Le Mans Coming to iRacing

iRacing has announced that Circuit des 24 Heures at Le Mans (Circuit de la Sarthe), home of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, is coming to the service.  After five long years of trying to secure a license with the track, the team at iRacing was finally able to secure it and race over to France for last month’s running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/5Seqw8h0M5E[/youtube]

The reason for the mad rush to France is because the track is only in scanable condition once a year, during race week when the public roads that make up the semi-permanent track are closed off.  This certainly put a time crunch on iRacing.

As the video shows, it appears like iRacing utilized the same scanning CUV that they utilized while scanning the massive Nordschleife last year.  Greg Hill, VP of Art & Production for iRacing, also mentioned that they were helped out by the ACO, whom already have a laser scanned version of the track as part of their driver approval process to run the race.  Wonder if iRacing will utilize any of that data or were able to capture everything they needed themselves?

The addition of the Circuit des 24 Heures at Le Mans is a huge get for iRacing.  As far as historic tracks goes, Le Mans was one of the last ones that iRacing did not have.  Once Le Mans (and the Nurburgring) is in the simulation, I’m hard pressed to think of any other big pavement race in the world that iRacing cannot recreate other than Monaco.

Clearly, it’s early days in the development of the track.  In fact, I’d be surprised if much development was occurring right now considering that the team is up to their eyeballs in Nurburgring work.  If I had to guess on a release date I would say sometime next year, maybe out in Season 2, but definitely before next year’s running of the race.

Can’t wait to drive the Corvette and Aston Martin down Mulsanne.  And while we’re at it, how about some LMP1 cars!