ITC 1996 slightly modified
If you don't like stories skip the next three paragraphs.
Let me start off by saying that i'm a huge fan of touring cars and especially DTM and BTCC. And that the 90s were my favourite period of racing in general, and of course of touring cars. So as a teenager through most of the 90s, i tried to watch and read all about these championships at the time and still have nostalgia for the time period of best racing in history IMO.
And as such the ITC ambitious project was of course high on my radar, as on probably everybody else's as well. When DTM was promoted to ITC, many were sceptical, but the popularity of DTM series was so high, that the people in charge thought that it was still a good idea. Sadly it was to ambitious, the money needed for a manufacturer to run in the championship was getting close to F1 (knowing that a manufacturer had to supply 3,4,5 teams instead of just 1 in F1). So this project died after only two years with Alfa Romeo and Opel pulling out after 1996 season because of high costs. But we had these two years of excellent racing on some of the most iconic tracks in the world.
Now to add to all this, Alfa 155 was part of this. My top 3 favourite car of all time, so my excitement was even bigger. As i started sim racing, one of my first jobs was to find and try to recreate these two seasons, especially the 1996 one.
The Alfa 155 TI EVO
@GzeroD did an excellent job in recreating this and i had a lot of fun driving these. Probably one of the best mod packs that can be had for free in AC. But what bothered me was, that the Alfa used in the pack was not the 1996 version of the car. The 155 from Kunos is the 1993/94 version of the car, that was slightly modified for the 1995 season. And that one is used in the Legion's pack. But for 1996 Alfa brought the EVO version of the car. The one with the ugly front that looked like the bull with the horns. Legion's car also didn't have the right liveries.
So i searched if the model of this car exists, and i found it on AC, it was made from FVandelli, but it got removed pretty fast as it was not complying to their rules. I managed to download it from somewhere and i don't know where (if somebody knows where, let me know, want to link to the original car) and it looked very authentic to me, it also had all the correct liveries. But i didn't like how it drove, it was not an Alfa 155 IMO. So i made a personal project of modifying and tuning it bit by bit for a long time. Some modifications were authentic from what i could find online, others were on my own personal opinion on how this car should drive. I used data from all sorts of other cars, as i never planned to release this, so i don't know all all what i changed, as i didn't keep track (so sadly can give proper credit, also why i was reluctant to release the car). I shared it with a couple of my friends and later a few users here on GTP tried it and all thought it was not bad at all, one friend is absolutely in love with the car and is bugging me to release it here. So i guess here it is, for those that want to try it (it's ugly i know, but that is the way the car really looked):
View attachment 930723
Link to the car (i made an s1 version so it doesn't overwrite the original one):
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/67...0051fb718728b28faa37b93c20200615203218/8b606d
The rest of the pack
To create an authentic full championship you need The Opel Calibra and the Mercedes C-Class. Both can be found on Legions blog. If you heaven't, try all 3 cars, also his Alfa, they are all excellent. The Opel needs a window fix if you are running temporal antialiasing in CM. Find it in the attachment (put the ini in the Documents/assetto corsa/cfg/extention/cars folder).
https://perendinator.blogspot.com/2019/06/fia-class-1.html
Preset and BOP
Also here is the preset with all correct liveries, driver names and strengths from the actual season.
@GzeroD did a great job BOPing the cars, but the EVO needs a little restriction to run competitively (especially cause i wanted to recreate the actual balance from the season - Alfa is slower on the straights, but faster through corners):
https://acstuff.ru/s/Wutq
View attachment 930734
The tracks
To create the full championship you of course need the tracks. Here is the list.
Rounds:
1 and 2: Hockenheim (DTM Layout), 38 laps
3 and 4: Nurburgring (GT Short), 22 laps
5 and 6: Estoril, 23 laps
7 and 8: Helsinki Thunder, 32 laps
9 and 10: Norisring, 44 laps
11 and 12: Diepholz, 28 laps
13 and 14: Silverstone (88 layout sort of, not completely correct), 20 laps
15 and 16: Nurburgring (GT Short), 22 laps
17 and 18: Magny-Cours, 24 laps
19 and 20: Mugello, 20 laps
21 and 22: Hockenheim (88 layout full), 15 laps
23 and 24: Interlagos, 24 laps
25 and 26: Suzuka, 18 laps
Prety impressive list, right? (all available for AC, if you can't find it, i can give you a link).
Also if you want to rewatch, all the races are on youtube, most in full:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=itc+1996
All the credits go to GzeroD and FVandelli and all that created the tracks.
Hope you enjoy it.