These are, scientifically and empirically, the hottest places in racing games

British summertime is a nuanced thing. A collection of micro-seasons that, at first glance, might bear no relation to the time of year or each other, but always culminates in about a week of sweaty hell that turns our homes into nuclear fission reactors, where we are somehow expected to sleep. Ah well. At least we’ve got games to escape to. 

So let’s go to the hottest places there instead. Your USB hand-fans and pretentious brushed aluminium water bottles won’t help you now, because we’re going into realms where only desert reptiles and British holidaymakers would venture. Behold: the hottest places in all of racing gaming. 

Mario’s longtime frenemy is actually pretty decent on the track, carrying a lot of top speed and knocking opponents aside with his massive frame. He’s less adept at picking a comfortable home, opting for some kind of steel foundry as the site for his castle abode, it’s revealed in Mario Kart 8.

Where the cantankerous dino-turtle sleeps in this sweltering morass of molten metal and lava is not made clear. Oh and by the way he’s converted a sizeable chunk of it into a race track, because at a certain point what difference does it make anymore. All the fireballs, the 90-degree turns and sheer drops make it a particularly enjoyable track to master, but no amount of air con could sort this one out.

Temperatures inside the cockpit reached 50 degrees celsius when F1 visited Qatar in October last year, resulting in several moments where fatigue had a visible effect on drivers’ performances. Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll reported being dizzy to the point of passing out in the cockpit.

Driving around the magnificent Losail Circuit in an F1 car is an ultimate test of vehicular endurance in hostile conditions, very nearly as bad as riding the London underground’s Northern Line in the height of summer. Thank goodness for Codemasters’ F1 games, which give you all the apexes but none of the dehydration.

The Paris-Dakar rally winds its way through some of the most challenging terrain in the motoring world, concluding in Senegal’s capital where average temperatures exceed 30 degrees celsius all year round. To get there, you need to navigate the Western Sahara in purpose-built machinery that makes even a Toyota Landcruiser look a bit flimsy. It’s as stern a demand as racing could possibly impose on you.

It’s also quite balmy. So while Dakar Desert Rally chiefly concerns itself with managing huge sand dunes and keeping your machinery ticking over while you’re hundreds of miles from the civilised world, it’s worth keeping in mind this is probably the warmest place that vehicles ever visit. So let’s take the AC off eco mode, eh?

It’s never specified exactly which wartorn country Far Cry 2 takes place in, but crikey it looks warm there. Arguably, a game’s never conveyed an oppressive heat more effectively, in fact: things seem to set on fire around you every 45 seconds or so. The horizon’s constantly wobbling with heat haze. The only colours you ever see are fatigue-inducing shades of brown and orange, and to top it all off you’ve got malaria. Battling the effects of malaria in a videogame is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

At least you’ve got a Jeep. In fact, despite this obviously being a shooter rather than a racing game, cruising around in the 4x4 is more of a defining experience in this game than the gunfights themselves. Back in 2008 it felt revolutionary to traverse the vast open world map in this way, stopping only to get into minor disagreements at checkpoints that inevitably led to massive fires.

Far Cry 2 is a game that seems completely uninterested in you having fun in it, and over time that fosters a kind of begrudging respect. It’s at the top of precisely nobody’s travel plans, but Far Cry 2 deserves a reverent nod whenever inhospitable environments are mentioned in gaming.

Maybe it was the fact that its predecessor was set in the confrontationally drizzly UK that makes Forza Horizon 5’s Mexican world map seem so sun-kissed and scorching. Maybe it’s all the actual sunshine, and the cacti and the desert and rainforest. We’ll leave that one for the Horizon Festival’s climatology team and simply say: it’s a bit warm out.

Playground Games packs a lot of environmental variation into its patchwork quilt of Mexican scenery, from mountainous regions to leafy forests, gorgeous beaches and Insta-worthy towns where, frankly, the restaurateurs should have learned not to put tables and chairs so close to the roads by now. It’s a great setting to take a snap of a vintage Corvette with the sun bouncing off its polished bonnet, and probably an absolute health and safety nightmare to operate as a festival site. We just hope there’s plenty of bottled water around.

Here are a few surefire ways to heat a room very quickly.

First: sit yourself down in a bucket seat that really hugs you and absorbs your body temperature. Place a gaming PC or console nearby, then a nice big screen emitting tonnes of heat, and then concentrate really hard on hotlapping, using a steering wheel connected to a servo full of metal parts that can put out 8Nm of torque.

Do this in the smallest room in your house. Close the door because your partner doesn’t like the whirring sound of the wheel, and put on a nice big headset over your ears for good measure. After about an hour, you’ll have created conditions that would melt titanium, knock Lance Stroll unconscious and bring out a red flag from any set of race stewards. And yet you’ll ignore it, because about 40 minutes ago you found three tenths in sector one but you still haven’t actually posted a faster lap yet.