Le Mans Ultimate · published
We always like to start our updates by saying, as always, thank you. The community response and involvement to everything we’re continuing to build is still incredible. We were so pleased to see the positive reception to our previous release and we hit new player records again!
The passion from the community fuels our teams Studio 397 and Motorsport Games to bring our best work to Le Mans Ultimate. And with that - let's get into the latest instalment.
First up, content - the third and final pack of the ELMS season pass is here and probably one of the worst kept secrets out there! The Duqueine D09 is another third-generation LMP3 chassis, with the now very-familiar twin-turbo V6 from Toyota. Raced in ELMS last year by the WTM by Rinaldi Racing team, the unique livery is certainly eye-catching - and now with 3 chassis to choose from we can’t wait to see the LMP3 grid variety in races and as a result we will have completed the ELMS grid.
The circuit joining the Duqueine in Pack 3 is the host of the ELMS Season opener in a couple of weeks - Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. One of Europe’s most popular tracks to race on - it’s a circuit which rewards technical drivers - featuring a combination of fast sweeping corners, medium-speed sections and a long 1 km main straight.
Released with the 2025 non-chicane layout, we intend to add additional layouts in a future update.
ELMS Season Pass holders and RaceControl Pro+ subscribers will receive the Duqueine and Barcelona as soon as the content released - as well as being available to purchase separately for €9.99 / £8.99 / $11.99.
Whilst on the subject of content - as promised, we're adding some new alternative layouts for Paul Ricard and Silverstone, giving players more options for how they can race those tracks.
Silverstone now features the National, International and the Grand Prix layout from the Wing pitlane as featured in WEC in years gone by...
At Paul Ricard, we’ve added the snappily named 1a, 1av2, 1av2-short and 3a layouts. They will be more memorable than their names I’m sure.
And for Imola, Spa and Portimão, we've expanded the grid size to ELMS 44 grid configuration, so players can expect bigger fields in that championship but they will also be available for online events as well. More cars, more action, more chaos?
Now let's talk features, because there's some really meaningful quality of life improvements in this update. Firstly, We've now added Logitech TRUEFORCE and haptic feedback support. Starting with Logitech TRUEFORCE, this technology is now natively supported in game. We know there is an active community who have been patiently waiting for this so we are pleased to collaborate with Logitech to make this happen.
TRUEFORCE utilises vibrotactile effects triggered directly from our physics engine alongside traditional kinaesthetic force-feedback to create a more dynamic feeling using their low-latency motors delivered directly to their SDK.
Additionally, this work has unlocked two additional benefits for all users. Firstly, we are able to include these effects directly in the normal FFB stream for non-trueforce users. Just like the TRUEFORCE variant, you can adjust the amount that is included - give it a try!
We also now have the ability for everyone to utilise haptic feedback for devices like bass shakers. Select the device from the drop-down list in the sound settings and away you go!
Something we know a lot of players car care deeply about - performance - and for this update we’ve done serious work under the Hood. Many of these come from our on-going console preparation work but serve to give everyone a better experience going forward.
We have introduced a new UI middleware - how exciting! For those nerds that want to know, we have historically used Chromium Embedded Framework (or CEF) for our frontend - but there’s a need for a more performant version and so we are switching to a newer, more lightweight and game focused solution called “Coherent”. This means we no longer have to run the game with v-sync enabled in mixed gameplay and UI screens such as the monitor and watch screens. It should also eliminate a number of crashes that have been persistent with the old technology. This is a fairly big change on a technical level and we know we’ll be needing to monitor and address any issues that come up in the release.
Loading times, a bug bear for many, have been reduced by approximately 20% after a further performance review - helping you get on track faster than before.
We are also introducing occlusion culling for vehicles - meaning that cars you can’t see are no longer rendered which will save players performance particularly when they get closer to the pitlane where there may be cars stored within garages.
For league owners and broadcasters - we've rewritten the broadcast overlay to mirror the 2025 WEC season update. A much requested feature, this is not just a colour change - the functionality has also been updated and performance refined from a full rewrite. Expect more improvements as we go here. We’ve detached this from the game builds and can remotely update at will!
We’re continuing to add to our list of localised languages and are pleased to add Korean to LMU in this release ahead of our friends at Genesis joining the 2026 WEC grid - good luck to them and more on them joining the grid in LMU very soon.
I’m pleased to also share that a number of new and highly requested telemetry parameters have been added to our shared memory file - I’m sure that will keep plenty of users with fancy pieces of equipment and software very happy indeed.
Finally, we’ve refined our LiveSteward system from user replays in the last release. This will allow us to review false positives quicker and reduce time to review intentional wrecking.
We wanted to quickly talk about the progress on Team endurance races. Thanks to all our players for testing the 12 Hours of Le Mans recently. We’re pleased to say that was largely successful and the 38 car events are officially out of the test program. There are a few more pieces of work to complete before we run the next 24 Hour test - keep an eye out for that.
There’s a lot to talk about here. We know career mode is a feature many of you are eagerly awaiting and we acknowledge it's been on our roadmap for sometime.
The career mode will be one of the most significant additions to Le Mans Ultimate which we are still committed too, and providing a great single player experience is still very our ambition. Given the complexity of this feature, we are determined to give it the necessary time and it is now expected to be delivered later this year.
As for content - we’ve now finished the ELMS season pass so what’s next? Well I want to ensure everyone the remainder of 2026 already looks as exciting as ever for new cars and tracks.
We’re expecting to share our next season pass plans at Le Mans in June where once again we’ll be giving a bumper edition of news before the world’s greatest endurance race starts again.
We also hear Easter Eggs are popular this time of year so make sure to keep a lookout…
So, that's a quick summary of V1.3. Check out the change log for the full list of additions. New ELMS content, new layouts & huge quality of life improvements. We hope you enjoy the latest update and as always, get out there, get racing, and we'll see you on track.
Stephen Hood, CEO of Motorsport Games & Head of Studio 397 said - “We can’t wait for players to try out the first major update of 2026 with the final ELMS Season Pass content and experience the new performance improvements for themselves! 2026 looks to be another extremely exciting year!”