Drivers race their clones

Oils ain’t oils… And perhaps drivers ain’t (real) drivers! In a Castrol promotion, two accomplished professional drivers have taken on their clones – all thanks to the wonders of virtual reality.

Video gamers are familiar with the concept of a ghost car. That is, a virtual racer (even within the virtual environment of a video game) that the player can compete against.

It can either be a representation of a rival player, or your own best lap of a particular circuit and is usually represented on-screen as a rather transparent representation of the vehicle in question. As you compete, the ghost car will either be ahead as something to chase, or perhaps filling the review mirrors like some sort of vehicular restless spirit.

Enter Castrol and its Titanium Trials. A series of tests to promote the company’s EDGE motor oil, Castrol has called on “the world’s best drivers to step up, push the limits and when the time comes BE TITANIUM STRONG”.

Oooh ahhh…

For the latest Titanium Trial, the team took an Aston Martin Vulcan and a Koenigsegg One:1 to the Ascari circuit near Ronda in Spain. There Aston and Koenigsegg test drivers, Darren Turner and Christoffer Nygaard, set virtual fastest laps before racing, errr, themselves.

The idea was to boost the performance of the Vulcan and One:1 by using Castrol EDGE and take on the virtual clone cars and drivers on the Ascari layout.

Castrol’s show a rather fanciful drama of virtual versus reality, with the actuality of the exercise involving the drivers looking at a HUD (Head Up Display) version of the ghost-car relative to the real-world track position.

Of course the outcome is somewhat predictable but the concept is rather neat, and production levels make for entertaining viewing.