Once we had finished eating ourselves into oblivion, we moved onto the afternoon activity – a car racing simulation. We could have gone to an arcade to play all sorts of different games but there was something kind of novel, about attempting to race around The Mountain in a V8 Supercar sporting a competitive time!
We had booked in for a 2pm session, which was not really limited in time. Once we got inside, the initial half hour to an hour was a bit of a mess. The simulators weren’t configured for us to just sit down and race, so we had some teething problems getting started. After the initial bump though, it was all engines go.
It took us a little while to get used to driving them, they are designed to handle like a real race car – so doing silly things in them just lands you into a wall. The owner spent considerable time explaining that it isn’t an arcade game to us and any inference or level comparison to a PC type game was frowned upon. While we all appreciated the complexity of his product, I think we all got a bit of a rise out of that – given we all work in IT or are at the very least, very computer literate. That said, the product itself is sold to various drivers in the V8 Supercar series, which is a testament to its seriousness. The tires take a period of time to warm up, you need to pay strict attention to gears, speed and breaking markers or things go pear shaped very quickly. The weight transfer of the car plays a huge role, so do the various surfaces of the track (ie: bitumen, ripple strips, dry and wet surfaces).
The owner was very accommodating, he opened on a Saturday and then allowed us to drink and drive! Overall, the experience was a bunch of fun. I don’t think an average person would get a kick out of it, the learning curve for driving fast is well above that of an average arcade style simulator. However, for his target clientele – it is spot on the money I think.
- Group shot #1
From left to right: Ian, Wayne, Myself, Nathan, Andrew, Dave, Cameron & Brendan - Group shot #2
From left to right: Dave, Andrew, Myself, Ian, Wayne, Cameron, Brendan (in white), Anthony & Nathan - Anthony, Nathan & myself racing
- Andrew & Ian racing one another
- Cameron racing Andrew
- In the drivers seat
