As Le Mans Ultimate emerges from early access, we’re still on the way to catch top hardcore sims

I have achieved Le Mans Ultimate on the radar of things that can be driven in realistic circles over the past few years, but I have not dived into that early access. Some of them were completely spoiled in terms of existing options when it came to doing GT races. This is a slightly older sim like Automobilista 2, Assetto Corsa Comperizione and even Raceroom, which has taken pole positions in the Steam Library races. Add the behind-the-scenes confusion that has frequently surrounds publisher Motorsport Games over the past six months.

Since this week, I have decided that Le Mans Ultimate has finally appeared from an early access practice session since February 2024, so now is the time to incorporate it and give it a try. I’ve played for 7 hours and driven just over 500 miles so I’ll call this the impression I’ve approved by my admirers of version 1.0.

My first trip from the garage ended quite anti-civilized after just a few yards. It was seated and stuck for a few minutes, so I realized I needed to enable the auto clutch setting so I could go anywhere. Once I got on track with the Ferrari 499p, I had to tweak another setting right away.

I chose the Professional Difficulty option. This knocked out all driver AIDS and quickly discovered that without the training wheels 499p could make my driving style uncomfortable. It kept spinning instantly the moment I touched the brake pedal and touched it towards the corner, but even after adjusting it to be as gentle as possible in front of the corner as I began the slowdown process, it kept happening. In the end I chose to lower the stability control, and it solved the problem, yet maintained enough challenge to drive so that the mistake was properly punished.

The good news is that since I made that change, I have returned to the Le Mans Ultimate setting to adjust the difficulty of the AI drivers, so it matches my performance on various tracks. The core racing experiences the game currently offers are generally very good. It’s especially great when you warm up to the smooth, flowing approach needed to make the most of your fire-setting monster fleet.

As hundreds of hours at Assetto Corsa Compeizione are another racer who chooses to focus very specifically on the simulation of GT cars, the two felt very similar in terms of the depth and super-tactile sensations they offer in the virtual motoring version. Their in-race user interface is also very similar. This seems to be a good example of taking the “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” approach.

While more generalist Sims, offering a much wider range of car types, usually end up sacrificing a bit of its strength in how much they mimic a particular series, Le Mans Ultimate and Assetto Corsa Comperizione focus on the best when it comes to one thing. It’s built like a drag racer.

This year’s World Endurance Championship (SIM’s official real-world tie-in series) has eight hypercar prototypes. Cadillac v-Series.R took the early lead as my favorite, so I’m happy to hear the difference by trying them all out and reporting that you can feel a certain difference. See, I’m a big, basic V8 sucker that sounds like a mechanical bear that gets approval when you stamp your power.

Meanwhile, the GT3 machines that make up the rest of the field are not as easy to access as prototypes that easily pass them, or from balancing the hypercar at the edge of the knife. Plus, they all look great both inside and out. The details help to convince you that you’re blowing Marsanne straight away in the middle of the night.

Some teething needs to be taken care of as developer Studio 397 continues to refine the game. It’s very light to the tutorial. That is, if you’re not a hardened sim racer who instantly understands where everything you’re used to is, then that’s the case of on-the-spot trial and error learning. One particularly difficult bit is the formation lap, which gives the game the option to drive as you prepare for the start of a race race.

This is something of a simple follower that most racing games automate by default, and I’m digging into it as a bit of an immersive goodness, but there’s a series of tough poly-single rules that are very easily violated. If you exceed the speed limit you stick to at 1 mile per hour just before the start, you will see an instant drive-thru. Please do anything in the game class as “unstable driving.” This appears to include any kind of brakes or weaving. It’s generally a fair cop at the end of the day, but I’m not sure if this is a feature that really adds a lot to the experience if things have to be tightly controlled.

Once you race, you’ve found that AI drivers in the game are generally more comfortable to fight against what you find. There are many options to adjust them to your preferences and I haven’t been taken in a way that’s not my fault yet. Well, aside from the very wet examples, my caddy saw the edges suddenly repeated behind by a sliding GT3 vehicle. That may have been all I got caught up in it, but AI drivers seem to lose the plot when the roads get really wet. In some races when I raised the flood near Max, I was spinning out GT cars in almost every corner. At one point during the race at Kota, I came across half of the field scattered across the track at the edge of the back straight. These kinds of things happen in wet lace, but Le Mans Ultimate now feels a bit on the stupid edge of the scale.

Currently, I have not had the opportunity to try out online or cooperative modes that serve as the only alternative to the game’s standalone single player weekend, but I think the amount of what’s offered in Le Mans Ultimate is close to where I want to make it a full release. Where it stands depends on how you feel about Motorsport Games choosing to release some additional additions as paid DLCs throughout the early access period, which already charged under £30 in the base game. It’s a shame that you won’t have a single-player championship or career mode (the latter is expected to arrive in early 2026) at 1.0, especially as the online championship is locked behind the annual “Racecontrol Pro” subscription.

As it stands, there are plenty of cars and trucks from the past three World Endurance Championship seasons (and more details on the European Le Mans series and soon arrive), and at least the core of a satisfying detailed racing sim in the tail of the horns of the best races. It’s a solid start, but there’s still a lot to improve and add before Le Mans Ultimate performs peak.