A few years ago, I had the chance to ask Alex Ward, the co-founder of Criterion Games, about the driving model for the Burnout series. I had heard from a friend that beneath the arcadey immediacy lay physics of rare nuance and beauty. I was reverent in my questioning, even if I was slightly clueless – is it a driving model or a handling model or a physics model? – and Ward, thankfully, was having none of it.