During the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, one of the Aston Martin F1 cars was given a false-start penalty after rolling away from its starting position. When interviewed later on, the driver in question, Two-Time F1 Champion Fernando Alonso, lamented that “it didn’t matter”, as the race went wary of him later on.
A bit of a slight tangent, yes.
But ultimately that’s what I felt for Project Motor Racing as I played this game. On paper, this has the major hallmarks of something special, like its developer’s previous work, but as of now, it might need a “Hail Mary” to recover from this disappointment, because boy, does it go wrong fast.
Presentation
One thing that I won’t really discredit the dev team that much is how the game looks, because while the game isn’t exactly a looker, it is running on the GIANTS engine, which technically is made for Farming Simulator and the sorts, so I can let them off for that. I
I would, however, complain about its UI and UX elements being quite dated and counterintuitive when compared to its other peers. It’s sometimes hard to look around during mid-drive, and while you could turn off elements in the pause menu, you couldn’t do so during mid-race when you need to focus. It’s quite a dated style of UI that feels jarring and doesn’t really look good even in motion.
Performance on PC is quite a letdown, with constant slowdowns on my Nitro V Gaming Laptop, even on the “Low” settings, where it does reach 60fps but gets pretty substantial hitching that makes even racing in Time Trial quite unbearable. It’s a shame that while there have been updates, and even a substantial Day 1 patch, the performance is still lacklustre, and that’s quite a huge disappointment for this sort of anticipated game.
The audio of the cars themselves is a bit of a hit and miss at times. GT3 cars like the Porsche 991.2 GT3 and the Mercedes AMG sound exactly how they should, beefy and loud, while somehow, the more unique-sounding cars like the Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar feel like it’s somehow being plucked from a PS3 racer with the way it sounds. Ditto for even the starter car that is the Mazda MX-5 cup car, which sounds way different than how it would in real life.
Gameplay
So, the positives. I love the idea of a Survival Mode career mode, and the various options that you could choose to fine-tune your single player experience, be it racing like you’re there one race at a time, a la Rolling Billboard or just become a Powerhouse at the start. It’s maybe a bit basic in terms of menuing, but the fact that a big crash at your first race could bankrupt you at the first go, bringing in consequences for your actions, is something that was missing in modern racing games. 
But all of that hinges on one of the important aspects of a racing game’s gameplay loop: the handling, and unfortunately, on the pad, it’s more of an unbalanced mess, which also varies from car to car. It could have been handled the way it should have at one point, but then it snaps quicker than any player on a pad would react. It’s quite a roulette if taking a corner, say the double apex in their version of Silverstone, could be a normal one or an oversteer snap that makes you lose position.
And while the most recent updates do help with the improvement of the other AI racers from not caring that your car is in the way to at least noticing that a vehicle (you) is in between them, it still has some issues with the start line, but it’s more of a non-issue if you’re already fighting for position or at the front.
Though one quite big nitpick is the severity of their penalty system, which punishes the player for even leaving the track for a fraction of a tyre width, which is not only unrealistic but harsh if you’re racing hard and get pushed off, which kinda contradicts their stance in “proper racing” as they have mentioned in their trailers. Like, why a time penalty for racing like you’re supposed to?
Content![]()
The roster of cars and tracks that players have at their disposal is quite commendable, with the list consisting of the usual suspects of GT3 and GT4 cars, but also as a sort of time capsule towards the 90s era Homologated GT cars, like the Lister Storm and Dodge Vipers, to name a few. Heck, they even got some of the IMSA Hypercars to join their neat roster. Which makes their car handling and PC issues much more disheartening, really.
This game should have become this generation’s Project CARS, 10 years after it was released, but if the state of the game is still like this, then playing the game might not be as enjoyable as many would have expected, both in the short term and even in the long run.
Would it be fixed in the future? I sure hope so, but things are dire right now, so that could take a while.
Personal Enjoyment![]()
I’ll be frank, I was excited for this one. Maybe it is the sway of the trailers, or the excitement of having a new wave of simcade racing games finally hitting store shelves after quite a drought of this sort of niche title since 2022 via Grid Legends.
And yet, I wasn’t particularly shocked to see it crumble in this sort of way, with reports of its eccentric developers being not that flattering, to say the least. Like, I get what they are trying to achieve, and while the formula for a rags-to-riches isn’t new (iRacing released NASCAR 25 with this sort of career mode, and it took off rather well), they just fumble on one of the fundamentals that makes this sort of racing game fun. And that’s a dang shame.
Verdict
Project Motor Racing, right now, is the biggest “What if” racing title on the market.
It should have the pedigree to make it one of the best racers on the market, but it falters when the spotlight shines on it, in the year where racing titles are abundant.
Handlings need work, of course, along with their performance on PC. But should they be able to improve on this lacklustre debut, I reckon it could shine and hopefully recover from this.
Played on PC, review copy provided by the Publisher.
Project Motor Racing
Biggest “What if” racing title on the market, had the chance to be one of the best racers on the market, But it falters when the spotlight shines on it, in the year where racing titles are abundant.
- Presentation 7
- Gameplay 6
- Content 8
- Personal Enjoyment 7