Racing games are one of the best ways for those of us without the good fortune or budget to be able to participate in real motorsport to live out our F1 or rallying dreams.
That said, you’ll rarely see many of the more risky overtaking manoeuvres you might be able to pull off against your mates in Gran Turismo or Forza make their way into an actual race, where the laws of physics are a bit more robust and damaged cars require real money to fix.
However, it seems nobody told Nascar driver Ross Chastain about this, with the Floridian racer having successfully pulled off a move inspired by his time playing racing games on the Nintendo GameCube during yesterday’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
Have you ever pulled off a move like this in a sim race?
Coming into the race in question, Chastain was one of seven drivers working to try and score enough points to avoid being knocked out of contention for the series championship, which is set to be decided during the final race of the season on November 6.
Late in yesterday’s race, Chastain found himself running too far down the order to advance, leading him to launch a desperation move to try and gain positions into the last corner of the final lap, as you can see in the video below.
Flooring the accelerator and bracing for impact, Chastain rode the wall of the short track at top speed from tenth place to fifth, keeping his title hopes alive and scoring the race’s fastest lap by a country mile.
The inspiration for the move? Playing Nascar 2005 on the GameCube as a child, as Chastain explained in a post-race interview: “You could get away with it (in that game) and I never actually knew if it would work (in real life). I did that when I was eight years old.”
For those who fancy trying to emulate the move either in one of the Nascar Heat games or another of the oval-based options out there, the key is seemingly just to pick a short track, go for fifth gear when you should be braking and none of the sections of the wall you’ve chosen happen to stick out at angles that might impede your progress.
So, grab your racing wheel, brace for impact, and make sure to follow us for more coverage of racing games like F1 22 and MotoGP 22.