One of the last holdouts of individuality in GT500 was, of course, Honda's NSX, easily the most rebellious GT500 entrant of the typically polite Japanese. Despite singing the same turbocharged 2L Inline–4 tune, the NSX Concept-GT has its heart in a very different place: aft the cockpit, immediately violating the rule in GT500 which stipulates that only FR cars may compete. As if having a Super Formula engine slung midships wasn't enough of a middle finger on its own, the NSX-P lined up on the top ten slots of the grid alongside its FR competitors as early as 2014, when the production NC1 NSX only debuted in showrooms mid 2016, meaning that the NSX-P had to be specially exempted from the rule that stipulates that cars in Super GT must be based (however loosely) on a models the general public can buy, hence why its known as the "NSX-P" instead of "NC1" like the road car. And just to stick it to the man, NSX-Ps also ran hybrid assistance; the only GT500 model to ever do so, though Team Kunimitsu, the team fielding the #100 Raybrig car we have in the game, opted to ditch the hybrid system for the 2016 season due to reliability concerns, meaning we GT7 players don't get to reap its benefits. For its blatant disregard for etiquette and rules, race officials slapped all NSX-Ps in the 2016 round of Super GT with a 29kg (64lbs) mass handicap, resulting in the rebellious Ronin weighing in at 1,049kg (2,313lbs) in comparison to the Lexus' and Nissans' 1,020kg (2,249lbs).
Of course, that mass deficit is more malleable here in GT7, where the game's Balance of Performance can arbitrarily add or subtract power and mass from a car from time to time. Now residing in Gr.2, the NSX-P weighs in at 1,175kg (2,590lbs) as of v1.52. A substantial increase over the car's original mass for sure, but at the same time, it's not the only one that has put on mass; it now only weighs 25kg (55lbs) more than the Lexus RC F and Nissan GT-R across all three BoP settings, meaning that its mass deficit over its FR compatriots got closed by a minuscule amount. The kicker however, is that, while the NSX-P normally has the least power of the three, under v1.52 BoP, it now has the most power among the three 2016 GT500 racecars: 545PS in comparison to the RC F's 542PS and GT-R's 540PS (401kW, 399kW, 397kW). If Super GT officials in 2016 have balanced all three cars to be roughly equal in pace, imagine what shrinking the mass deficit and completely reversing its power hierarchy does to the balance of the three. Hint: there is no balance.
Full disclosure: Even by my subpar standards, I'm not very good with high–downforce cars. However, despite my shortcomings, the NSX-P is just so easy to drive to my hands, and nothing else in the category even comes close. Yes, the engine revs to an astonishing 9,500rpm, and yes, it does make over 300PS per litre, but contrary to common sense, the HR-414E engine has healthy, usable torque from as middling as 5k, from which the power curves gradually build, reaching a crescendo at 9k, where the in–game HUD flashes the rev bar for a shift. Intuitively, that's where the NSX-P wants to be shifted, but trust me when I say that it's not an engine picky about shift points, and its Anti–Lag System, set to Weak by default, keeps the engine on its toes when off–throttle. It's just such a malleable, intuitive, and cooperative engine in spite of its bloodcurdling figures! As one of the only four cars in Gr.2 that I consider modern, the NSX-P displays startling immediacy in response to its driver's inputs, easily making the rest of Gr.2 feel like utter laggards and hazards to drive. But while it's one of the only four modern cars in Gr.2, it is the ONLY rear mid–engined car among the four, meaning that the NSX-P makes even its elite group of modern peers—who themselves already make other cars in Gr.2 feel slow and unwieldy—feel like sloppy pigs in the corners! In short, not only is the NSX-P the fastest Gr.2 car under current BoP, it's also the easiest to drive!
