As a direct ancestor of iRacing, the ‘Grand Prix Legends engine’ had multiple stock car racing false starts, before eventually releasing as NASCAR Racing 4. The original NASCAR 3, cancelled and replaced by one that used NASCAR 2’s engine, is barely remembered.
Shortly after the release of Grand Prix Legends the sim racing community looked forward to another title that promised to offer a similar insight into historic racing. Trans-Am Racing ’68-’72 ultimately never released, a victim of a publishers shady dealings, but as a part of my research I uncovered a VHS of a never-released trailer for the game. Watch the trailer and read about what sim racing missed out on.
Studio 397 announced today in a post on social media that due to “a change in licensing agreements” Silverstone Circuit will no longer be available from the company as a free first-party track for rFactor 2.
Post text:
A note on Silverstone
Due to a change in licencing agreements, this Friday, November 25th, Studio 397 have been instructed to remove access to the Silverstone circuit in the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop. We remain exceptionally proud to have offered a high quality, free version of this iconic track for the simulation all these years, and we are certainly as disappointed as you are about this outcome.
Players can still download the circuit until the morning of Friday November 25th, and can continue to use the track within rFactor 2 beyond this date.
While we appreciate this is not the news anyone wanted to hear about this track, we are working very hard to look at alternative options to bring another new, free circuit to the simulation in the very near future. rFactor 2 remains proud to offer a healthy collection of free base content, and remain yet more determined to continue expanding the playing experience with new, exciting and high-profile content in the future.
As the person who originally licensed Silverstone Circuit for rFactor 2, I can’t say I’m happy to see this. I can’t say much, but I have remarked in the past just how difficult I always found it to work with British tracks on licensing compared to those anywhere else in the world. I truly have no idea why that is and being British myself I found it enormously frustrating. I speak from direct experience when saying that a developer will go as far as they reasonably can to keep a track like Silverstone in their product and if it doesn’t happen I would put absolutely no blame at the feet of the developer involved.
Here are some of the original release screenshots from 2013:
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