Top Gear Tests Put iRacing Sim-Trained Only Driver In Real Racing Car

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If you thought Gran Turismo 5 was some sort of insurmountable racing  experience facsimile, you’re about to have a tiny shock. The creators of iRacing claim it’s ” the world’s most sophisticated commercially available racing simulation, conceived and designed with a very discriminating customer in mind — professional racers”. Top Gear (betraying their allegiance), famously adept at tackling any and all challenges involving any sort of vehicles in unflinching Barney Stinson fashion, be they pixels on a screen or dirigibles with tiny caravans attached to their underbellies, wanted to put that to the test.

Image by Top Gear

So they rounded up the current iRacing champion and $10000 winner Greg Huttu, a Finnish Ford Sierra owner who’s never driven past 100 mph in real life and never even been inside a racing car before, gave him a Mazda Star to command, complete with full racing crew and a day at the track. You’ve probably already guessed that he did a bit more than OK, since the title of the article isn’t “Geek humiliated, thought he could be a real driver”. Here’s what Top Gear had to say about his performance: “His braking points are spot on. He’s firm and precise on the throttle. And in the fastest corner, he’s entering at 100mph compared to an experienced driver’s 110 – a sign of absolute confidence and natural feel for grip”. His time was three seconds off an experienced driver’s.