New Sim in Development: PISTA Motorsport Celebrates Argentine Racing

PISTA Motorsport Formula 3 Metropolitana.jpg
Image credit: REG Simulations

South American motorsport tends to be somewhat overlooked in sim racing: Automobilista 2 shines some light on the mostly Brazilian Stock Car Pro series and its circuits, and the cars are also available in iRacing as official content. REG Simulations wants to change this: The Argentine developer announced that they are working on a standalone sim called PISTA Motorsport, which is going to focus on Argentina's racing scene.

The studio has created several cars and tracks for Assetto Corsa, but it wants to capture the domestic racing scene of its native country in its very own sim: Claimed to be "the first simulator made from scratch in the history of Latin America", PISTA Motorsport aims to bring the Latin American motorsports world closer to sim racers around the world.

Laser-Scanned Circuits​

Supposedly the result of learnings of the last five years, the project is in a relatively advanced state, according to REG's first Dev Log. Currently, work is ongoing on a Fiat Uno del Turismo Pista Clase 1, the Autódromo Municipal Juan Manuel Fangio in Rosario and a scratch-built version of the Autódromo Roberto Mouras in La Plata. For the track creation, the team relies on LIDAR data to achieve the desired accuracy. In other words: laser-scanned circuits - quite in-depth for a relatively small project.

PISTA Motorsport Fiat Uno.jpg

The Fiat Uno del Turismo Pista Clase 1 in PISTA Motorsport has already progressed quite a bit in development. Image credit: REG Simulations

While REG has confirmed that FMOD Studio would be used to handle the sim's sounds, the game engine itself has not been mentioned yet. The available screenshots look promising, however, even including puddles - the Dev Log promises "advanced technology" that allows for dynamic animation of the tracks and their surroundings like crowds, pit crews and more.

PISTA Motorsport Autodromo Rosario 1.jpg

PISTA Motorsport promises dynamic environments, including puddles that affect the handling in a realistic way. Image credit: REG Simulations

From Karting to the National Stage​

Gameplay-wise, PISTA Motorsport is going to focus on an in-depth career mode, taking sim racers from karting to the spotlight of Argentina's national championships. AI supported by machine learning is supposed to provide authentic behavior of opponents on track. The sim racing community is also supposed to become involved in development eventually, providing feedback and suggestions.

Popular Racing Series in Argentina​

  • Turismo de Carretera: Top-level stock car series in Argentina, dating back to 1937, making it the oldest racing series in the world that is still operational. Ex-F1 drivers Gastón Mazzacane (Minardi in 2000, Prost in 2001) and Norberto Fontana (Sauber in 1997) are on the grid for 2023.
  • TC2000: Touring car series featuring works entries of Chevrolet (Cruze), Honda (Civic) and Toyota (Corolla). Other cars include the Fiat Cronos, Renault Fluence and Citroen C4 X.
  • Top Race V6: Silhouette-style touring cars featuring approximately 390 HP and strict aero regulations to ensure parity among competitors.
  • Turismo Nacional: Touring car championship featuring two classes (1.6 and 2.0 liters of displacement), with vehicles only being allowed minor modifications from their road-going counterparts, resulting in highly-competitive races.
  • Turismo Pista: Similar to Turismo Nacional but cheaper to run. Features three classes, namely one for the Fiat Uno and one each for 1.4 and turbocharged 1.6 liters of displacement.
  • Fórmula Nacional Argentina: Small single seaters with a 2-liter engine. The series has been known as Formula Renault 2.0 Argentina in the past.
  • Formula 3 Metropolitana: Argentina's national F3 series, though cars (see header image) differ in specification compared to the FIA Formula 3 single seaters.

PISTA Motorsport sounds highly ambitious for a newcomer studio - which is something REG Simulations is quite aware of: "It is not an easy path givent hat everything we do is 100% from scratch, and we face large companies with years of experience and much more investment capital, but we believe that we are on the right path to put Argentina on the map" in sim racing. The sim's page in the Steam Store is already up, featuring the option to wishlist the title.

PISTA Motorsport Autodromo Rosario 3.jpg

The dawn before a bright future? PISTA Motorsport seems ambitious, but has an interesting concept. Image credit: REG Simulations

Your Thoughts​

What do you think of the concept of PISTA Motorsport? Could the ambitious project bring some interesting variety to the sim racing table in the future? Let us know in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

LIDAR doesn't necessarily mean they actually go there with measuring devices to my knowledge. The aerial surveys that have up to 0.5m height accuracy also uses LIDAR technology afaik. Since I cannot read Spanish, can anyone confirm if they specified which LIDAR data they are using?
The dev log only says that they used LiDAR for the Fiat Uno (without specifications), not for the tracks
 
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Premium
The 2pez games in the past were a blast and I raced them online so often.

