Even though I could not achieve the balance that I desired, I still wanted to mix it up with the AI and see what they had to offer. Since the game has no multiplayer option at all, this was going to be my only chance to actually race. Although I had heard some grumbling about the lack of mirrors in the game from some others that had tried it, I hadn't really noticed that there was no mirror until I got on the track with some other cars. In test-drive mode, I was so concerned with trying to keep my under-steering pig off the wall, I didn't have time to look in the mirror. I even exited back to the controller options to find out how to set my wheel buttons to look left and right. To my disappointment even that option was missing. There is an option to look behind you but I don't have the desire to see where I've been at this juncture. I need to know who is on each side, not who is behind me.

At this point, I'm not sure that I even want to go back and resume the race. I know I'm going to be an accident waiting to happen if I can't see where my competition is around me. Fortunately, I started in the tail of the field and since, as predicted, the AI cars start on warm tires, they were well ahead. When I did eventually catch up, that's when things got interesting. The AI does seem to respect that there is another car beside them and do try to avoid that car. When one of them enters the corner with you and your spotter is calling, "Outside�. Outside" and you can't see or hear where he's at, that's a scary place to be. Since I'm driving a car that only turns when you lift off the accelerator, you make an easy target to be overtaken. Then the car that is passing suddenly appears from behind the front tire. You see the perspective of the in-car view is so narrow that the car that has just passed you seems actually smaller than your front tires. From the cockpit the view angle is so narrow that all you can see to the left and right are your tires and even though there is a car right beside you, you can't see them until they are past the front end of your car. And the odd thing is that the AI car looks to be about half the size of your car.

I recently watched the Miami IRL race and even from the visor cam, you still have some peripheral vision. When a car pulls up alongside, you can see the wing approaching and then the tire as well. Another thing I noticed in that IRL race was that the car alongside looked to be the same size. Certainly your eye has a wider view angle than a lipstick camera and even with a helmet on, you should still be able to determine by sound positioning where other cars are around you. The longer I drove, the more I felt like I was looking the wrong way through a pair of binoculars. Then when it came time to pit, suddenly I wasn't driving the car anymore. Instead, I'm a passenger in a blimp watching the car I was driving proceed down pit lane on its own. I was sure I turned the Auto Pit option off. I can only assume that the tire modeling was so bad that no one would have been able to control their car at less than race speed and the fix was to simply have the game take over and drive you on and off pit-road. Why not model the pit speed rev-limiter that the real IRL cars possess and leave us in the car to watch the crew work? Honestly, the one exceptional feature in the game is the action of the crew. They actually remove the tires and at least pretend to be fixing the necessary damage. It sure would be neat to see that while sitting in the car.