There's a silly trademarked name for what car handling designer Tim Dearing is doing: TrueFeel. Really, though, it's just a process of hard work and good judgement that starts with raw simulation data for each car, processed by a new physics engine that runs at 1000 Hz. The designers then carefully prune back the cars' more demanding behaviours and ladle in some progressive, controllable drifting "because people find it fun", while attempting to preserve the feel and basic handling characteristics of a particular car. The end result, Dearing says, should be easy for most players to master within a couple of laps, but offer plenty of depth beyond that.

Long-term challenge will mostly come from ascending through Grid 2's four tiers of cars. Although missing the most expensive licences - Porsche, Lamborghini and Ferrari - it looks like a well-curated selection of muscular exotics. You'll start in classics like the 1970s Mach 1 Mustang and BMW E30 M3, then progress through Skylines and modern muscle cars to supercars like the McLaren MP4-12C, track day specials like the wild BAC Mono, and finally outré hypercars like the Pagani Huayra and Koenigsegg Agrea R.