Le Mans Ultimate has blossomed into a really good sim racing game.
From its early beginnings in early access, when things were, to put it mildly, incomplete, to now, it's a revelation.
The latest pack adds the remaining 2024 content — that being Losail International Circuit in Qatar, plus the Lexus RC F GT3 and the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2. This means the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship roster, for both tracks and cars, is complete.
Because the real-life 2025 season didn't add any new tracks, that means the 2025 calendar is also complete, and with 2026 expected to retain the same calendar, the track roster is looking good, if a little small.
Phil Oakley
Lexus and Lamborghini join the LMU scene
The Lexus and the Lamborghini were the only two LMGT3 cars the game was missing, and they're welcome additions to the line up of GT cars in the game.
Motorsport Games and Studio397 were kind enough to give Only Endurance early access to the fifth pack, so we tested both the cars and Losail out.
The Lexus feels, as you might expect from a front-engined car, a little understeer-y, especially on cold tyres. Indeed, when I exited the pits at Losail, I went straight onto the run off as the cold front tyres refused to bite.
I soon got them up to temperature, and found the car is stable a driveable, if a little front-heavy as a result of that engine in front of the driver. But, for a car aimed at amateurs over professionals, at least in some ways, it felt good, and like something I could happily drive in the game for an extended period of time.
I've never driven Losail in any other sim — I'm not even sure its officially in any other sim, off the top of my head — so it was a learning experience. The track feels billiard table-smooth though, as drivers have described the real-life version. And, as has been described by both WEC and Formula 1 drivers, the radius of some corners is unusual, as the track was initially made for motorbike racing in mind back in the mid-2000s.
But, it was interesting to drive, if a little sterile. The 3D modelling work Studio397 have done looks great, modelling the track and its surroundings in high quality, while still remaining driveable on any graphics level setting or PC spec which supports the game.
The Lamborghini, on the other hand, doesn't feel as driveable. Don't get me wrong, it's not hard to drive, it's just harder than the Lexus. The Italian car is a little twitchy, a bit edgy. Not like it's trying to kill you, but just lightly maim. as it sends you into the barriers. I couldn't quite extract the same pace I could from the Lexus, which isn't saying that much, the average sim racer that I am.
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Teams and custom liveries
The other major new features in the pack are the addition of teams and custom liveries.
Now, the build Studio397 supplied was not enabled for online play, so I couldn't fully test out the teams feature. But it seems very fleshed out, with a good UI to manage the team's roster of drivers, engineers, and managers, with team stats available, driver lineups for various squads within the teams, and the ability to give the team a logo. Admittedly some of those features are only available to paid RaceControl subscribers though.
Custom liveries are also similarly fleshed out, with a showroom for viewing liveries built into the game. The game has templates readily available for every car, so budding livery designers can open a car's template in their editing app of choice and design from there. They can then import it into the game, view it in the showroom, and tweak the spec maps to make it matte or shiny, whichever they prefer.
Separate from the paid DLC pack is another new feature, driver swaps. As this is an online-only feature I couldn't test it out, but from how Studio397 have described it, it sounds similar to how driver swaps are done in rFactor2, the studio's other sim racing game.
The GT3 tyre model has also been updated, and I can say from my testing it feels fantastic. If you start to spin the car, it's save-able, and you can push hard while still retaining control.
The tyres are also very cold straight out of the pits, as in real life, meaning you need to gently bring temperature into them in the first few laps of a session. If you push too hard, you'll spin or overheat the tyres.
What's next for LMU?
The first thing Studio397 needs to do is add the 2025 content — cars, liveries and driver lineups.
The Aston Martin Valkyrie and Mercedes-AMG GT3 will be exciting additions to the game, expanding the car choice and adding a naturally aspirated V12 engine.
What's after that? We don't know. We could see content from the WEC's sister series in the ACO world added, from the European and Asian Le Mans Series championships, plus the Michelin-sponsored Le Mans Cup.
Or, we could see historical content added.
Motorsport Games CEO and Studio397 chief Stephen Hood will be speaking at the annual ACO press conference this Friday, the day before Le Mans. It's likely he'll be announcing what's coming for the game in the future, so stay tuned to Only Endurance for more info.
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