If you think about it, it's a pretty bloody amazing miracle that we human beings are capable of operating motor vehicles; after all, our fleshy prisons were never developed to be able to propel itself to dizzying speeds like 30km/h, and yet our brains can process audio, visual, and sensual information quickly enough to go way faster than that. Of course, without rigorous and routine training like the ones Formula drivers undergo, our spiteful mortal vessels will start to give out past certain g levels, but even the fastest of sanctioned racing machines can only pose a moderate challenge to our neural processing power through a screen. I can still notice things like grip limits, understeer, oversteer, differential locking, downforce imbalance, or, hell, even zonk out and daydream a little on the straights when driving an F1 car in a simulator.
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Absent any building costs, fear of pain, and the rulebooks that result from the hinderances of reality, the Red Bull X series of racecars seem purpose–built to challenge that mental limit of processing speed in us sim racers, to seperate the truly gifted freaks of nature from the ones that simply work hard and dedicate. Even though the X2014 model is tamer on paper than the X2011 that preceded it, it's still capable of mind–bending speeds that is well past what my brain can handle. I am utterly incapable of even thinking to myself when attempting to drive it, let alone try to put any of it into words.
I cannot fathom where its grip limits are, let alone how to explore and find them in a safe manner. Don't ask me where it makes healthy torque; I don't even remember how many gears the thing has. Straights in most racetracks pass by faster than I can let go of thoughts of the previous corner; every bend feels like consecutive corners in the X2014, and it'd take a straight as obscenely long as Fuji's home straight for me to take a deep breath or two in before the madness begins anew. Yeah, the brakes work. The brakes work so well that it might not just be the car they stop. This thing has so much downforce that it can literally oversteer up Eau Rouge—no, I'm not talking about the back end of the car stepping out—I mean, the car can literally turn too much and hit the right hander apex of Eau Rouge at a 45° angle doing 320km/h if you thought common sense things like steering resistance and laws of physics would stop the X2014. Trying to drive this thing with common sense and experience with other cars will completely neuter the X2014—its magic is allergic to common sense. Just know it. Trust it. Keep the throttle pinned. Steer it into that corner flat out, but don't expect the steering weight to fight you, so be surgeon precise with it at 300km/h. Following another X2014? Cope, I guess. Death is just a restart, not an end.
Every microscopic twitch and imperfection of my input is magnified and displayed faster than I can even realise my mistakes. An imperfection that might have resulted in dipping half a wheel past asphalt in a typical Gr.3 racecar will see the X2014 taken clean off the circuit. At the end of each drive, I am drenched in sweat, I am breathing heavy, and I can hear my heart race, not at all unlike having just been through a life–threatening fight. This thing drives almost as though it were taken from some arcade racer, and yet it has more rooting in reality than your typical Vision Gran Turismo faff, easily vacuuming the track of marbles with utterly bonkers sci–fi make believe contraptions like the laser–propelled 2X. It's only at low speed corners where it starts to resemble a sane, normal formula racer, absent the downforce–generating fan of the X2011. At speed, though? Don't even bother with the default panning mode of Mode 2 when shooting photos of the car, lest you get an indistinguishable blur. Either bump up the shutter speed or use Mode 3.
Mode 2 panning at 1/60s shutter speed at Maggiore's Banky Boi corner. The X2014 was doing 140km/h.
The fact that there are people out there with the mental processing speeds to handle the X2014 and even the Tomahawks really made me realise just how hopelessly average I am, and it'd be a pretty depressing thought if that sadness wasn't mostly drowned out by respect for both the machine, its creators, and the people actually capable of doing it justice.
And then there's the 1967 Lamborghini Miura P400 Bertone Prototype. While the X2014 overwhelms with unreal capability and immediacy, the Miura almost literally swings the entirely opposite direction. Packing a "mere" 349HP (260kW) and weighing in at just 980kg (2,161lbs) in–game, it's certainly not fast in the grand scheme of things, but I would still argue that it, much like the X2014, is a magnifying glass for driver skill that greatly exaggerates even microscopic skill gaps between players. I say this because this is one of, if not the most difficult cars in the game to drive, giving drivers microscopic margins for error and demanding an unreasonable amount of knowledge and precision in its driver. In the hands of someone like me, it's downright hazardous to drive even at middling speeds with every precaution taken.
Being the prototype of the first road legal rear mid engined road car, it's understandable that a lot of rear mid engined quirks and tendencies feel completely unaddressed and unmitigated in the P400. Even mild trail braking with default ABS will pull the rear end out screaming and thrashing, and there is absolutely zero safety measures in place to keep the Miura from swinging its tail out as though trying to whip itself if a driver turns too much on the brakes. Long, sweeping corners with deep apexes, such as... oh I dunno, the entire last sector of Fuji, are an utter nightmare to find and meet while babying the Miura's rear end. It forces drivers to have a smidge of throttle applied almost immediately after peeling the steering wheel off–centre for a corner—well before the apex—to keep some weight pressing over the rear tyre, more than a smidge if the revs are low. But be ready to ease off that throttle pedal when the car straightens out and the revs climb, because once this prehistoric NA V12 engine wakes past 7,000rpm, you'll get... you guessed it: explosive, barely containable oversteer.
According to the game, the Miura has 0 downforce front and rear. That's a lie: it has less than zero downforce—it has lift. The production Miura is notorious for being extremely floaty at speed in real life, and in the game, it's one of the very select few cars that is both old and fast enough where lift becomes a real problem. The steering wheel goes noticably numb and muted in just third gear at around 150km/h, and the car will aquaplane on thin air in 4th and 5th, with the steering wheel light enough to turn 90° on the final left kink of Deep Forest Raceway after the pit entry while the car understeers into the outside barrier. The Miura needs to be tipped into a turn earlier and earlier with alarming increments once it hits its stride in 3rd gear, and lifting just a hint, even for a barely noticable moment, gets the car pointy again thanks to its soft suspension (and hopefully full tank of fuel). But of course, be wary of doing this as well, because the rear end of the car doesn't get any friendlier at speed. In GT Auto, the only aero parts available to a Miura are custom rear wings that completely desecrate the look of the car, which means that even if you wanted to, there's no fixing the airy front end of the car; it can only be made worse.
The Miura is a completely impractical car, even in the context of a racing game, not just because it's a pricey LCD exclusive, but also because it requires a skill level so high that none but the most skilled drivers can find any consistency and speed with it. For plebs like me, a modern day car with less power and more mass, like an NSX-R, would be much faster over a few laps. There's an old saying that goes, "work with the car, not against it", but to do what the Miura wants to do would be to tap dance on a minefield with the devil himself after you cucked his wife in secret. For everyone else, the Miura has to be fought vehemently as though their virtual lives depended on it. If you can manage it, or even exploit its tail happiness, I can't help but to suspect it's unreasonably, unethically fast. It presents itself as an unreasonably tough test for drivers that might be bored of more mainstream offerings, almost akin to the demonic Kaizo Mario levels in the gaming world. I have a torrid time driving it, but at the same time, I find it difficult to dislike the Miura: it's a car that asks of its driver to be so hyper aware of everything that is going on with the car, from weight shifts, revs, yaw angles, speed, and traits like that are often associated with the best drivers' cars.
That is to say, instead of me critiquing the cars, the past few weeks have flipped the table, and the cars have criticised me instead. And, you know what? Both those cars, for polar opposite reasons, made every other car feel slower to drive; the X2014 with raw, sheer speed, and the Miura with how quickly it lapses the window of forgiveness to its driver. I might even be brazen enough to say that these two cars have made me a better driver.
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