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Dan Greenawalt, the smooth creative director of Microsoft's racing studio Turn 10, arrived outside the entrance of a grand downtown Los Angeles venue in the back seat of a two-seater IndyCar racecar yesterday evening. It had driven, with just two howlingly loud blips of the throttle, all of 50 metres up the street from where it had been parked. Greenawalt got out, grinning, and chatted for a second with the driver, a chiselled, blonde IndyCar pilot called Josef Newgarden. Then he walked through the gates to Forza Motorsport 5's E3 event to scattered applause, arriving at the party he had just left.Meaningless PR stunts like this happen at E3 all the time. It turned out that this one had a point, though. An hour later, Greenawalt - one of the most relentless PR machines in Microsoft's ranks, which is really saying something - was doing some more grinning and standing next to racing drivers as he announced Forza 5's deal with IndyCar, America's premier open-wheel racing series. IndyCar brings open-wheel racing cars to the Forza games for the first time, with four teams represented.
Greenawalt went on to announce that Forza 5 will also feature classic Formula 1 cars in a tie-in with the upcoming Ron Howard film Rush, which tells the story of Grand Prix greats James Hunt and Nicki Lauda and their tumultuous, dangerous 1976 season. Their McLaren M23 and Ferrari 312-2 will be in the game. It's not quite the deep collaboration with the automotive industry that Gran Turismo 6 showcased last month, but hey - this is Hollywood, after all.
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