Kunos Simulazioni seems to be teasing some new content coming to Assetto Corsa Competizione in the near future, during the official v1.8 update stream to announce the new BMW M4 GT3.
As we know, the M4 GT3 landed with v1.8 on November 24, filling a promise Kunos made back in August that the car would arrive either in late 2021 or early 2022. That only applies to the PC version for now, with the car arriving at launch in the PS5/XB Series title in February 2022, and PS4/XB1 owners set to miss out.
However, at the time Kunos announced the M4 — which also has a new Fanatec wheel that serves not only as a simulator peripheral but the car’s own real steering wheel — it also said it was planning on bringing a second American circuit to ACC to join Laguna Seca.
That naturally led to speculation over the track’s identity, and Kunos looks to have sneakily confirmed that the circuit is in fact the Circuit of the Americas — or COTA — in Texas.
In a very short clip featuring right at the very end of the presentation, labelled as both containing potential spoilers and “dramatically Italian”, we’re treated to a very brief flurry of shots that contain both cars and a track not yet seen in ACC to date.
Most obvious of these is Circuit of the Americas, which actually appears in all five of the clips, though it’s clearest in the clip with the Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo Evo 2, itself set to arrive in 2022. The shot looks up the main straight towards the first corner, “Big Red”.
A second clip, near the end, features the M4 GT3 itself, and allows us to clearly see the Lexus F branding that adorns the track during its GT World Challenge events.
The third shot of COTA appears looking back at the first turn, this time featuring the BMW M4’s stablemate, the M2 CS Racing. It’s not clear how this entry-level race car will fit into ACC’s structure of GT3 and GT4 racing, though did appear in the SRO-scantioned TC America series in 2021 — and locked out the podium in one race at COTA.
Two more cars we’d struggle to place in ACC’s hierarchy are the Porsche 992 911 GT3 Cup and the Ferrari 488 Challenge. Both have their own one-make series organized by the manufacturers themselves — the Porsche Supercup and the Ferrari Challenge — outside of the SRO’s jurisdiction, so quite how these cars will fit in remains to be seen.
Of course Kunos also stated back in August that there’d be a DLC pack coming in 2022 featuring 6-7 “very different cars” which race “under the SRO competition umbrella”. As things stand, we haven’t seen those yet but they remain likely to be the GT2 cars.
We’re sure all will be revealed in due course, so stay tuned for all the latest.
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