Golden Lap goes where no other F1 sim has dared to tread

I can picture the scene as if it were a movie, like Rush or Ford vs Ferrari.

We’re a few races into the season and the heady days of sunshine and success in the early rounds have drained away due a spate of poor decisions – mostly mine – to do with tyre choice. And now the rain is coming down hard on the Hopkins Boot Raceway.

My ‘Chapman’ team, known for their technical innovations and black and gold livery (Lotus-alike, clearly) are now looking like losing second place in the constructors’ table. Qualifying is a washout, with the commentators making remarks about the state of the racetrack, branding it ‘dangerous’ and saying: “This track wasn’t exactly built with safety as a priority, with crashes 50% more likely to end in a fatality.”

It’s a grim setting.

Despite the torrid conditions, our Joel Ryan has managed to stick his car on P3, with his team-mate, Paul Woods, usually the one labelled ‘aggressive and reckless’, having a rather understated quali, and starting in P5. A solid base from which to try and beat the Ezzolini boys.

As the race gets underway, Woods falls to P7, but soon starts to come into his own, pushing on to P4. On lap 14, Allessandro Rinaldi crashes out, bringing out the red flag.

It looks bad.

At this point you can imagine some drivers shaking their heads as they chat to mechanics, making hand gestures describing aquaplaning, with onlookers suggesting it’s too wet to race. But there’s too much at stake, so everyone duly lines up for the restart.

A fresh set of wet tyres all round and the race resumes, soon becoming a four-way fight between the Chapman boys, Levi Mach of the Ezzolini team and Antonio Vilalba of the Hemlock team. It’s very close but our main man Woods manages to break through into the lead.

Joy instantly turns to horror as he misses the apex at the next turn and – oh no! He’s in the wall. Race over.

It’s now all down to Ryan.

By lap 36, however, the skies are brightening. It’s still raining, but it isn’t the downpour it was a few laps earlier. With almost-done tyres, Woods has somehow made it to first place, radioing back to say that he’s ‘in the zone’ and how ‘this will be a breeze’.

Another crash, another safety car period. I keep Ryan out for another two laps to extend the stint as much as possible. I can see that, with 20 laps to go, the track is drying and looks like it’ll continue to dry. So, against the rest of the field, I go for broke and pit Ryan from the lead for a new set of inters. And I tell him to push.

But I’ve done it again – it’s obviously the wrong call. He’s losing time hand over fist. By lap 52 he’s out of the points, but the inters still aren’t lighting up, even though the weather is clearly improving. Defiant, I tell him to stick with it and keep pushing. The grip will come.

With 10 laps to go, he’s now a lap down and can’t pit. He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

Lap 64 of 67 and he’s a full three laps adrift. Stressed out of his mind, and likely cursing my name, he’s still obeying my orders and pushing as hard as he can. Even I can see it isn’t worth it. And just then I get this sudden feeling that it isn’t safe for him.

He’s in danger.

So I reach for the radio – or in this case my laptop’s touchpad – to tell him to stop pushing. I have to accept it, it’s over, the race is lost. Come on home.

But as I go to press the comms, there’s a track status change. Someone’s crashed and it ‘looks bad’. I know even before I see who it is. It’s Joel Ryan.

The commentator, Walker, announces “Uh oh, Joel Ryan has pushed the car beyond the limit and crashed. It looks bad.”

And it is.

“Joel Ryan did not recover from their crash. They died,” announces a sombre Walker after the race. And all I can click is the box that says ‘A tragedy’.

And that’s it. Numbness. Now I’m having to spend the few last dollars the team has on a replacement driver. Some young upstart from Liechtenstein who is ‘careful’, ‘knows their limits,’ and is ‘less likely to crash’. He can’t possibly fill Ryan’s shoes, but then who could?

And so the team is left with a void at its heart. An empty chair in the dressing room, an unused race suit hanging on the peg. And worst of all, it wasn’t even his fault. It was my call to put him on the wrong tyres. Me who told him to push. Me who kept spurring him on like some abused racehorse even when the race was lost.

I’ve never had a game make me feel quite as culpable as Golden Lap has done here and it’s made me look at the game in a new light. These race cars may present as coloured circles, but suddenly I feel like there are people inside.

And, as I will undoubtedly have to announce to the team, we just lost one of the best.

You can also read our full Golden Lap review.