NOTE: Recent testing showed major inconsistencies with this car set and an update will be released soon.
This is the first of hopefully many, grid recreations for specific iconic historical races in Assetto Corsa such as 24 hours of Le Mans, 24 hours of Spa, 1000km of Fuji, Sebring and more. The first one is focused on the 1981 24 hours of Le Mans. The 1981 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 49th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 13 and 14 June 1981. It was also the eighth round of the World Endurance Championship of Drivers, and the fifth round of the World Championship for Makes.
Defending champions Rondeau entered a strong 5-car team. The Porsche works team challenged them with the final development of their 936, now fitted with the 2.65-litre turbo engine from the abandoned Indianapolis project. The prospect was sufficient to entice Jacky Ickx out of retirement again, teamed up with Derek Bell with whom he had already won the race in 1975. The 1981 race was interrupted by two serious accidents on the Mulsanne Straight killing French driver Jean-Louis Lafosse and a track marshal. These events saw the first deployment at Le Mans of the pace-car system to slow the race, as repairs and medical attention were carried out. The 1981 Le Mans was at a point of pivotal change, some privateers, the last hurrah of the 917 and McLaren M6 and next year would see the rise of Group C. 1981 was full of big turbos, high top speed and no driving aids. A few videos of the race can be found on YouTube including the wild RX7.
You can read up on the 1981 Le Mans results at Motorsport Magazine.
Important note! Is this grid a 100% accurate representation of the 1981 Le Mans Race? No .. it is unfortunately not. We are bound by the restrictions of what mods are available for Asetto Corsa and also their quality. We either left these cars out, or swapped them to different mods that closely represent their real life performance in the race. It still gives you a good idea of what this race was however. Some mods are also not free and be respectful of their designers. A few dollars or Euros pays respect to their efforts and is worth it.
To recreate the race you will need to individually download and install in the following order:
- Track
- Cars
- Liveries
- Grid Preset
- CSP 0.1.80 to fix the slow AI grid start issue
- Custom Shaders Patch as some of the cars require this
Track
Track
https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/le-mans-1982.52192/
24 hour extension (optional)
https://www.racedepartment.com/media/assetto-corsa-24-hours-le-mans-2022-extension-1-0.4262/
Gridfiles
https://acstuff.ru/s/bykl3c for quick race
https://acstuff.ru/s/LnxGzu for race weekend
Cars
Cars
As long as you download the cars the grid file preload will load the grid with the appropriate amount of each of the cars required, in the position they qualified in the real 1981 Le Mans.
3x Gr.6 Porsche 936
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/porsche-936
7x IMSA GTX Porsche 935 Moby Dick
Available for download through the Kunos Porsche DLC
3x Gr.5 Porsche 935/80
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/porsche-93580
5x Gr.6 Rondeau 379c
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A1ISM7Vxc67D2xw01wwTImv1TUHKJjH1/view?usp=sharing
3x GTP WM P81.
Unfortunately the P81 isn’t available and the closest available is the P83 which was available for the 1983 race.
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/wm-p83-2
4x IMSA GTX Ferrari 512 BB LM
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/ferrari-512-bb-lm
6x Porsche 924 GTU
944 LM not available and substituted with 924 GTU
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/porsche-924-gtu
3x Gr.5 Lancia Monte Carlo Turbo
https://www.drm-modding-team.com/
2x Lola T600
T600 not available for AC, substituted with the T610
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/lola-t610-2
3x Lola T298
T298 not available for AC, substituted with the T280
https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/lola-t280-classic.931/
6x IMSA GTX M1
The DRM M1 has unfortunately a fuel consumption bug that makes the AI pit for fuel each lap and has been replaced by the March M1 IMSA GTX V8 which has about equivalent performance
https://mega.nz/file/oUkEyTxB#JYghH1w_4eipzd_He3MzGlU1st7EWQ_Y7C-Yo5sa9Os
2x Gr.6 DeCadenet Lola M76/M78
DeCadenet Lola M76/M78 not available and substituted with DeCadenet 83 instead.
http://gtsupreme.com/group-c-1980s-mod-for-assetto-corsa-updating-21-10-2021/
1x IMSA GTP McLaren M12/6B GT
https://www.mediafire.com/file/yn5vw3zn8krjaq8/mclaren_m6_gt_by_Uncle_M.rar/file
1x Gr.6 Porsche 917K
https://www.assettoworld.com/car/porsche-917-k
Cars not available
Cars not available at all for AC for the 1981 race with no reasonable substitution:
3x Mazda RX7
1x Chevrolet Camaro
1x Gr,6 IBEC P6
1x Gr.6 Ardex S80
1x Gr.6 Dome Zero RL 80 (although a later RL82 is available through the Group C pack)
1x Gr.6 Renard Delmas D1
1x Gr.6 ACR 80B
This set will give you a 50+ grid race, which means you will need a powerful computer to run or you will need to reduce some of the cars.
So how does AC stack up against the real race?
I have run quite a few simulation races to get an accurate reading on the lap times to see where the cars would be at in a race and how realistic those times are measured against what happened in the 1981 race.
| Car | Assetto Corsa Lap time | 1981 Le Mans Lap time |
| Ferrari 512 BB LM | 3:59.420 | 3:52 |
| Lancia Monte Carlo Turbo | 4:00.432 | 3:48 |
| Porsche 935/80 | 4:01.845 | 3:48 |
| Porsche 936 | 3:38.603 | 3:32 |
| McLaren M6GT | 3:40.145 | 5:13 |
| Lola T280 | 3:37.310 | 4:04 |
| Rondeaux M379C | 3:37.789 | 3:36 |
| WM P81 (P83 used) | 3:37.493 | 3:38 |
| Lola T600 (T610 used) | 3:35.439 | 3:46 |
| BMW M1 IMSA GTX | 3:40.110 | 3:47 |
| Porsche 917K | 3:33.065 | 3:46 |
| Porsche 935/78 Moby Dick | 3:43.049 | 3:46 |
| DeCadenet Lola | 3:55.108 | 3:46 |
| Porsche 924 GTR | 3:51.267 | 4:04 |
Want to race?
And to wrap it all up you need the grid file. You can import this one directly into Content Manager and it will give you a grid of 44 cars. Each class is fairly competitive so pick your favorite, set your length of race and enjoy.
What does it look like?
The Assetto Corsa Le Mans Project 
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