FIA GT1 1997 Preset and BOP
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The story
After the demise of Group C and then after 1996 season also of the DTM/ITC, there was a big void left in the racing world. The DTM series was extremely popular. Not only in Germany (the 1996 Helsinki Thunder race was watched live by more than 200.000 spectators). It also created enormous revenue for FIA and some manufacturers. FIA wanted to cap on this popularity and searched which competition could become a spiritual successor to DTM. The decision made was FIA GT1 world championship.
They convinced three top manufactures to field factory teams for the 1997 season (Porsche, BMW and Mercedes). They managed this by loosening the restrictions on homologations (effectively enabling the rebirth and renaissance of the prototype racing we still enjoy today (fully in effect from 1998 onwards)). They also added the most popular venues from DTM/ITC championships to the calendar (Hockenheim, Helsinki Thunder) and convinced most of the sponsors to move from DTM (Warsteiner). The new formed teams also brought with them the top drivers from DTM (Schneider, Ludwig, Naninni, Stuck, Lehto,…). All this elevated the competition to a whole new level of quality. And the teams that dominated the competition in previous years struggled to compete.
The cars
The competition was a multi class competition with GT1 and GT2 cars. But since the GT1 class had over 20 cars and most tracks on the calendar in AC only have only 24 pits, I made this a single class championship preset. We also sadly have only 7 liveries from the GT2 class.
As said before, three factory teams joined the competition this year:
They were joined by the semi-privateer and full on privateer teams:
Any of you that created races with these cars in AC probably quickly noticed that the biggest problem is the AI. These cars were basically ironing boards with wheels attached to them, so very low and very stiff. This made them slide all over the place and crash a lot IRL and the same thing can be said for AC. Because of the physics the cars in AC react badly to curbs (curbs are not your friend!!) and struggle if they are not on the ideal line. So the biggest problem was to make the cars actually finish a lap, let alone a race, without causing massive collisions.
So I had to create new versions of some cars in the pack (they have s1 added to their name, so they don’t overwrite the original cars), as I had to “fix” them for racing. I did not touch the physics on any of them (except aero settings for BOP-ing reasons and realism reasons), but I changed the AI settings and also a few visual glitches (dash cam settings,…). I didn’t have to do this for Legion’s cars, so these are all “stock”.
Here you can download the entire pack of “s1” and “stock” cars with all the skins included (be careful with legion’s cars, as they will overwrite the default cars if you have them). Both URD cars have only the data file, sound files and skins in them, as they are paid mods. So you have to copy all other files from their default car folder (don’t overwrite any of the files).
These are all great to drive, but I like the Mercedes, the 911 EVO and the McLaren the best:
https://mega.nz/file/Xdlg3S7b#XT97dnfbzOxBP91wj94dDkRrCRBi9Qjj_vHQiqcrTBM
The skins
Thanks to excellent work from
@jaqory (
PC - Assetto Corsa PC Mods General Discussion | Page 1565 (gtplanet.net)), we now can recreate a full top 24 cars from the GT1 class. And they all look amazing. Really amazing work, thanks again. The rest of the skins I found on RD and other places on the internet, they are all included in the download file.
The preset and BOP
I wanted to go for as much realism as possible. There were basically two classes within a GT1 class. The factory teams invested large amounts of money into development and world class drivers, so they were just better in every single race. Others were not far behind, but at the end of the race, they usually were not able to mix for the podium places. The McLaren’s having the car evolved from last year, were naturally stronger at the beginning of the season, and Mercedes became more and more dominant as the season progressed. Porsche also improved as the season progressed and were very competitive in few of the last races.
I also wanted the cars to run close to lap times they ran IRL. I managed to make them run around a second off of the qualifying lap times they actually ran in 1997, and in races they actually match the lap times from real life. I reduced the number of collisions by a great margin, but still these will crash more often than other cars (it was so IRL as well). So don’t go with aggression settings in CM over 70 or 75.
Download the BOP from here:
https://acstuff.ru/s/7ASc
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Tracks
The cars ran a very good calendar of 11 races (all tracks available in AC). These were endurance races with two drivers a team, so I recommend running 30 lap races, with 2x fuel consumption. This way the full tank will last for 15-20 laps and you should have a “mandatory” pitstop or even two in every race:
- Hockenheim – 4 hours
- Silverstone – 4 hours
- Helsinki Thunder – 3 hours
- Nurburgring – 4 hours
- Spa – 4 hours
- A1-Ring – 4 hours
- Suzuka – 1000 km
- Donnington – 4 hours
- Mugello – 4 hours
- Sebring – 3 hours
- Laguna Seca – 3 hours
Credits
URD,
@GzeroD, Assetoland for amazing cars.
@jaqory and others for amazing skins. Hope you enjoy it. I certainly do.
