It’s been a while since Le Mans had an official, proper, standalone video game. I still have my copy of the Le Mans game on PlayStation 2, but this was the last time the world’s greatest race had a full standalone game to call its own.
Le Mans Ultimate, then, is the latest attempt to bring the 24 hour race in the French countryside to the virtual world. And, despite some bugs and issues, it’s looking increasingly likely it could fulfil that promise.
Motorsport Games and Studio397 were kind enough to supply The Racing Line with an early preview of the new DLC pack. We’ve gathered some thoughts on the new content, plus an overall ‘state of the game’ and where it might be headed in the future.
The new content
First up: the new content. Included in this pack are the Alpine A424, the Isotta Fraschini Tipo 6 LMH Competizione, and the Circuit of the Americas.
The Alpine feels good to drive. It’s quite twitchy, interestingly similar to the Acura ARX-06 in iRacing, which in real life is based on the same Oreca chassis as the Alpine. It feels less compliant than the other cars, and maybe trickier to drive because of it. But, if you can get a handle on it, it could be quick — much like the Acura in iRacing. I did prefer driving the Ferrari, Porsche, or Cadillac though — they felt a bit more compliant and easy to extract pace from.
But I’m no alien — I’m a mediocre sim racer who enjoys it as a hobby because it’s fun, not because I’m good. So take my comments on driving with a pinch of salt. I’m almost certainly not pushing these cars to the limits.
The Isotta Fraschini feels exactly how you’d expect it to feel. It has a tendency to lock up, and corners can’t be taken as quickly as in other LMH-rules cars. It doesn’t exactly feel hard to drive, but… if it’s like this in real life, you can see why the drivers struggled to extract pace from it.
Both cars are, as you’d expect from Studio397, modeled well and accurately, as far as I can tell, both interior cockpits and the exterior views. A particularly nice touch is the flag panels working in the cockpit, meaning you don’t need any UI to tell when there’s a yellow flag, or a faster car coming up behind you.
Circuit of the Americas, likewise, feels good. The esses have the same sausage kerbs they’d feature in real life, and the sponsorship hoardings are the same or similar to what they had there at the race this year, making it feel all the more realistic. Like other recreations of COTA, it will probably be out of date quite quickly due to the real-life track’s geological position, built on soft soil which causes the surface to crack and create bumps on a fairly regular basis.
There’s also an early version of a new gameplay mode: Co-op. I haven’t tried this out as I didn’t have anyone to test it with, but the premise is that you’ll be able to set up a race with friends, and can then hand the car off to them when your time in the race seat is over. They can then complete their stint, at a time suitable to them, before handing back to you, or another friend, and so on.
You can also save mid-race or mid-session now, Grand Prix 4-style, and when you pit in an AI race, a menu will appear to allow you to perfect your strategy.
Other changes include the ability to choose between the 2023 and 2024 seasons — 2024 still features GTE cars, but these will be replaced by GT3 cars once they’re added to the game — and changes to the car select screen to make it less overwhelming as more content gets added. Seating positions also save per car now, and the AI has improved so cars will no longer drive back full-speed to the pits after a session, for example.
There are lots of other minor changes to physics, setups, sounds, you name it.
The game’s future
While new content is all well and good, the real question is: where is the game heading?
Motorsport Games and Studio397 are being fairly tight lipped on that, as you’d expect.
That said, though, there have been some intriguing additions since I last touched the game earlier this year. Online mode feels much more fleshed-out now, with daily races split into three categories: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Drivers also get two ratings, based on safety and skill, not unlike another certain sim racing game. You can only enter the intermediate and advanced races once you’ve got the required ratings through racing in the beginner category.
I asked Motorsport Games whether there’s a plan to have a series which follows the real-life FIA World Endurance Championship, or if there’ll ever be a publicly-accessible 24 Hours of Le Mans. There were shorter races held during the Fuji week and weekend, and was told specifically that there’s an aim to run this type of event again, with multiple splits so everyone who wants to take part can do, and you can progress through the splits to show improvement.
Unfortunately I did not receive a direct answer on the Le Mans front. I did, however, ask about custom liveries — with the answer that they’re on the future roadmap but with no specific date attached. That should lend some personality and individuality to the online side of the game especially, which feels quite clinical at the moment.
In terms of support for VR headsets, this support is coming and the team will have more to share on this front later this year. There are unofficial ways to get this working in an unsupported sense, with people seeming to have varying levels of success. I usually race in VR and tried the unofficial solutions, which half-worked, but I suspect my PC is a little underpowered for Le Mans Ultimate in VR, at least in its current unofficial, unoptimised state.
Finally, I asked about more content than just WEC cars and tracks. Motorsport Games have spoken in the past about the intention to have content the European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series in the game — content which is sorely needed, especially tracks. When you look at other titles and the range of circuits, the selection in Le Mans Ultimate — just tracks WEC has raced on this year or last year, minus Qatar — is lacking in a substantial way.
I also asked about historical content. Could we see content from, for example, the Group C days, or the GT1 cars in the 90s, or the LMP1s in the 2000s and 2010s, in Le Mans Ultimate in the future?
The answer: maybe. The Motorsport Games spokesman said that there’s over 100 years of history to choose from, so anything is possible.
The game at the moment
While the game has quite clearly progressed from its initial early access state a few months ago, it’s clear it’s still in early access, with numerous bugs. The menus seem to flicker every now and then, and at one point it crashed to desktop altogether when I attempted to load into an online race. I also had no sound some of the time, which required restarting the Bluetooth on my PC. And FFB also didn’t work on one launch, which required a game restart. Driving a Hypercar up Eau Rouge and Raidillon with no force feedback is a very weird feeling…
The lack of GT3 cars at the moment is also a shame. These should arrive soon, according to Motorsport Games — but until then, we’re stuck driving and racing the GTE cars. Not that that’s a bad thing, by any means.
All in all, though, it seems to be coming along nicely. I’m intrigued as to where Studio397 and Motorsport Games will take Le Mans Ultimate over the next year to 18 months. It feels like a worthy addition to the sim racing landscape, and a title befitting of the legacy of Le Mans, the world’s greatest race.