Often, when it comes to public acknowledgements of failure, the messaging is laced with caveats, excuses and exaggeration relating to difficult circumstances within which the failure existed .

But not this time.

Kevin has given the sim racing community, via an interview with Traxion, not just an honest apology but a real insight into the key decisions which led to the beleaguered title’s disappointing launch.

The term “echo chamber” is used a lot to describe political confirmation bias within friendship groups, social media platforms and news feeds, but Kevin has used the term to describe their Factory Driver program.

The Factory Driver program was designed to fold a small group of sim racers into the development process, leaning on them for feedback concerning the physics model and force feedback.

However, the program ended up being more fan club than test factory.

Kevin noted that those in the program were overly excited to be testing the game, giving positive but useless feedback to the developers that understandably raised the development team’s expectations of the level of feedback they would receive on the game’s launch.

The fans in this program heaped hype and hyperbole on the developers, telling them how amazing the cars felt, how good the game was and how much the community would love the next chapter of Straight4’s legacy.

Yet - it was not to be.

As soon as the game was released, criticism came pouring in. The sim racing community was not impressed.

Still buoyed by the sheer volume of praise from the Factory Driver program, the team at Straight4 refused to accept there was substance behind the online backlash.

Slowly, it dawned on them that they had been grossly misguided by well-intentioned fans in their Factory Driver experiment.

News of patches, fixes and ultimately redundancies followed.

With the announcement of a 2.0 release due for later this month, Kevin was keen to assure Traxion’s audience that the Straight4 team remains motivated, passionate and receptive in their pursuit of revival… GT Revival you might say…

He’s also working on the trees - you heard it here first.

I’m not sure that this is as significant as it sounds. Whilst iRacing is hosting a series of DTM licenced events on iRacing, RaceRoom’s DTM licence remains unaffected.

This isn’t so much a changing of the guard, just an addition of one more guard in the guard box… is that what they call it? A guard box? Who knows.

iRacing has historically been the industry leaders when it comes to hosting large scale special events, often with the top tier being streamed to official channels, so this can only be a good thing for DTM and DTM fans.

Given RaceRoom’s long-standing support for emergent and marginal racing series from around the world, it would be a shame if this new arrangement with iRacing detracted from its own events.

All that being said, as an avid iRacer, I’m looking forward to getting involved!

BINGO!

That’s right - long time readers (anyone who’s subscribed since January!) will know that I started a 2026 sim racing bingo card.

Given the information we get from studios and manufacturers ahead of time, this is harder than it sounds. Clearly, I can’t break embargoes by adding news to my bingo card… can I?

So I have to think up new developments that we haven’t been told about yet that might come to fruition within a reasonable timeline.

Well, it’s March and we have one!

MOZA has launched its own motion platform!

So, for that to help me win a “line”, I would also need Traxion to hit 150k subs on YouTube (please subscribe here if you haven’t already) and I need Le Mans Virtual to be a hit…

Many drivers focus on entry speed, but the real lap time is gained on the exit.

The earlier you get back to the throttle, the more speed you carry down the entire straight.

With trophi.ai, Mansell provides real-time coaching while telemetry overlays show how your exits compare to faster drivers.

Better exits lead to faster laps.

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If you’ve ever read a Traxion.gg article, you’ll know that the writers over here all have very distinct voices and opinions. It’s this character and sound that I think makes Traxion special.

Human creation is becoming a rare commodity with which the media seem to trade less and less. But not at Traxion. We don’t use AI to write our articles on the website, and I pledge to you, that I will never use AI to write this newsletter.