Ah. Vaguely remember reading about this.

Wasn't this yet another rFactor/gmotor based sim? And yet another one of such that I never got to try. I still wish I could find and try Superleague Formula 2009: The Game. Which was a game made by ISI.
 
Premium
I know I will be in minority this time and I will be boo'ed, but another tarmac sim racer...? What this game is going to have which other similiar games dont have besides cars and tracks? Good luck to them obviously, but still, when we gonna have some proper RALLY sim this time, and not another 69th tarmac racer?
You just have to wait one more time, the 70th will be rally. No one passing up 69.
 
Sounds very interesting. Nice to see a game about series that haven't yet been shown in sims, instead of the usual GT3s on Monza and Spa! I will definitely watch this closely.
 
I hope the AI will be really unique and the game will have the possibility to play against both AI and real racers at the same time! Online championship mode would be great, the big shortcoming of today's simulator is that you can't compete against AI with friends in a custom online championship!
Good luck!
 
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This looks like being headed Bundle Games; aka the biggest a-holes in the history of Argentine simracing.

As an Argentine, I think nothing good will come out of it; I would not have this title on my library even if it was gifted to me, and I won't be sad one bit if it turns out to be a flop or never comes out. Because, together with more reasons and stories than what I could write here, it's for this very group of people that Reiza could not have more Argentine content in AMS2. They can Foxtrot Oscar for all that I care.
 
I’m very interested in a project of that kind. Sims like that allow me to learn more about racing series and tracks that I would not know about otherwise. This is one of the reasons I like Reiza sims so much: I had no idea that there was a stock car series or a prototype series in Brazil.
 
Good, if Reiza won't bring Turismo Nacional BR to AMS2, I'll be all over the Turismo Nacional AR in this one. It will be hardly any different from what we already have in the interesting mods for AC, but it's good to have another option.

Turismo Nacional Clase 3 and Turismo Pista offer some of the best touring car racing in Argentina, with close pack racing with some door and bumper banging included.
 
I know I will be in minority this time and I will be boo'ed, but another tarmac sim racer...? What this game is going to have which other similiar games dont have besides cars and tracks? Good luck to them obviously, but still, when we gonna have some proper RALLY sim this time, and not another 69th tarmac racer?
Although I praise the dev and wish them well, I tend to agree with you. And with Reiza plan to simplify modding in AMS2, maybe it will be easier for them to generate positive cashflow by creating and selling paid mods like RSS etc. Good luck to the team!
 
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Super excited about this, I've tried the 2pez dev mods in RF1 (Turismo Carretera & TC 2000) and they were just great, can't wait to have Turismo Nacional C3 and C2, Pista and more ARG leagues with a better graphics and physics engines, we're very passionate about motor racing too (besides football). I used to race in some esports leagues like súper tc2000 in RF2 (official teams have their simracers lineup besides official drivers which is something cool). VAMOS CARAJOO!
 
Curious fact about "Turismo Carretera" .....until 1998 it was "real road"...(before they were ONLY races on real roads, routes, country roads...no circuits, circuits were added over time , and in the end "the road" was abandoned) a section of a remote town was closed... and the cars ran there, with potholes, ditches on the sides of the road, residents of the town who were approaching... and a helicopter that transmitted to the tv channel.
dangerous and deadly...yes, but very close to the people (the cars were common on the street...and the drivers formed "peñas" (village clubs) to be able to pay for the car, and thus the people were represented by one driver at least.

Little by little, all of that was lost, today the TC is a "mini NASCAR", the cars are (just like NASCAR) "shells" of old cars, inside they are prototypes. today the TN (TN..not TC) is the closest thing to the old tc (only in the fact that they use modified touring street cars)


Anecdote of Juan Maria Traverso (old tc champion, well known in ARG)

-What was the most dangerous maneuver you did?
-"....in one stage of the Mesopotamian Grand Prix, the race started one by one (as in current rallies), we were going on red soil (on jungle roads), Marincovich was in front of me, (...) there was a place where there was a well (hole, descent, valley) very deep and very narrow... for me, it had to be gone full throttle (at full speed, "flatout"). My co-driver warned me "no!, no!, this is done in first gear, very slowly" (apparently it was a descent from a river)... but since Marincovich was beating me, when I got to the place I said "it's full speed "................and it wasn't (to go at) top speed.....

.... I bounced off the roof of Marincovich's car -which is below- (his car got stuck in the well)... I bounced, and went ahead.... and won the stage..... I tell it and they don't believe me....
...in fact, marincovich arrived at parc fermé (at the end of the stage) the journalists said "Marincovich overturned the car" (on seeing the roof of the car) and Marincovich said:
"... no, this animal ran over my roof" (while he pointed at me) ... "
and they thought what he said was a joke...":roflmao:
JMT in an interview for a sports channel.
 

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