Test Drive Tuesday: Bentley Speed 8

A small post for now (still exam season): I had taken some time off for a new car in the Test Drive Tuesday list - last week was a repeat of one I already did, and the week before was a variant of one I already done as well! So today was the 2003 Bentley Speed 8, a 24hrs of Le Mans prototype car. It's a beautiful car and really fun to drive. It has great stability and can brake almost as hard as a Formula 1 car. Its also good in straight line acceleration, but can be quite squirrelly accelerating out of corners. Other than that, I had no major problems with the car it was fun to drive and I didn't kill myself all too often!

There is some video footage, but I wont get time to sort all that out until after Christmas. So for now here's how the car stacked up:

• At Daytona and Bristol Motor Speedways, the Speed 8 weighed in 7th (of 17) overall and 3rd in class (of 4, Class: GTX - Prototype and Supercars)
• At Martinsville Motor Speedway, Watkins Glen and Laguna Seca the Speed 8 took 3rd place overall (of 17) and was 1st in class - beaten only by McLaren Formula 1 cars of 2013 and 1988!
• At Longstone pass the Speed 8 managed to pass the 1988 McLaren to take 2nd overall!
• Looking at combined times; for the 3 oval tracks, the Speed 8 is 7th overall, but falls to last in class (4th). But for the road tracks it triumphantly takes first in class by over 10 seconds and takes 3rd overall!
• Again in the combined times, for speed tested tracks, its 5th overall and takes 2nd in class, behind the Zonda R. For stability tested tracks, it takes 3rd overall (again, behind the F1 cars) and 1st in class. Finally, in braking tested tracks, the Speed 8 takes 2nd overall and 1st in class.
• All tracks combined, the Bentley Speed 8 is the 3rd fastest car I've tested in the Test Drive Tuesday series - beaten only (again) by the McLaren MP4-28 and the MP4/4.

Test Drive Tuesday - McLaren MP4/4

So apparently I forgot to post last weeks TDT until 10 minutes ago - woops! So this week, we continue the advancement through the years in Formula 1 development with the 1988 McLaren MP4/4. This car looks and feels much more the modern F1 cars we see today.

Between the aerodynamics and the faster engine, the car has blazed up to 9 seconds off the lap records of all the other cars I've tested in the Test Drive Tuesdays. Despite my constant protests that I am much better in front wheel drive cars than I am rear wheel, I do technically have more simulator experience in F1 cars over the years - nearly 10 of them in fact! Despite the trouble I usually get myself into with rear wheel drives, with Formula 1 cars, I can just make them work which is good for my happiness!

So the MP4/4... well, it is fundamentally better than the previous two F1 classics in very way. Advances in aerodynamics make the world of difference in corners and with the faster engine, you can get good traction out of the corners, as well as being able to maintain a higher cornering speed. All round, the car is great fun to drive and isn't massively hard unless you try to push really really hard.

I had alot of fun in this car but sadly, at $18 on 50% discount and $36 normally, it was just too expensive to justify buying. If it comes down in price or can be bought as part of a worthwhile bundle, I would recommend you take it for a spin!

Test Drive Tuesday - Maserati 250F

So this weeks Test Drive Tuesday car was the first car since I started reviewing the TDT's that isn't a GT1/GTX supercar. Today we take a look a back to Formula 1 in 1957 with the Maserati 250F. The car was very interesting as I've never really delved much into classic cars - as I usually pipe: modern front wheel drives are my strong point. Despite its differences, the car had very similar characteristics to last weeks Koenigsegg Agera R, albeit for very different reasons. In the Koenigsegg, you had too much power, making it very easy to spin out. Whereas the Maserati is very much designed for speed in a straight line, hence the very narrow wheels,  and as a result the rear end loses traction very easily on the exits of corners.

Of course, it is quite difficult to comprehend why these cars were designed this way, but if you take a look back to the 50's, you find that grand prix tracks were very different from how we see them today. Back then, the gearboxes couldn't handle alot of gear changes before burning out, so it was preferable to find a route that allowed cars to get to their top speed and stay there. This meant that cornering wasn't really much of a concern when designing the cars and hence this is how finished product turns out!

