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Clone Rivals: Aston Martin Vulcan pushed to the extreme
In the new Titanium Trial from Castrol EDGE, Aston's factory driver goes up against a cloned version of himself at Ascari
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Aston Martin’s Vulcan is all about the resolute pursuit of performance. It is about reaching – and even exceeding – the limits of what is possible, both technically and, of course, for a driver. It is a track-only supercar, just 24 will ever be made and everything about it, from what it is made of and how it looks, to the components it is made from are chosen for a reason.
And this includes the oil. When Darren Turner is pushing a Vulcan to the ‘Vmax’ he needs to know his oil will perform at the same level that both he and the engine are. Under that kind of pressure, the only thing preventing the car suffering a massive mechanical meltdown is a barely visible film of Castrol’s strongest, most advanced oil ever: Castrol EDGE boosted with TITANIUM FST™.
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Darren Turner is a hugely experienced, 42-year old, British racing driver. A longstanding Aston Martin factory driver, he took back-to-back class victories at Le Mans with a DBR9 in 2007 and 2008. He is currently racing a V8 Vantage in the FIA World Endurance Championship and, in between, is one of Aston Martin Lagonda’s high performance development drivers.
Because there will only ever be 24 examples of the Vulcan made, it is the unique nature of his job that means Turner is one of only a handful of people – other than those final owners – who will ever get to drive the Aston Martin Vulcan.
The concept behind this Titanium Trial was to pick two world-beating supercars – the Aston Martin Vulcan and the Koenigsegg One:1 – and two world class drivers (Darren Turner in the Aston and Koenigsegg factory test driver, Christoffer Nygaard, in the One:1). The challenge was to face their ultimate test: to race against themselves!
For each driver, the trial began with a team of experts creating a Clone Rival to race against, in this case a virtual reality version of Darren Turner, in a virtual reality Aston Martin Vulcan, on a virtual reality version of the Ascari racetrack. VR specialists, REWIND, spent many months developing a custom simulator to map the acclaimed Spanish track, creating a truly authentic Trial in which Turner was able to race a carefully mapped cloned version of himself.
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But just exactly how would that feel?
“I’m very experienced with driving under pressure, but racing against myself gave me an overwhelming sense of competition. Every aspect of the car – and myself – had to be pushed to the limit to achieve the best lap times. Racing one of the world’s fastest supercars using Castrol EDGE gave me the confidence to push to the extreme and beating my best simulator performance by 1.1 seconds – with the real car – gave me an incredible rush”.
It comes as no surprise that the latest Castrol EDGE is able to perform at the same incredible level as Turner and the Vulcan. This latest Titanium Trial was the culmination of an unprecedented level of development for Castrol EDGE, including testing more than 2,400 blends and the equivalent of 1.9 million miles being covered to ensure the formulations were exactly right.
Production of the video of this latest Titanium Trial was a match for the Trial itself. With a crew of over a hundred, and two stars in more than reasonably expensive cars, it needed a director with the experience to pull together two final films that did justice to the technology and capability of the drivers and the cars. And, of course, the oil.
That man was Jako, one of Britain’s most acclaimed specialists in filming major movie action sequences. His credits include Gladiator, Casino Royale, X-Men First Class, Skyfall and the most recent Bond blockbuster, Spectre. The VFX was put together by The Mill, the world’s leading creative content post production facility, the same production house responsible for some of the stunning special effect sequences in the latest Star Wars movie.
Like Castrol EDGE boosted with TITANIUM FST™, the making of the latest Titanium Trials films has seen the limits of what is achievable pushed as far as they can possibly go.
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