Davide Nativo
Premium
What if I told you that there was a way to look at tracks as if it was the very first time again?
We are used to consider reverse layouts as something usually driven for fun, or in arcade games as an alternative to enrich the track offer. However, I have started to wonder, after driving some of them, if reverse layouts could not be considered as something more than just a pastime. In fact, while running at first on some of the many Silverstone layouts in reverse, I started noticing how much fun they can be, and the challenge that they offer. Yes because going the opposite direction is not something we are used in doing, it is challenging to our very own way of thinking.
Without going too much into the deep philosophical plane of explanation, it is true that we are used to see things only from a specific perspective. More often than not, one that has been taught to us or professed to us as right. We then learn to separate the good from the bad, based on that very perspective, and we try to get external approval by seeking for others opinions and confronting them with ours. If they are similar, we feel safe; if they are not, either we change what we think or we try to stand our ground and collect accolades by showing how right our opinion actually is, exactly because so different from the one everyone else has.
We are not used to pursue an unlike look of things, just for the sake of it. How much we are missing by not doing so, my friends! We are most scared that by looking at things from a different perspective, ground might shake under our feet. Yet isn’t our life a journey through perilous seas? We thrive through waves, we rot on still ground.
Reverse layouts can be a most useful partner in our quest to learn to have a different mentality. The reason is very simple. By going the opposite direction, we understand a whole lot of things. First, that everything has (at least) two faces to it, two ways to look at it, valid all the same, just different, maybe opposite. We cannot and should not limit ourselves by accepting one and refusing the other. That is because, secondly, it is by fully experiencing the one different from what we accept as right for us that we may realize if that is actually true, or if we have always lived the wrong way (bad joke, I know!). Thirdly, it is only by freeing our mind from the boundaries of looking at things in binaries, to start seeing things from different perspectives just to have a fresh look at them, for the enjoyment of discovering new vistas, that we taste what life truly is about.
If you don’t believe me, if you think that I am just making a fuzz out of all of this, start trying driving reverse layouts, and see for yourself. However, do not do it as an exotic diversion, or as a lazy experiment. In these cases, just do not bother. Try it with honest intention and earnestly. Otherwise, you won’t understand.
It has been by racing the reverse layouts of some of the tracks I love that I have fully realized the reasons why I love them, their strengths and weaknesses, the points where I could exploit better a particularity of the circuit. At times, this happened at the cost of despising the reverse layout, true, but that is good. As we said, how could you truly be so sure about something you believe in, if you haven’t really experienced the opposite of it, or even refused to just look at it? How, if you never questioned it?
Other times, I’ve had just so much fun, that I wondered why I did not do it before. The challenge was so thrilling, so exciting, so fit for a specific type of vehicles that it felt wrong not to use it for them. It was better than the original.
Sometimes instead, tracks, or parts of them, are not meant to be driven in reverse, and that is what makes it more challenging. To still try to be fast, by approaching the circuit in a way you were not supposed to. It could also happen, on the contrary, that the reverse layouts felt just as right as the normal one. Equally challenging, equally fun, equally logical. It felt like discovering a new venue altogether. In these instances, a sim can double its offer by just offering an alternative to the usual, at (almost) zero cost.
In the end, this wants to be merely a suggestion, a friendly reminder that there could be so much more out of the ordinary, out of the already known, if only one learns to have different eyes. Do not get tired of looking!
We are used to consider reverse layouts as something usually driven for fun, or in arcade games as an alternative to enrich the track offer. However, I have started to wonder, after driving some of them, if reverse layouts could not be considered as something more than just a pastime. In fact, while running at first on some of the many Silverstone layouts in reverse, I started noticing how much fun they can be, and the challenge that they offer. Yes because going the opposite direction is not something we are used in doing, it is challenging to our very own way of thinking.
Without going too much into the deep philosophical plane of explanation, it is true that we are used to see things only from a specific perspective. More often than not, one that has been taught to us or professed to us as right. We then learn to separate the good from the bad, based on that very perspective, and we try to get external approval by seeking for others opinions and confronting them with ours. If they are similar, we feel safe; if they are not, either we change what we think or we try to stand our ground and collect accolades by showing how right our opinion actually is, exactly because so different from the one everyone else has.
We are not used to pursue an unlike look of things, just for the sake of it. How much we are missing by not doing so, my friends! We are most scared that by looking at things from a different perspective, ground might shake under our feet. Yet isn’t our life a journey through perilous seas? We thrive through waves, we rot on still ground.
Reverse layouts can be a most useful partner in our quest to learn to have a different mentality. The reason is very simple. By going the opposite direction, we understand a whole lot of things. First, that everything has (at least) two faces to it, two ways to look at it, valid all the same, just different, maybe opposite. We cannot and should not limit ourselves by accepting one and refusing the other. That is because, secondly, it is by fully experiencing the one different from what we accept as right for us that we may realize if that is actually true, or if we have always lived the wrong way (bad joke, I know!). Thirdly, it is only by freeing our mind from the boundaries of looking at things in binaries, to start seeing things from different perspectives just to have a fresh look at them, for the enjoyment of discovering new vistas, that we taste what life truly is about.
If you don’t believe me, if you think that I am just making a fuzz out of all of this, start trying driving reverse layouts, and see for yourself. However, do not do it as an exotic diversion, or as a lazy experiment. In these cases, just do not bother. Try it with honest intention and earnestly. Otherwise, you won’t understand.
It has been by racing the reverse layouts of some of the tracks I love that I have fully realized the reasons why I love them, their strengths and weaknesses, the points where I could exploit better a particularity of the circuit. At times, this happened at the cost of despising the reverse layout, true, but that is good. As we said, how could you truly be so sure about something you believe in, if you haven’t really experienced the opposite of it, or even refused to just look at it? How, if you never questioned it?
Other times, I’ve had just so much fun, that I wondered why I did not do it before. The challenge was so thrilling, so exciting, so fit for a specific type of vehicles that it felt wrong not to use it for them. It was better than the original.
Sometimes instead, tracks, or parts of them, are not meant to be driven in reverse, and that is what makes it more challenging. To still try to be fast, by approaching the circuit in a way you were not supposed to. It could also happen, on the contrary, that the reverse layouts felt just as right as the normal one. Equally challenging, equally fun, equally logical. It felt like discovering a new venue altogether. In these instances, a sim can double its offer by just offering an alternative to the usual, at (almost) zero cost.
In the end, this wants to be merely a suggestion, a friendly reminder that there could be so much more out of the ordinary, out of the already known, if only one learns to have different eyes. Do not get tired of looking!
Last edited by a moderator:
