Sadly the build we were playing was set to quite a comfortable difficulty level, so it was easy enough to leave the competition miles behind after a little while, but Codies says the eventual game will logically progress through each discipline and challenge you each time - and you'll develop rivalries with the competition, so can expect a bit of "tat" if you've shown a bit of "tit" on an earlier corner. With high top speeds, little downforce and much less traction than some of their modern-day counterparts, the Mercs would clash and send each other flying - cartwheeling, given half the chance - until we took advantage of racer's-friend Pausing And Restarting a few times and gave ourselves more room to brake and paid more attention to the back of the car, at which point the slalom-like cornering became easier to anticipate and it was simpler to establish where best to press the cars ahead of us. Slightly harder but perhaps more compelling was the '30s Vintage GP starring a fleet of beautiful Mercedes W25s at Oschersleben. That's when things went wrong - for Jack!
Running slightly wide into the big, round Druids corner, we found ourselves diving toward the left-hander at the bottom of Graham Hill with enough momentum to zip comfortably around a slower car on the right-hand side and then tuck past another on the left as we sped along the bottom straight toward Surtees.
Picking up a European V6 and scooting around the full Brands Hatch circuit, it took a little while to establish the best braking distances for each turn and work our way into the reckoning, but the results were pretty gratifying. The latest preview build of the game, on display at Games Market Europe last week, gave us a handful of track-and-car combinations to try out in several of the game's umbrella categories - Touring, GT, Classic, Open-Wheel, Oval and Rally - and most were quick to satisfy with evidence of headroom to explore. And just as our chums will be able to spend more time tinkering with gizmos under the bonnet - as they take time out from arguing against globalisation and forming Jaffa Cake Appreciation Societies (true) - Codies has spent time tinkering with gizmos under the game's own bonnet, enhancing the graphic and sound engines to levels that push the current generation of console hardware toward keeling-over-in-the-gutter-ranting-about-student-grants point.
For the third game in the "Race Driver" series, Codemasters has refined this approach - maintaining that accessibility and adding and refining certain disciplines, but also allowing you to take larger steps beyond the basics than before, but only if that's what you want. It takes about half a lap to establish the basics, and then you build. Transferable skills: experience points for directionless drinkers. Much as they do in the student union bar when faced with the prospect of shots, pints or cocktails - and probably when they're writing dissertations and fishing around for internships, too, although we wouldn't know about that. They can get behind the wheel of anything from a touring car to a truck and they're generally capable of keeping them on the track and competing, yet the disciplines are distinct enough that they need to build on that foundation differently each time. On a related note, they all seemed to enjoy TOCA Race Driver 2 a great deal. If we can get away mentioning them without planting the seeds of a dodgy "midnight TOCA" joke, it's all our uni chums ever talk about.