roll over a rumble strip and/or turn the front end of the car semi hard. I then send a detailed report of what, where, when, and how fast I did it via Morse code by tapping the ground and hoping those vibrations carry over to Japan. From there, I wait for the folks at Honda to hold several board room meetings to work out the physics of my manoeuvre with the sophisticated aid of abacuses and simulations done with clay models made by special Takumi craftsmen specifically for each report I send, before discussing over tea and rice crackers whether my manoeuvre besmirches upon their family honour or not. Within 11 working days of having reached a decision, they will write back to me in Japanese, sending a pigeon to my current location. The moment of truth comes when I put that letter through an OCR translation tool, and if the esteemed council at Honda finds that the rumble strip I rolled over was too pronounced or that I turned the front end of the car too hard for the rear to keep up, the punishment for my misdeed(s) is rendered instantaneously in that very moment. If I'm not seated in a car at that point, like if I were, say, in a hotel room, the whole hotel would then proceed to break sideways and oversteer into a mountain for seemingly no reason to the untrained eye of an innocent bystander.
That's how far divorced the cause and effect is when driving an RA272.
Driving the RA272 safely therefore, requires one to be extremely cognisant of any and every feedback the car gives the driver. Thankfully, the car is light enough that its steering wheel could be rocked back and forth ever so gently by the seemingly mirror–smooth home straight of Suzuka, making the circuit that hosts several high–downforce races in a year feel like a beat–up rural road. While the steering wheel talking to me in a modern racecar is usually met with the automotive equivalent of, "I got it, mooooom, sheesh, I'm not a kid anymore!", the moment the steering wheel even looks at me sternly mid–corner in the RA272, I back off and say, "yes, mommy. I'll be a good boy, I'm sorry for existing"... or whatever the automotive equivalent of that is. The RA272's emphasis on the driver being cognisant of every little tell might mean that it's a car that really rewards its driver having high end sim racing hardware, such as a load cell brake pedal and a direct drive wheel. I'm unfortunately not rich enough to test that out.
If unhindered by BoP, I would take even the worst Gr.4 car in existence over the RA272 as a driving experience, because even a stripped out, barebones Gr.4 racecar feels like a luxury spaceship in direct comparison to the RA272. But it has to be said that the RA272 feels properly special, even in a game that can't sell a Jimny to a stranded fan. It is the oldest F1 car in the entire series of Gran Turismo, and the only one of its era. The Discover section for this car therefore, is filled with replicas of other F1 cars of its era, and for that reason, I imagine there'd be someone out there crazy enough to collect 20 of these bad boys to replicate an old F1 grid in Custom Race. And while its very similar in pace to slicks–shod modern day track toys like the X-Bow, it has a (mostly) central seating position and exposed wheels to give an driving perspective that is excruciatingly rare in the whole game, and I wish more cars would adopt a centre seating position, especially track toys. No modern day turbocharged econobox engine track toy however, will give you even remotely the tinge and thrill of a NA 1.5 V12 going to 12k, and it's something so rare and extraordinary that I have to get used to again and again at the start of each drive I have with it. It's just so out of this world! It's criminal that this engine isn't available to swap into other cars by now! All that is to say, while I wince at the thought of driving it hard in competition, it feels really special to drive at five tenths. It's a good Tokyo or Le Mans grind car for that reason, if you don't mind dropping 2.5 mil for one.
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