So you need to understand everything that’s new with the race start procedure in Le Mans Ultimate. Well you’re in the right place as this guide will walk you through step by step. The only thing we won’t be able to help you with will be your reaction times, so don’t go blaming us for being left in the dust at the start!
The whole aim is to improve communication with players during the crucial opening phase of any race event. This reduces the frequency of incorrect penalty assignments, including when unexpected events may occur such as disconnections or incidents during the formation lap.
Players will be given a visual guide encouraging them to line up in the correct positions with an expected maximum speed to follow, with warnings being displayed in front of every driver to ensure no one driver gets an unfair advantage at the start.
The Race Directors Instructions
After you have finished with qualifying, you’ll be instructed by the race director to go to the grid where you will line up to begin the formation lap with all relevant car classes and drivers present. Once all cars have gridded you will see a prompt pop up in front of you letting you know when it’s ok to go in formation relative to your class and starting position.
Keeping Your Distance
As you pull away from the line, if you fall too far back from the car you must follow in single file, you’ll receive another prompt telling you to catch up with the pack, the car you must follow at this stage will appear with a red banner above the car, you’ll notice other drivers around the car you must follow have neutral banners.
Keeping Formation
Now you’ve caught up to the pack, you’ll see a formation grid appear on the race track with green/yellow/red stagger lines to judge your distance. Keeping yourself between the green and yellow lines are where you need to be. If you are on the red line you are too far forward on the grid and will have to drop back slightly.
Lining Up To Begin The Race
As you approach the final corners of the lap, a new prompt will pop up letting you know which side of the grid you must line up on to begin the start procedure. Again, the driver you must be following will appear with a red banner above the car. You get ample time to line up correctly and make sure you are in position.
A Fancy Futuristic Feature
What we really love about the new race start procedure and formation lap is this rather futuresque red translucent barrier that pops up every time you get too close to the car in front of you. It just appears up from the ground like some sort of laser shield to protect the rear end of the other car and disappears again once you’ve got your distance correct. It may or may not slice the front of your car off if you go through it.
Maintaining Your Speed
Now everyone is in position and you are approaching the line and the race start, you’ll be giving a hold speed prompt that you must maintain. If you are speeding it will flash red and you must slow down. This ensures everyone is starting in the correct positions relative to those around them and no one is gaining an unfair advantage at the start by being too far ahead of someone else.
Go, go, go!
The final thing for you to do is execute the start to the best of your abilities, making use of the brand new radar feature that shows you how close cars are around you. This is a perfect example of the radar in action as you can see there is a car to the left flashing in red showing it is as close as can be, whilst there is a bit more room to the right, shown by the radar only flashing yellow. The radar system works by fading in and out of focus based on your proximity to other cars.
New Radar System
Le Mans Ultimate brings in a much-needed radar system that sim racers have been shouting for. It will be used to help improve awareness in wheel-to-wheel racing – you will be able to see where opponents are when running wheel-to-wheel, helping situational awareness in the heat of the moment, both in online and offline modes of the game.
In turn, this should mean fewer incidents out on track, thus helping the community of racers on their journey to improving their ranks and opening up more races they can enter each week using the online competition system.
New Driver Labels
The final thing to finish this guide off, which we have mentioned throughout this guide, is the new driver label feature. Le Mans Ultimate have added this in to bring another dimension to the race track for drivers. It will show you what position the car is in, what class they are in, what team they are driving for and their names. This is a feature than can be toggled on or off at any point and is available to you in both live racing mode and the new replay suite mode.
