GT5 X2010 Prototype
Sebastian Vettel scored himself a Formula One championship at the Suzuka circuit in Japan yesterday, and now Gran Turismo 5 users can celebrate his win with a free (virtual) car, courtesy of Red Bull and Sony.
The car in question isn’t Vettel’s actual race car, but the Red Bull X2010 concept the F1 star helped dream up for the video game. But don’t let that discourage you: the car was previously only available to gamers who completely beat GT5, which was no small feat.
The car is no slouch, either: it was designed to flaunt current racecar regulations and provide the best performance of any race car, ever. To that end, it has a twin-turbo direct injection V-6 engine producing 1483 horsepower and 527 pound-feet of torque, and a curb weight of 1356 pounds. It also uses a similar setup to the old Chaparral 2J, which uses a fan to suck air from beneath the car, creating up to 1.63G of downforce. All told, the car can do 0-60 mph in 1.4 seconds, 0-120 mph in 2.8 seconds, and 0-200 mph in 6.1 seconds…at least, on your television screen.
Red Bull and Gran Turismo 5 are giving the car to each and every GT5 user that logs in to the PlayStation Network through October 16th. Once gamers have the car, there’s a second celebration gift: five million virtual credits for drivers who score a gold medal on a unique time attack challenge. Lap the Suzuka circuit in a minute and 25 seconds, and the big prize is yours. For those of you who aren’t gamers, consider a virtual credit to be about one dollar in GT5. Scoring a gold, then, is enough to stock your virtual garage with four or five Bugatti Veyrons.
Not that the Veyron is any improvement on the X2010, though. Elite gamers have been known to take the X2010 around the Nurburgring Nordschleife in just three and a half minutes, and the X2010 can theoretically reach 280mph. In other words, it makes the world’s fastest production car look, well, slow.
