Le Mans Ultimate Exits Early Access – Reaches v1.0 Status And Adds Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar

I am very happy to say that this is a real feel-good story for me. I left Motorsport Games (a former employer of mine) because I thought they wouldn’t recover, and despite the fact I think the folks at Studio 397 are among the most talented bunch of people in sim racing, I thought it safer for me and my family if I went to work somewhere else. Many at Studio 397 will have had similar fears. Some left – like I did – and some did not.

Who knows? Maybe I was right – for me – there were some layoffs after all, but with the investment from Pimax earlier this year and steady forward development, it really does seem like the studio is back on track. I couldn’t be happier for everyone there.

While I don’t know how things will work out with future repayments, etc, at least people can see that Studio 397 are capable. It’s good for sim racing that this product exists, and it’s exactly how I wanted the rFactor 2 engine to be used.

So here we are: Le Mans Ultimate has reached 1.0 status and exited Early Access.

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Their text:

Community Thanks

From everyone at Motorsport Games & Studio 397 – thank you to all of you that have supported our project through Early Access. It has not been an easy journey for the game or our company but we’re pleased to have made it here thanks to everyone’s support – both in purchasing the game but also those of you that have helped through reports to refine any issues we had with releases.

In particular, we want to address the last release – a lot of technical code changes were made in order to accommodate driver swaps and custom liveries. This caused some issues for some players. Thanks to your clear and concise feedback, we have tracked down these issues and have delivered three major patches between this release and in the last one (patch 3), in particular we have fixed networking issues for players with specific Internet Service Provider network types (CGNAT) having unexpected player consequences that really could never have been found without your help.

These are the types of scenarios that Early Access was built for – we just don’t have the internal testing capacity to check every piece of hardware or 100s of different ISP network configurations. The good news is – we’re now done with those major changes, but it was vital to do this before the release of “version 1.0”.

What’s new in v1.0?

This is the grown-up, more mature June release but with some special new toys.

The Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR LMH and Mercedes AMG LMGT3 are coming to the base game FREE of charge. The incredible noise of that V12 engine in the Valkyrie will impress you both onboard behind the wheel, and from the trackside view.

The Mercedes, with its slick look is a fan favourite in GT3 racing across the globe and has been lovingly recreated in Le Mans Ultimate in never-before-seen detail.

We didn’t mention it before but, we found some time to squeeze in the BMW M4 Evo LMGT3 as used by Team WRT this year. Included to all owners of this DLC content (available in 2024 Pack 3), we’ve updated this model for the 2025 season, with its brand new head and tail lights, wing mirrors and hood vents – it’s a stunner!

On the subject of LMGT3 – we heard your feedback on the new tyre model in the June release. Although we feel like it was a step in the right direction in reducing over-reliance on slip angle for speed, we appreciate the cliff-edge of grip felt a bit steep. We already made some improvements via patches to the setups which were not in the correct operating window. However, for this release we have also made some changes to the thermals of the tyres to increase the performance range as well as smoothing off the drop in performance amongst other things that are being continually improved – we think they’ll be a very positive improvement for all levels of driver.

We have also bought the simulation up to 2025 spec. There are new position boards on the cars where appropriate and added liveries to make the grid an even more colourful place than before. LMP2 Le Mans 2025 liveries will be coming soon.

Content isn’t the only place we’ve made improvements. We’ve made a few user experience changes as well. Firstly – the Race Weekend season select needed some work to add the 2025 calendar, and secondly – we’ve refined the car setup page! No longer do you need to go to several menus to change the really important things like virtual energy, tyres and electronics. It’s all here – condensed and ready to get you back out on track quicker than before.

And finally, we’re repackaging some things on the steam store. The “free DLCs” – BMW M Hybrid LMDh, McLaren 720S and Ford Mustang LMGT3 are both in the base game now to make things a little clearer. We’ve also created a new bundle – the Le Mans Ultimate WEC Full Access bundle – which is setup to be an easy step in to all the content we’ve fully delivered so far. And – if you don’t have all the 2024 packs you’ll be given a discount to “complete the set”.

Version 1.0 will be available on Steam at a 13% launch discount from the SRP (£28.99 / €34.99 / $37.99) until 5th August (after Racing Fest sale on Steam). After this point, the game’s SRP will increase to £34.99 / €39.99 / $39.99. The WEC Full Access Bundle will be available at a 15% discount.

Things to look forward to

As we announced in June, the development team is still hard at work on Le Mans Ultimate, well beyond the upcoming version 1.0 release.

We are working on delivering the European Le Mans Series content and I’m pleased to share some early previews of buildings in Silverstone as we accelerate development of this project. We will be on-site at Silverstone during the ELMS weekend between the 12th and 14th September with a special build just for those of you there.

As we’ve already mentioned, work on career mode is underway with us expecting to deliver a unique single player experience in early 2026.

That’s not the only feature we’re working on – keep voting on our forum pages for what you want most even when we’ve left early access. We’re keeping an eye on it!

Message from the studio

Stephen Hood, CEO of Motorsport Games and Head of Studio 397 said – “Thank you again to all the players and supports of Le Mans Ultimate since we launched in Early Access, for whom without we would have not reached this V1.0 Milestone. Keep pushing on track, enjoy the new content and I’ll see you again very soon.”