Le Mans Ultimate Review: great as a simulator, but lacking in features

Here’s the problem with reviewing Le Mans Ultimate: do you review it as a game or as a simulator? If you review it as a game, it looks like a slightly underwhelming package. Review it as a simulator, though, and it’s something very different altogether.

First, a bit of background. While Le Mans Ultimate has just hit version 1.0 and enjoyed a ‘full’ release, the fact is that racing fans have been playing this in Early Access for the better part of a year and a half. In that time, refinements have been made and content added, to the point where even ahead of this release version, it’s grown into one of the most popular racing sims on PC.

There’s a few reasons for this. Firstly, it feels phenomenal to drive. The degree of communication via the handling model about how the car is behaving on the track surface is second to none, built as it is on the foundation of the excellent rFactor 2 simulator.

It’s perhaps most evident not when you’re getting things right, but when you’re getting them wrong; accidentally entering a corner with a touch too much speed and feeling the rear end of the car begin to overtake the front as you loop it into a spin feels utterly authentic. Painful as it might be to your racing driver ego, you know a simulator is accurate when, in that scenario, you only have yourself to blame.

The other reason Le Mans Ultimate has been embraced so wholeheartedly is Le Mans itself. If you’re unfamiliar with the real-world event, it’s a 24 hour ‘endurance’ race where teams of three drivers compete through day and night, handing over the car at pit stops. In recent years, the Le Mans 24 Hours and the World Endurance Championship that surrounds it has enjoyed an influx of manufacturers building truly stunning racing machinery.

The Ferrari 499P, for example, may well be the prettiest contemporary racing car on the planet. Cadillac competes with a more muscular silhouette that houses a thunderous V8 engine. Peugeot meanwhile has a unique concept that originally raced without a rear wing at all. And the 1.0 version of Le Mans Ultimate brings with it the race-fettled version of the Aston Martin Valkyrie with its screaming V12, reminiscent of 90s F1 machinery.

Then there’s an entire field of different GT3 cars – a race within a race – competing for their own honours in a specification of GT car that has long been a favourite of online sim racers.

This digital garage is made up of the sorts of cars sim players naturally gravitate towards, whether it’s because they’re achingly desirable or comfortingly familiar, and the inclusion in Le Mans Ultimate of three season’s worth of laser-scanned tracks from the World Endurance Championship means there’s plenty of locations on which to test their skills.

The focus on endurance motorsport too makes this sim a natural home for team-based online endurance events. Popularised by the subscription-only iRacing service, the best way to describe these scheduled multiplayer events is a bit like simracing’s equivalent of a Destiny raid.

It’s a multi-hour – sometimes 24 hour – challenge that requires teamwork, strategy and, well, endurance. The difference between this and a traditional raid is, you’re competing against other real players and only one player at a time shoulders the entire team’s expectations. Participating in one of these events is something every simracing fan should try once.

All this sounds excellent, and it is, but there’s that niggling ‘game’ thing that we need to address, not least because it’s literally in the name of the website. As a game, Le Mans Ultimate feels bare bones. There isn’t even a championship mode, let alone the sort of full career mode we’ve come to expect from, say, the F1 games. That full career mode is apparently on the way, but not until 2026.

As a result, if you’re a solo player who has no interest in multiplayer, you’re limited to running individual race weekends. Well, unless you fancy keeping track of championship points in a notebook yourself, like you’re solving a Myst puzzle or something.

What Le Mans Ultimate is relying on is that you will dive into online competition with both feet. The AI drivers in the game are actually reasonably convincing, but nothing compares to overtaking a living breathing human. The online service has paid elements for those who want to take running an online team more seriously, but even non-paying players can enjoy a series of reasonably well attended scheduled races, a la iRacing or Gran Turismo 7.

And if you are truly committed to only ever playing offline, Le Mans Ultimate is hoping that the internalised feeling of mastery that comes from running fast laps or competing in single races to improve your speed will be all the continuity you’ll need for the moment. Le Mans Ultimate: not necessarily a great game, but a genuinely exceptional sim.