The Last Garage and Heusinkveld will help create Donkervoort’s next car

Marcel Offermans’ far-reaching sim project The Last Garage made its competitive debut at the recent Sim Formula Europe competition in Maastricht, The Netherlands, debuting a licensed BAC Mono in the process.

However, at the same event, the former Managing Director of Studio 397 and rFactor 2 revealed an intriguing partnership between TLG, sim racing equipment manufacturer Heusinkveld and Dutch sportscar manufacturer Donkervoort.

The tie-in will see Offermans’ simulation expertise and Heusinkveld’s sim racing hardware knowledge put to good use.

Donkervoort’s development strategy

“We will be involved in a two-year research project to help Donkervoort develop their new car,” stated the affable Dutchman during a public address at Sim Formula Europe, witnessed by Traxion contributor Ewan O’Leary.

“Their current car is the F22 which has been out for a while and they’re currently developing the successor to that. When they developed a car [in the past] they’ve basically been designing that on paper and then building the first versions of the car. 

“Because they know they need to tweak stuff they built the first couple of cars with a very expensive suspension [set-up] so they can tweak all the hard points, and then just send the car to a track with the driver. They start driving it and get feedback and keep tweaking the car until they’re totally happy with it,” he explains, citing the time-consuming and costly nature of developing a road car.

“That works, but it’s a very expensive process to do it like that; you have to hire tracks, get drivers and cars to the track, it’s also not the fastest process. Our goal is to try and shorten that [process] and make it less expensive. We’re going to build their new car in the simulator and see if we can use that to optimise some of the suspension and other aspects, and see if that works,” he clarified.

Donkervoort specialises in manufacturing lightweight sportscars with supercar levels of performance. Headed by Denis Donkervoort, the family-owned business is based in an impressive facility in Lelystad, The Netherlands, with the owner pinning its success on its outstanding customer service.

“In the whole project with Donkervoort we will probably have to [create] a few tracks that they do a lot of testing on [for The Last Garage],” continues Offermans in a separate interview with Traxion.GG contributor Pranav Kalavala.

“If you look at Donkervoort, they do a lot of testing at Zandvoort, Assen and at Spa. Those are the three tracks they visit regularly. I have no clue whether I will be able to get licences for all of them but we’re definitely going to try something in that direction because we need those tracks to correlate the data”, said Offermans, hinting at three tracks that may make an appearance in TLG in future.

Heusinkveld’s role

“The role Heusinkveld is playing goes back to what I said earlier about our desire to get a better integration between software and hardware,” states Offermans, regarding Dutch sim hardware manufacturer Heusinkveld’s part in the Donkervoort project. 

“We want to make sure that all of the hardware that’s used in that car has proper haptic feedback and that we have better control over that. So, pedals, steering wheel, shifters, that kind of stuff. We need to make sure that that all integrates well together”, he concluded.

Net gains

Offermans firmly believes that working with manufacturers like Donkervoort and BAC is the ideal way to stress test his TLG handling model:

“We also started working with companies to make sure that we can actually validate and improve our physics model,” he stated. 

“Because it’s nice that we make [a physics model] and think it’s right but you won’t know until you start modelling cars and comparing data between your sim and the real world,” he continued, highlighting how he can prove the accuracy of TLG’s physics by correlating it to real-world car data.

“That helps us validate the code and the physics we have and improve on that and it might actually help BAC improve the car and maybe future projects they are doing,” he said, referring to the BAC project.

“So that’s a win-win for us and really a way for us to get better at what we and I enjoy most, which is creating cars that really feel drive and feel great,” said Offermans, emphasising how important he thinks manufacturer partnerships are to his TLG project.

What do you make of The Last Garage and Heusinkveld applying their sim expertise to a real-world car project? Let us know in the comments below.

Featured image courtesy of Donkervoort