So as a result of the narrow wheels, exiting corners was a bit perilous but once you got used to how the car handled, boy did it flow together well! In fact, the oversteer characteristic meant that if you nailed the corner entry, then you had very little input other than regulating the throttle so you didn't spin out. It doesn't sound like too much, but in practice, what it meant for me is that I could really push the car right to its limits - something I was never able to do with any of the previous cars - which was exhilarating. It really is just great fun knowing that one millimetre more on the throttle, or one degree round on the steering, and you've gone from a beautiful lap to being fodder for the tyre walls!

The alien nature of the car (compared to the more modern ones we deal with regularly on this game) does take a lot of getting used to and is still fairly challenging even after several hours practising, but is seriously fun and provides a very welcome brake from what has become a bit of a supercar-grind. Its funny to think that driving supercars could become boring! By this point, the Maserati has gone up to $15, so its a bit pricey, but if it ever comes down in price on is part of a bundle, I'd heartily recommend getting it!

This review has got me thinking a bit, and I might do a bit of a re-purposing of the blog for a while - more will follow in a day or two!

Test Drive Tuesday(s) - Koenigsegg Agera R and Audi R18

So yeah, I kinda got wrapped up last week and wasn't able to do my weekly TDT, although I did race it and make a review video. Last week was the Audi R18 GTI prototype and this week was the ridiculous Koenigsegg Agera R. The reviews are below:

Audi R18 GTI

So, last week was the Audi R18 - a 24hr of Le Mans prototype contender. From a looks point of view, well, it had 16 headlights...... it was very strange and my sentiments are about the same for the driving style. The rev limiter is *very* low, and pretty much as soon as you got onto the power, you had to shift up again. To put it into context,  the rev limiter is 5000 rpm - the rev limiter in my Mini is 7000! In practice, what it means you need to take a whole different approach to driving a track. Generally, one thing that is conserved between cars racing on the same track is that the gear you take on the corners is usually the same. Sure, the speed is different, and you can take a different line or have a different braking point, but the Evo and the Indycar both the first corner at Watkins Glen in 2nd gear! In the Audi, however, you don't (except in the first corner at Watkins, so perhaps that was a bad example :p)! Because you are shifting alot earlier, you end up upshifting in the middle of the corner, which can destabilise the car mid-turn. So you have to relearn all the gears on a track from scratch for this car. Another thing about the gearing is that because you are upshifting so early, it lures you into a false sense of security that you can just slam on the power because you are in a high gear and consequently you'll end up exhaust-forward if you're not careful coming out the corners.

Another point of contention for me was the brakes. While it's not easy to lock up, the car becomes very unstable on braking and can make setting yourself up for corners very tricky! Overall, once I got to grips with the car, I found the car to be very fast, and it topped the tables at Bristol, Martinsville and Watkins Glen, and came a close second at all but Daytona. Sadly, I don't think I enjoyed the car enough to really recommend it and I spent most of the laps living in fear of the brake and accelerators. Which ties me nicely into (and you'll see why in the video):

Koenigsegg Agera R

This car made me sad. Having seen Top Gear once upon a time, I knew the presenters were very keen on the Koenigseggisseggggnignigsegigisegggnigseggniggsegg......... erm Koenigsegg, and I know it's a seriously fast car. With 850 kW of horsepower and 1627 NM of torque, the Agera R doubles the stats of all of the Test Drive Tuesday cars to date. With a 7 speed semi-sequential gearbox, this car has a top speed of 273 mph, so you would be forgiven for thinking it would blow all the other cars away. But when I saw the stats, that amount of torque sent alarm bells off in my head, and indeed, it was all too good to be true. The car is in fact *so* powerful, you can barely lay down the power without spinning out. Even as high as 4th gear, it's all to easy to spin out in a straight line. This trait meant that sadly, it is actually the SLOWEST of all the TDT cars I've driven, except for Daytona.


Even at Daytona, the fastest track in the game, you cant get close to the top speed of the car, with ~250mph being about the fastest I ever got. In fact, it was only AFTER I closed the game to write this did I discover it has a 7th gear. There is no possible way I could have used it on any track I visited though as it was just too fast. One oddity I did notice was that gears one and three were fairly standard, but gear two is a very very short gear, which took a little bit of getting used to!
Ultimately, this car could definitely go much much faster of these courses, but without traction control on, I'm not the one to do it and the best I could manage is very much sub-par for this car. As you can tell from the vidoe, I ended up getting very very.... I can't even say frustrated - just angry with this car! It wasn't a particularly enjoyable day, and I'm no hurry to purchase it!

