Having been reared by the sort of racer where I use other cars as turn-one shock absorbers, largely alongside Gabir, the last few years have taken him into more rarified air. Apparently - apparently - it's gauche to hurtle into a corner like a bat-faced demon, confident that the cushion of another's steel and flesh will orient you toward the exit.

Drivatars, Forza Motorsports' famously player-trained automated opponents, take lessons from what mortals do. So it's no surprise I guess that they drive like people - not people in the real world, although I guess some people do drive like that. No, they drive like people who are pretending to drive two-hundred thousand dollars worth of pretend car, in the absence of meaningful consequences. That is to say, like psychopaths. And if such data is collated, distilled, and made to animate a wheelman simulacrum, maybe it's not exactly driving the racing line. Maybe it will instead attempt to gorge itself on blood and organ meats.

When I think back to my Ridge Racer days or whatever, it's hard to square any of those ribald techniques with the actual sport. Project Gotham at least took some of your tender Kudos away, in a nod toward a more refined racetrack ethos, but I'm not sure I actually internalized the lesson they were trying to tell me - I just tried to make them up elsewhere. Most of my experience with "true" racing comes from iRacing, where a judging and angry God cleaves the Rubbing from the Racing, and often sends both participants to their rooms with marks on their permanent records and it still happens.

(CW)TB out.