Comparing Gran Turismo 4 to driving an actual Ford GT
by Vladimir Cole 
{ Sep 12th 2005 at 3:59AM }
Wired news reporter Mark McClusky got to drive the $200,000 Ford GT (pictured here) and notes
that the hours he logged playing Gran Turismo 4 (PS2) helped him perform on the racetrack, but not as much as
he thought they might.
"Turning all those laps gave me a good mental model of how the track flows: what turns come where, where you need to set up to make the turns, where the fast and slow parts of the track are."
He goes on to compare the differences of driving a really fast car around a race track to the experiences of driving similar cars in Gran Turismo 4. For any armchair drivers that think they're ready for the tracks, this is required (and inspirational) reading.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Will @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
Very intresting read!
mark @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
ummm thats nothing. CHeck out Jeremy Clarksons review of GT4.. and hes driven nearly all the cars in the game!
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1722790,00.html
M3 Magic @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
This guy is a total loser. This car is not anywhere near being the most powerful vehicle in the world. Hello? Porsche Carrera GT, Ferrari Enzo, Mercedes McLaren SLR, any of those are more powerful in terms of power. He couldn't even drive a manual...no wonder he couldn't get near to tapping the full potential of this car. He also says that only 100 people in the world could drive this thing to its full potential, which is totally inaccurate. True there are many poor drivers out there, but any real SCCA driver could and would have the ability to drive this thing smoothly. Stick to video games @$$hat. I'm surprised this vehicle didn't show up on wreckedexotics.com.
metal_gear_jello @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
I thought the Mclearen was the most powerful "off the assembly line" car in the world. Or at least the fastest. This guy is off his rocker, admits he can't drive stick and test drives a GT40.
mark @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
I thought the porsh gt just won fastest production car?
Sanity Musty @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
I agree with the other commenters that the guy is not a proper car nerd. I mean he thought race car drivers weren't real atheletes. Props to mark for posting the article from the Times Online.
JPRacer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
Jeremy Clarksons is a total moron...
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There's no "fastest" car in the world. Sure, there's a "top speed" record car, but fastest, no. Test at different tracks and you'll get different results.
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As for the current subject it's easy to see that the guy never drive agressively before. There's no comparaison between sitting in a couch driving a FordGT in GT4 and pulling 2G (with race tires) in a real GT. But there's a good thing to this, now he admits that race drivers a true athletes.
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Jeremy Clarksons is a total moron...
metal_gear_jello @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
You maybe right mark, I haven't followed car stuff for a long time. Either way, the GT40 is a n awesome car for sure, I don't know if it's the world most powerful. But I guess powerful enough to be on the cover of GT4.
Radiant Silvergun @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
Currently the world's fastest are the Koenigsegg SSR (240+ est) and Saleen S7 Twin Turbo (240-260 est)
Bugatti's Veyron will probably take the title soon.
Good article here about world's fastest cars:
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2005/08/29/fastestcars-luxury-vehicles-cx_dl_0829feat_ls.html
Imp @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
EGM did a very good article concerning this a few months back. They took a really good GT player and car enthusiest and a profesional driver, and had them play some GT4 for about a day in these cockpit type setups they made.
Then they took the gamers/drivers out to the real track they had played in the game in order to see what the correlation was.
The pro did his best in the game because he can push the car farther without fear of dying.
The guy who had never driven that course in real life prior to this experiment said he felt more confident in knowing the track having practiced it so much the day before.
GTgamer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
I'll agree, the Wired writer isn't very qualified to give much input as a professional driver to truly see how different GT4's model differs from reality. However, it gives an "armchair driver" (drives a normal car which is likely an automatic) a good perspective of the difference between simply sitting down in front of a PS2 and pushing buttons to shift gears versus actually going out and driving a performance car. Of course, his observations/conclusions aren't very surprising. Real life is easier with all of the haptic feedback and it's very physically challenging.
Common sense plus knowing a little physics or going to a kart track (not the kiddie fun center ones) could also quickly teach someone the points in this article as well.
Apparently JPRacer has some odd pent up hatred toward Clarkson. I think Clarkson's general point is that there are quite a few cars that could navigate many circuits quicker than the NSX could.
CPB86 @ Dec 18th 2005 9:07PM
"I think Clarkson's general point is that there are quite a few cars that could navigate many circuits quicker than the NSX could."
You may want to search the internet and watch the motegi battle, pro drivers with the following; m3 csl, 360 modena, gallardo, murchialago, 911, nsx. It's surprising how well the NSX goes against the high horsepowered Lamborginis.