Test Drive Tuesday - Toyota TS020 GT1

Game: Simraceway
Car: Toyota TS020 GT1
Cost: $7.85

So today's Test Drive Tuesday car  is the Toyota TS020 GT1, a 24-hours of Le Mans contender from 1998. Being of the same pedigree as the Mazda 787 from a few weeks ago, I was sadly mistaken that the cars would handle very similarly. This is very much not the case! While the car accelerates and brakes reasonably well in a straight line, it is very heavy around the corners and makes for quite an uncomfortable drive in my opinion.

After trying the car across my testing tracks, I have to say that I didn't have alot of fun in this car. I tried pushing the car, but much in the same way that you *could* push a bouncer, it's only going to end in pain! This was the crux of the problem for me: while I could spend quite some time getting to grips with the car, I just didn't find it fun enough to want to.

Even when racing later on, the car would go off on a spin for the simplest of errors. While this is probably a realistic representation of the car itself, it does make it very irritating to drive. From my point of view, I have already found a great GT1 class car for myself so I really don't want to invest the resources to be able to drive the car flawlessly as I wont enjoy myself on the way. By all means, if GT1 cars are interesting for you, then check it out, but I wont be purchasing it for my collection.

Mazda Racing Vidoes

Now its uploaded, here's the Mazda in action at Watkins Glen for 2 races!

Test Drive Tuesday - Mazda 787

Game: Simraceway Cost: $7


So today's Test Drive Tuesday was the Mazda 787 and I have to say, I spent about 20 minutes trying it out, then quit the race to buy the Mazda. I said of the Maserati last week that it was the most fun I've had in a supercar, but the Mazda wipes away all the other cars I've tried. The straight line acceleration and braking is phenomenal and the aero package in the car means the car can sustain very hight speeds in corners as well as being able to hold very heavy braking and hard acceleration. Kitted out right, at 220mph, the Mazda is one of the fastest cars in the game that I've driven. Both me and my friend found the car a very easy drive and a very enjoyable one too. The car is both fun and easy to drive for people who are not used to rear wheel drive vehicles, or who aren't used to racing games at all, and weighing in at $7 out of promotion, its one of the cheapest supercars I've come across on Simraceway, and I'd thoroughly recommend purchasing it. Also, much like the lap board in Top Gear, I'm starting a table of personal best laps around 6 tracks in the cars I test. The reason is that trying to review a car is very subjective. Your experience of a car depends on your skills and preferences in driving, which will differ from mines and other peoples. I've chosen 6 tracks, 3 ovals and 3 circuits: Daytona is a test of the pure flat out speed of the car, whereas Martinsville and Bristol form a great test of accelerating, braking and steering stability. I've come to love the Watkins Glen long track for its fast opening section and I feel that the latter stage is a good test of the stability of the car in constant-speed corners. Similarly Laguna Seca is a good mix of fast corners testing the stability and acceleration of cars. Finally Longstone Pass is a tricky track with many medium and heavy braking sections that push the boundaries of of the car your driving. So I'm currently working my through the list of cars I already own, I'll announce how the cars stack up against others. Just now, the Mazda is first on all counts! I'll finish off the videos and get them uploaded when I can. Unfortunately because the Mazda was so easy to drive, the Test Drive Madness videos won't feature this week as there was no hilarious crashes. I will put some videos of the racing performance though. Thanks for reading!

Test Drive Madness - Maserati MC12 GT1

Another weekly I want to start. After reviewing cars during the day as part of the Test Drive Tuesday, me and my friend (Sozedge on screen) like to team up and do some races in the TDT cars. This always ends up in shambolic disasters as opposed to meaningful races, so this series is more for the yuks than it is a legitimate review of racing the TDT cars. This week, we bring you the Maserati MC12 GT1 at Watkins Glen, Laguna Seca, Silverstone and Daytona.

Again, I apologise that out microphones are quiet and hissy in places, will try to get it sorted next week.