Late last week CJ Wilson Racing announced they were launching a Cayman Cup for Forza Motorsort 6. Sponsored by Logitech and produced in conjunction with The Online Racing Association (TORA) the CJ Wilson Cayman Cup will run from the 27th of April, 2016 to the 31st of August, 2016.
Complete with a Driver Championship and Team Championship, the CJ Wilson Cayman cup will race across 10 tracks over the next four months: Dayton, Sebring, Mazda Raceway, Wakins Glen, Long Beach, Lime Rock, Road America, VIR, COTA and Road Atlanta.
The virtual Caymans are said to be as close as possible to the real thing. In fact, CJ Wilson racing and its drivers worked closely with TORA to create a care that matches the team’s Continental Tire Sportscar Challenge Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport. Driver Danny Burkett (pilot of the #33 ONE Capital/Motor Oil Matters Cayman) put in many virtual laps to match the performance and handling of the Forza Cayman to the real thing.
“Without a doubt seeing my #33 ONE Capital Cayman in a video game was one of the coolest moments of my life”, explained the 20 year old from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Burkett went to on describe the development process. “It was awesome but a little bittersweet as the 2015 Cayman GTS in-game didn’t really feel like the GT4 race car did in reality. So when we started planning the Cayman Cup race series, Matt Hunter, from TORA, sent me the base setup for the car they were planning to use and it was surprisingly good but it still need to be fine tuned. Once we got those adjustments figured out, like getting the brakes a little better and improving the overall grip levels it felt almost identical to what it was like to race the Cayman GT4 Clubsport on the track at Sebring.”
Team Owner, CJ Wilson sees a number of practical benefits to online racing.
“Because Danny has been helping to develop the car for the series and he believes that it feels very much like our real race car, the Cayman Cup is going to give the competitors all of the experience with none of the costs of running a real race team and I’m kind of jealous of that!”
Perhaps, more importantly, the quality of the competition isn’t lost on Wilson, either.
“Not everybody has the access to develop their abilities in karts and that other stuff. They can, however, develop a lot of the same skills over a long period in Forza such as race craft, consistency, and damage control at the pointy end of the virtual field. Who is to say that in the future that there won’t be a CJ Wilson driver that we have scouted through our partnership with TORA? It would be great to develop somebody like that from the ground up.”
If you want to join in, make sure you have a copy of Forza Motorsport 6 and then check out the official rules and regulations over at the TORA forum pages.