When Kunos Simulazioni announced the Supernova Games Studio-developed Assetto Corsa Rally, it sent sim racers into overdrive. What can we expect from the cars and stages on offer? How will the cars handle? And what’s the pathway from Early Access to full release? In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what’s on offer in the newly released title.
What To Expect
Assetto Corsa Rally boasts fine attention to detail that has never been seen before in rally games. It will be the first major rallying title to fully utilise Unreal Engine 5, hoping to showcase immense graphics prowess that makes use of the latest developments in graphical software and hardware.
It will also feature a first for sim rally in laser-scanned stages. Until Assetto Corsa Rally, the most realistic rallying games would undertake site visits and use photography and map charts to produce the most realistic route. Laser-scanned stages will allow you to feel every bump in the tarmac and every rut in the gravel.
Sim rally fans are most looking forward to trying out the physics engine in Assetto Corsa Rally. Many sim rally fans still use much older titles, such as Richard Burns Rally, due to its immense modding scene and the decades-long quest to refine the perfect handling model, whilst others will pick a title such as BeamNG.drive for its ruthless damage mechanics and soft-body physics model that rewards looking after your car. Only time will tell with the route that this title will take.
The Cars At Launch
Assetto Corsa Rally will launch with 10 cars across 7 different classes, all representing different eras of rallying history.
The Group 2 and Group 4 classes showcase the time before the World Rally Championship as well as its inaugural seasons. Small and nimble front-wheel-drive cars are the name of the game in Group 2, whilst Group 4 is often a story of Italian dominance as FIAT and Lancia traded titles with their rear-wheel-drive machinery.
Group B and Group A showcase what many rally fans consider the Golden Age of the sport. The duel between rear-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive that has since been immortalised in film, and the birth of rallying superstars: names like Kankkunen, McRae, Mäkinen, and Sainz. The cars that they drove are equally as iconic, with Assetto Corsa Rally launching with Lancia’s historic Rally 037 Evo 2 and Delta HF Integrale 16V EVO.
The World Rally Car era that spanned from 1997 to 2021 saw innovations in technology and the dawn of new eras of dominance. This class is being represented at launch by arguably the most dominant of them all: the Citroën Xsara WRC that first won a rally in 2001, won titles between 2003 and 2006, and even featured on the podium as late as 2009 before the 2L formula was banned at the end of 2010.
The current era of the Rallying Pyramid is represented by the four-wheel-drive Rally2 class and the front-wheel-drive Rally4 class. These are incredibly prominent classes the world over, with many national and international series hosting a top class in Rally2 and a Junior class in Rally4 machinery.
The Rallies At Launch
At the Early Access launch, Assetto Corsa Rally will have two different rallies. Both of these are former WRC events: Rally Alsace in France, and Rally Wales in the UK.
The Alsatian tarmac is best known for seeing Sébastien Loeb claim his ninth and final world title in 2012, and Sébastien Ogier claiming his first a year later in 2013. Both claimed their titles in Loeb’s hometown of Hageneau, albeit with Loeb claiming it on the final stage of the event and Ogier on the first stage of the event. The Munster and Saverne tests featured in these rallies between 2010 and 2014, with drivers using the narrow country lanes near the German border to flow through the tarmac rivers between the trees.
Welsh gravel is also known for deciding many a World Rally Championship. It famously crowned Britain’s two Championship-winning drivers, Colin McRae in 1995 and Richard Burns in 2001, as well as three co-drivers in Derek Ringer, Robert Reid, and Welshman Phil Mills.
The two stages featured in Assetto Corsa Rally at launch are Hafren North and Hafren South, with the fast mid-Wales forest roads featuring in many guises over the years and famously being immortalised in many different rallying franchises. These are famously quintessential roads for rallying games, allowing drivers to slide through the forests and use the verges and camber to carry maximum speed through the corners.
What’s to Come In The Future
It’s been 10 years since DiRT Rally first arrived on the scene in Early Access. The initial version of Codemasters’ series revival came with a handful of cars and stages, and gradually grew to include 6 rallies alongside 3 officially-licensed WorldRX venues and the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, as well as cars from past and present in all three disciplines.
Sim rally fans should come to expect similar developments from Assetto Corsa Rally. Whilst we are yet to see a full roadmap towards the end-goal Version 1.0, and whether more stages will be added to the current rallies, they should expect to see more rallies and, at the very least, more cars added to the current classes along the way to full release.
Final Thoughts
AC Rally perhaps comes at a fantastic time for the Assetto franchise, whilst they try and sort out AC Evo, and AC Rally has the opportunity to take the place of one of the best Rally games in modern times.
Already, there are early signs of it being very popular, with reviews from people at the sim racing expo stating it feels very good.
Using Unreal Engine 5, laser-scanned rallies, and a plethora of cars across the years, they have a good benchmark to get people into the ecosystem. As long as they follow the Early Access Launch with a great road map, they could be onto a winner.
