An intriguing announcement from the Stephane Ratel Organization (SRO) has raised the possibility that one of the world’s toughest endurance circuits, the Nurburgring 24hr circuit, will be coming to Assetto Corsa Competizione in the future.
As Marco Massarutto once told us, the question of when the Nordschleife will be coming to Assetto Corsa Competizione is probably the one most-asked of Kunos Simulazioni. The answer has always been pretty simple: it’s not.
Although GT3 race cars compete there in endurance races throughout the year — notably in the N24 — they don’t do so under the SRO’s umbrella. As ACC is the official game of the SRO’s GT World Challenge, and its official esports partner, it only contains tracks and cars that are part of that series and associated events. Other than the GP circuit, that doesn’t include the Nurburgring.
However that’s all set to change, as the SRO and ADAC — the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club, which organizes the N24 — have jointly announced that the famous 24-hour race will be part of the SRO’s Intercontinental GT Challenge calendar in 2024.
It’s part of a shake-up of the series, which has seen GT World Challenge drivers from the myriad regional series come together to compete in five races on five continents. SRO is instead aiming to unite the biggest GT3, or GT3-led endurance races in the world under one competition.
That will see the N24 join the 24 Hours of Spa on the calendar, alongside the Bathurst 12 Hours and Indianapolis 8 Hour. A fifth race has yet to be decided, though it seems that the Gulf 12 Hours will be dropped after just two seasons.
For ACC fans though it’s great news, as it means that the full 24H circuit is now eligible for inclusion in the game — although that doesn’t necessarily involve that the separate Nordschleife. Even better, Kunos already has a high-quality scan of the track which features in Assetto Corsa, so it should be a comparatively swift process.
There is one stumbling block though: Kunos is hard at work developing Assetto Corsa 2 for a Spring 2024 release. It rather depends how much life is left in ACC as to whether we see much further content, with Massarutto already hinting that the GT2 pack that we’re yet to see will be Kunos’s “goodbye” to the title…
