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Master motorsports with these Project CARS 2 tips
The makers of Project CARS 2 tell you how to drive rallycross, open wheel and GT vehicles, plus supercars and touring cars
Project CARS 2 is a motorsports fan’s dream. While many racing games focus on one discipline, be it rally or Formula 1, Slightly Mad Studios’ superb sequel features rallycross, GTs, touring cars, open-wheel F1 and Le Mans-style vehicles, plus ridiculous 1000-horsepower supercars. There are also loads of vintage cars to try out.
This being a simulation, they all handle differently and when you throw in the ever-changing weather conditions, it's a great challenge. It is realistic, but, as Rod Chong, COO of Slightly Mad Studios, told us, “fundamentally it’s fun and it’s a completely immersive experience. You can sample different types of racing – classic tracks, modern tracks, all these different things.”
Handily, he also told us how to drive each different type of car. So if you want to master the different motorsports, check out his masterclass.
How to drive rallycross cars
Use the handbrake to turn a rallycross car
© Slightly Mad Studios
You have to almost chuck the car into the corner – a little bit like you’re playing an arcade game, where you brake quite early and you have to set the car for the corner well in advance of getting there. You almost want to rotate them, get them sideways and then slide through the corner.
With a rallycross car you have to turn a lot earlier than you think you need to
The cars accelerate very fast, which means that you’re shifting gears quite a lot. But the real trick with these cars is that you have to slow them down quite a lot before you get to the corner. It’s not like a GT, where you can brake quite late and turn as you drive in the corner. With a rallycross car you have to turn a lot earlier than you think you need to.
You also have to use the handbrake, because they understeer a fair amount. Rallycross cars are quite unusual in that they’ll turn and nothing will happen, so you need to pull on the handbrake a little and rotate the car to get it set up at the right angle. When you pull the handbrake, the power is still going to the front wheels and so you can, in some instances, keep your foot on the throttle and pull the handbrake a little and know that you can really steer the car with the movement of the front wheels.
Sometimes it’s ok to be on full lock and have your foot mashed into the maximum throttle and you use the wheel with the power applied to the front wheels to get the car to turn.
How to drive GT cars
Driving at night in a GT car
© Slightly Mad Studios
We have a lot of GT3 cars and GTE cars – these are some of the most popular cars in the Project CARS community and they have different characteristics. So, for example, the Bentley is quite a heavy car and it’s a little slow out of the tight corners, but it has very good downforce, whereas the Ferrari is a good all-rounder, and the Porsche has more weight in the rear, because it has a rear engine.
Generally, GT cars are designed to be quite easy to drive, because in real life, GT Cars are built around amateur drivers. They’ve got a fair amount of downforce and a relatively limited amount of power (even though they have 500 horsepower).
The thing that’s deceptive about a GT car is that sometimes you think they can go faster around a corner than they can, and you have to be a little patient with them sometimes to find the balance and the limit with them. Overall, they're some of the most enjoyable cars to drive, because they have a relatively high amount of downforce to power ratio.
How to drive touring cars
Put your foot down in touring cars
© Slighty Mad Studios
The majority of the touring cars are front-wheel drive and the best way to set up a touring car is to have it oversteer. One thing that you’ll notice is that the back end slides around a little bit, but that’s quite normal with a front-wheel car and you can use the throttle to correct things.
So, say the back end slides out, and you’re about to spin, you can turn into the way the car is sliding, put your foot down and you can actually pull yourself out of bad situations, so that’s one thing that’s special about the front-wheel touring cars.
How to drive open-wheel cars and prototypes
Open-wheel cars have a lot of downforce
© Slightly Mad Studios
We can actually talk about these two in the same breath, because the way that you drive both is similar. The open-wheel cars like the Indy Cars and the Formula Renaults and the Le Mans prototypes have a lot of downforce, and therefore you have a lot of traction.
You have to think about braking – if you’re going top speed in one of these cars and you want to brake for a corner, you can just mash your foot down as hard as you can and the car develops a lot of traction. It’ll slow very quickly, but as the car slows, it starts generating less aerodynamic downforce, and the car will have less and less grip available, so you have to take your foot off the brake pedal. So, press very hard and then you have to slowly decrease your brake pressure.
You've got to downshift quickly and then you can start braking later and later
In order to maximise your performance, you have to downshift very quickly. I was getting some coaching from Nick Hamilton, one of the professional drivers that work on our game. He was helping me get a bit faster and he was noting that when I was driving an Indy Car, I hit the brakes, but I wasn’t downshifting quickly enough. He said you’ve got to downshift a lot more quickly and then you can start braking later and later.
How late you can break is quite astounding. Sometimes with these cars, if you keep going faster and faster through the corners they generate more downforce and you can actually go through some corners a lot faster than you think you can. You have to experiment with the high-speed corners and see if you can generate more downforce so you’re going faster, and as a result you get more grip.
How to drive supercars
LaFerrari boasts 1,000 horsepower
© Slightly Mad Studios
You have to be very careful because these cars have way more power. A GT3 car generally has 550-650 horsepower. With LaFerrari you’re dealing with over 1000 horsepower and then you’ve got less downforce and you don’t have slicks, so you have to be quite careful and think about it differently. You’ve got more power, less downforce and less sticky rubber, so I tell people when they’re driving supercars that they have to be more careful than when they’re driving racecars
How to drive classic racecars
Drive classic cars in Project CARS 2
© Slightly Mad Studios
We’ve got a lot of old touring and GT cars from the late '60s and the early '70s, which are really fun to drive, as are the old Grand Prix cars and even some of the late '70s sports and GT cars. They’re a lot more crude than the modern cars and the tyre technology that these old cars have is a lot more basic. The thing that’s fun about them is learning how to control the cars’ sliding.
With these cars, you can control the angle of the car by inducing oversteer, so you can be in a medium-speed or low-speed corner and you can just stab your foot down a little bit and the car will kick out a little bit and you can control it really nicely in a slide like you’re some old-school racing hero.
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