Video games allow us to do some pretty epic things that we otherwise wouldn’t normally get to do, such as racing down the highway at 200+ MPH in a supercar. But, sometimes, actions in the virtual world can and are replicated in real life. Just recently, NASCAR racer Ross Chastain proved just so by pulling off an insane maneuver during the receny NASCAR Cup Series XFINITY 500 championship race at the Martinsville Speedway. What made this move so special is the fact that he attributes learning it from playing NASCAR 2005 back on his Gamecube.
Above is a clip captured by ESPN reporter Marty Smith. It shows driver Ross Chastain sending his car around a corner with some serious acceleration, all thanks to a technique known as “wall-riding”.
Basically, the momentum from the car being propelled forward causes it to scrape along the side of the wall, but also keeps the wheels mostly straight. This reduces the drag caused by having to use the wheels to lean into a turn, which drivers normally have to slow down a bit for in order not to lose traction.
With the wall cancelling out that effect, the acceleration gained from the beginning of the turn not only gets transferred into the middle of the turn, but increases as the car exits and hits the straightaway.
Wall-riding in games is, unsurprisingly, a lot easier to pull off since physics systems (especially back in the days of the sixth-gen where NASCAR 2005 hails from), are still limited compared to real life. Even so, as we can see, some tricks are actually quite possible both in and out of the third-dimension.
In serious competitive racers like Forza Motorsport, iRacing and Gran Turismo, pulling off such a maneuver in a “pro” setting would surely cause some backlash against the player that tries it. It’s seen as unprofessional, sloppy and nearly leaning on the line of cheating since you’re basically getting an assist from the wall.
But, in the case of what Chastain has been ablr to pull off, this led to him, not being penalized, but rewarded. This little trick nabbed him a winning position, screeching into 4th place by the end of the race.
Chastain was interviewed after the race and cheekily admitted that his 8 year-old self used to do this in NASCAR 2005 when playing with his friends on the Gamecube, but he didn’t really imagine trying it in real life would yield the same results.
So, what’s the takeaway here? “Video game logic” is a catch-all term to describe things that primarily would only ever work/make sense in a video game. Stuff break; glitches and bugs can yield some wacky results. But, the real-life laws of physics look like they have a few cheat codes and glitches of their own, too.
Interestingly enough, the full title for the aforementioned NASCAR entry is NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup. Looks like Chastain meant to take it quite seriously.
Source: Go Nintendo
