An Experiment

Today I booked the date for my christmas present, a day at the Ron Haslam Race School. Basically the idea is that I get a day at Donnington Park riding race prepped motorcycles while being tutored by a riding great. For a car analogy, it's like being taught to drive by Damon Hill. I'm pretty nervous already, and the event itself is a good 21 days away yet. Although I own a pretty fast bike I've never ridden a race prepped machine before, let alone been on track.

This presents a fantastic opportunity. I've always been a bike fan, and I own a copy of SBK X on my 360. It's the official game of the World Superbike Championship, Donnington Park is on the championship calendar and therefore, in the game. So I'm going to use it to see if I can learn the track in the game, hopefully then, when I get there in real life I'll know which way it goes when I'm there in real life.

Now obviously there are a few caveats to this. The main one being that riding a sports bike is a full body experience, and how comfortable you are at speed is based on how positive the feeling is that you get from the bike. You feel the road in your hands from the bars, the bike will try and launch away from you under acceleration and throw you forward on the brakes. If you're good you'll be touching your knee down in the corners, if you're amazing you'll be dragging an elbow as well. There's nothing strapping you on, so you just have to hang on as hard as you can. No matter how good the physics of the game are, there is no way to replicate that. Another big issue will be that I will be much slower in real life than I am in the game, so braking points will be totally different. My real life abilities won't let me brake anywhere near as late as I'll be able to in-game. Thankfully though, turn in points and lines through the corners should be pretty similar, which will be helpful.

So I'm going to experiment. Half an hour a night learning to ride Donnington Park in SBK X and then we find out if being half decent at a track in a video game can be any help when you go there in real life.

If I survive, I'll report back with my findings!