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Watch the future of racing with Castrol EDGE

Two drifting V8 Mustangs, two real-life tracks, one virtual fight to the finish

Published: 03 Dec 2015

Not so long ago, “virtual racing” meant dropping 10p into a Pole Position arcade game, pressing “one player”, and moving a block of pixels left and right across a grey strip to a high-pitched drone. Any actual excitement required plenty of imagination.

Fast forward to today, and things are rather different. Castrol EDGE’s Titanium Trial series has been pushing the cutting edge of virtual reality racing for a while now: you may remember drift supremo Matt Powers sliding a Roush ‘Stage 3’ Mustang through a digital landscape of volcanic rock and stalagmites, or Ken Block himself racing against only light, on a course drenched in darkness.

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It’s now time for the next Titanium Trial, and Castrol has gone one better with another world first: two champions racing head-to-head both inside and outside a perilous virtual reality world. Formula Drift’s Matt Powers returns, but this time he’s got company. The challenger is Ben Collins: a familiar name to all fans of the Top Gear TV show, plus championship winning Le Mans driver, author, and stunt driver for some of Hollywood’s finest, including recent James Bond films Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale.

The two racers met on real-world track in LA, driving real-world V8 Mustangs lubricated by Castrol EDGE with Titanium FST, designed to boost the boundaries of their cars’ performance. Meanwhile they were wearing the latest Oculus Rift Kit headsets, plunging them into an alternate world of sheer drops and shape-shifting twists and turns, with the cars effectively acting as giant game controllers.

That virtual reality code behind the race took months to prepare, using the same technology that is powering autonomous cars, and requiring hours of painstaking preparation to ensure the real-life driving reactions fed back instantly to the virtual world.

We won’t say who won, but the effect is spectacular: you can see the results in the video above…

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Following the virtual chequered flag, a breathless Ben Collins said: “I have taken on some extraordinary driving trials in my career, but this was certainly way up there. The hardest part was getting used to the VR world and truly letting myself go - putting my foot down and trusting my instinct over my rational brain. It’s hard when every bone in your body is telling you that what you can see isn’t real, but you know you’re still in control of a real car driving at speed. But with Castrol EDGE I knew the oil would be up to the job.”

His rival agreed. “I loved putting on my Castrol EDGE headset again,” said Powers, "and it was mind-blowing to race driving legend Ben as if we were on the same otherworldly racetrack…"

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