But of course, as with any GT500 car from the past decade, the NSX-P only truly comes alive when air starts rushing past its aggressive bodywork, at which point, the sheer, immense downforce that these cars are capable of so thoroughly dominates the experience that hardly anything else about the car registers. The grip that this thing produces at speed, alongside the drag said downforce generates, means that the NSX-P can get so stupidly close to the corner before needing to brake for it—even from top gear—that I don't much use brake markers alongside the track to judge when I need to stomp on the left pedal, instead rather just eyeballing the apex. It's mind boggling, even thinking back at it now! Not that the NSX-P really wants to slow down, because it incentivises and rewards slightly odd, wider entry lines into high speed turns that allow the car to bring more speed into the corner entry, and from there, the driver will just have to trust that the car will bite into a sharper line seeking the apex. This I think is where the NSX-P truly differentiates itself from and outshines its FR competition, because none of them can carve out a line as sharp as the NSX-P can, with their heavy engines up front. Downforce may make overtaking unnecessarily difficult, but because the midship NSX-P likes taking wider lines into high–speed turns, it's good both at attacking and defending around the outside of a turn, and it's SUCH a thrill when someone lines up on my inside, and I place that blind faith in the NSX-P to just send it round the outside, my nose still ahead and therefore retaining the right to the corner, and it's just... ooh! *Chef's kiss.* The speeds the midship NSX-P can carry through corners is so obscene that, with BoP off, a pair of NSX-Ps spanked a 787B silly around Tokyo East in our Wednesday lobby, even going as far as to harass a record setting AWD EV time attack machine in the ID. R. While sussing out the limits of the Racing Medium tyres in conjunction with the downforce is a matter of blind trust, dumb courage, and trial and error like any other high–downforce racer, once it does click, that adrenaline rush is one of the most addicting feelings I've felt. It's a bit like listening to a commentary video at 2x speed; if you can catch and process everything at 2x speed, suddenly losing that efficiency by going to 1x speed just feels so painfully slow—uncanny, even. That is to say, the NSX-P makes the entirety of Gr.2 feel inefficient, uncanny, and a downright chore. It can even mix it up with cars a category above on the right tracks! That is a scary thought, and I think we should just stop restricting categories in our lobbies when we feature racecars, and dabble more in turning off BoP entirely, too, just to see if more cars like the NSX-P are out there.
Honda Audio-Technica by wowbagger_84
#honda #audio #technica
#honda #audio #technica
Of course, like any other car, the NSX-P is not without its flaws. But because it is simply untouchable in Gr.2, the criticisms against the NSX-P are less of me saying, "the car is bad", but moreso, "this is just what Gr.2 is like", especially when its modern competitors in Gr.2 share the same foibles. As with all high–downforce cars with suspension stiff enough to withstand the crushing forces, the NSX-P can be a little sketchy in low speed corners where the aero is of no help and the suspension permits pitifully little weight transfer, and even with a hefty detune from BoP, the safety net of TC1 is something I inadvertently find my back pressed against from time to time, with full acknowledgement that the real GT500 cars never came with TCS or even ABS. That said, the rear end of the NSX-P lets go so linearly, with such tactile warning through my T300 wheel, that it almost feels malleable enough to play with. Because of said stiffness in the springs, raised rumble strips are to be taken with extreme caution, if not avoided entirely.
The speeds that high–downforce affords may be addictive, but the same high speed turns that make these aero–reliant cars so stupidly fun to yeet through also place a humongous strain on the tyres, so much so that, even on plain ol' 1x wear during our Saturday lobby, the default Racing Medium tyres hit their peak on LAP 2 of Yamagiwa, after which the tyres just fall off. I suspect that the cause of this rapid wear is due to the tyres getting too hot and melting themselves as though the road were lava. World Tour Driver Tidgney has excellent videos about tyre temperatures, how they affect racecars, and how to better manage them, and in these high–downforce cars, tyre temps are no less an essential part of driving (and preserving!) the cars as the engine oil, so much so that a player who uses 3rd party apps to monitor tyre temps in real time ought to glean pertinent information and gain a huge advantage, and I really dislike that GT7 doesn't display the tyre temps for that reason. Whatever the causes may be, tyre degradation makes the same blind faith the car demands of its driver ever more precarious, because there's nothing gradual or communicative about taking corners at those speeds; you just have to yank it hard into a corner, and you'll find out just how worn the tyres are only until after you carry too much speed into a turn, expecting the car to stick, and it just doesn't. At that point, there's really not much the driver can do but pray.
Look, the NA NSXes were my childhood heroes, and the 2008 Epson NSX GT500 still ranks among my top 10 favourite cars of the game, to look at and especially to listen to. I think it's one of the last "authentic" and "genuine" GT500 cars ever made. In those areas, the 2016 NSX-P can never hold a candle to the old NSXes, and the NC1 "nsx" will never be a real NSX to me. But while modern GT500 cars may not have much of a personality, their raw speeds are at such a high level that I genuinely think personality would just be plain dangerous; these cars have to be perfect and immediate at the speeds they ask of their drivers, and offer no surprises. That said, over the course of the week, I think I've miraculously found some personality in the category that seemingly forbids it: the NSX-P's personality is that it's simply heads and shoulders better than anything else in its category, be it GT500 or Gr.2, and it just goes to show just how much of a shame that it's the rebel, not the norm. If Toyota and Nissan haven't the balls to make a proper mid–engine sports car, why should Honda have to bend over backwards and pay the price? Why should Honda run an FR "Civic" in GT500, when paying customers can't even buy a Civic that drives its rear wheels, even partially? The NSX-P and NC1 NSX, simply by virtue of it being rear mid–engined, may just prove to be the peak of GT500 cars for a very, very long time.
