Miguel Gomes

[LessThanSte]

Hilarious!

[chrisn]

Interesting debate......

We have some similar experience here recently. Some of you may remember James Burnett who used to head up the Race School at Rockingham. He is now manager of the Dubai Autodrome Race & Drive Centre. The April edition of Car magazine Middle East has a feature about a challenge we held at the Dubai Autodrome recently. James was lent an Aston Martin DB9 and sent out to lap our 5.39 km GP Circuit, with our timing system set up. Meanwhile in a pit garage an 11 year old was set up with a DB9 on the same circuit on the GTR2 game on a pc.

I can report that, after cooking the brakes (it was a road car) and a couple of laps showboating on Turn 12 outside the office window, James set a best time of 2:33.117. His young competitors best time was 2:22.107. James did salvage some pride back by settling down at the computer screen and setting a lap time of 2:06.433 in a virtual GT3!

What does it prove ? Probably not a lot really. Aston Martin would not fly out a full spec race car to prove the point so James was handicapped compared to the set up on the game. However the key point is that in the virtual game you trash the car into the wall or armco barriers and you get to start over, without repair bills or troubling my circuit paramedic or the local trauma centre. That has to make a difference.

James told me afterwards that the kid had about 10 offs before setting his best time. James had none - Aston Martin Middle East would not have been best pleased and nor would the Dubai Autodrome management if he had taken a similar approach to perfecting his lap. More to the point he knew that the video recordings of his offs would have been held by my guys in Race Control ........!!

I do not doubt that virtual racing can help drivers learn a circuit. However it is no substitute for ARDS tests, Rookie Training and real on track experience. Anybody who suggests otherwise can have my Clerk of the Course licence - as I hold a duty of care to other racers, the marshals and the general public when people are out on track I would not be comfortable if people were qualifying to race on a virtual basis alone.

My god - it would be like the roads of Dubai out there!

Chris

[Tser]

Careful CN, Lessthanste will be here shortly to tell you that you don't know anything about running a circuit that could not have been learnt better, easier, quicker, cheaper and more realistically through CircuitManagementSim 2.0!

[Nick Brad]

Can we please have a close on this thread as what started out as talking about an amazingly talented driver who impressed me greatly when doing his rookie test, has degenerated into a mud slinging contest despite requests to keep to the original subject matter.

After all, I'd hate for Toby to start shredding the sofa in anger after reading this thread has become.

[R3ROK]

Quite right Nick....and I was just about to say how realistic my sega megadrive was......or my spectrum+2....

[Tser]

My posts certainly bear no reflection on Senor Gomes at all, simply an opinion of the validity of games/simulations for teaching you how to drive race cars.

[Henry Cutts]

Or maybe with my experience I know what I'm saying to be true! Karts aren't cars and have a totally different style.

I think you will find some Karts you need to drive smoothly although you would drive more aggressively than a stock car. With the engine you have to be very smooth, making no big throttle movements which as far as i know seem to be fairly similar style to SCSA, If anyone would like to loan me a car to make a fair comparison i would be happy to drive (obviously it would be cheaper to get a SCSA driver in a Kart but that’s no fun for me!)

Computer games are a good tool for learning circuits etc. as has been confirmed by drivers from F1 to Nascar, If its good enough to train people to fly millions of pounds worth of plane with hundreds of lives at stake I think we can all agree it is (or can be in the future) a good training tool for drivers.

[Nick Brad]

Which if done in a constructive manner, would have made for an interesting seperate thread imo. However, this thread was about Miguel and I feel it is greatly unfair to hijack this thread for an almost unrelated subject when Miguel has even admitted himself that his online experience had no relevance when applying/taking his rookie test, merely that he felt his sim experience helped him gain knowledge of the circuit and how to handle the extra size/weight of the SCSA cars.

[Reynard]

Can we please have a close on this thread as what started out as talking about an amazingly talented driver who impressed me greatly when doing his rookie test, has degenerated into a mud slinging contest despite requests to keep to the original subject matter.

After all, I'd hate for Toby to start shredding the sofa in anger after reading this thread has become.

As you can see, Toby has become extremely cross about the assorted meanderings of this thread. He is therefore kindly requesting you all, as I am, to please keep it on topic.

[savage86]

I think what Miguel has done is a fantastic achievement, especially as he has only driving Karts before and Nascar Racing 2003. He Steps into a real Ascar with a massive v8 engine and heavy body and passes the rookie test.

I think people are being extremely harsh they obviously need to try some of these games to see how realistic they are. I have raced with several real racing drivers on the game. Rick Impey (he raced in trucks back in 2004)

Thierry has already been mentioned and Ali Topley he raced legends he was a team mate of time. They all seemed to think that the differences were not that big between the game and real life.

Further more I know for a fact an SCSA racing team tested a setup they had thought up on the game, took it to the real life Rockingham the weekend after and the car behaviour and tyre temperatures and wear were nearly exactly the same.

A driver needs a real racing drivers skill to be good at the game, however what might hold them back is racing real cars may scare them too much to drive as the car as well as they would in the virtual world.