Scott steps up preps on simulator
THIS is the $50,000 state-ofthe-art racing simulator Scott McLaughlin hopes will stop him revisiting a painful memory at the Newcastle 500 this weekend.
McLaughlin blew his shot at a breakthrough Supercars championship last year when he collided with Craig Lowndes.
So in a bid to leave no stone unturned ahead of this year’s do-or-die title clash with Red Bull rival Shane van Gisbergen, the DJR Team Penske driver has enlisted the help of a motion-equipped computer game loaded with Formula One spec technology.
McLaughlin has done hundreds of laps of the Newcastle circuit in the simulator, which has been built and designed in Australia.
“I’ve probably done 300 laps over the last few weeks to get ready for a massive weekend,’’ McLaughlin said.
“Everything is on the line, so I’ve done all I can to make sure I’m ready to go the second we hit the track.’’
Located at the DJR Team Penske headquarters in Stapylton, the Simworx motion force simulator features “four degrees of freedom’’ and is loaded with the same software used by Formula One and NASCAR teams.
While McLaughlin has not cut a single lap on the 2.6km Newcastle street circuit this year, he has driven a simulated 750km around the championship-deciding course since extending his lead in the title race with victory in New Zealand.
“(The simulator) lets me get my eye in before we go anywhere near the racetrack and even lets our engineers play with set-up stuff that we wouldn’t have time for at the track,” he said.
McLaughlin leads Red Bull Holden Racing Team driver van Gisbergen by 14 points ahead of the Newcastle 500, which begins tomorrow.