Caterham Academy Coming to rFactor 2

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As part of Studio 397's drip marketing for the Q3 content drop, today's announcement saw the Caterham Academy be added for free on August 8th.

After yesterday's announcement of the Mini Cooper S and the news from the day before about the World Wide Technology Raceway, the Caterham Seven Academy is now making its way to rFactor 2.

The Caterham Academy is a road-legal, simple, lightweight kit car that can be bought for less than £35.000.

Technical Specs​

The 1.6l Ford engine produces 125 bhp or 93 kW and 150 Nm torque. With its 5-speed gearbox, it achieves 0-60 in 5.3 seconds.

The main selling point of the vehicle is its lightness, however, which is coming in at 625 kg including the driver.

This may not be the quickest vehicle on the planet, however, it will definitely allow close racing along many circuits.

Outlook for rFactor 2 and Caterham​

In the announcement video, more models from the Caterham brand have been announced to be released in the upcoming months.

A little bit of speculation sees the 420R race package coming to rFactor 2 too. Basically, that would be a higher-powered version of the Academy car, while not being road legal.

What I'm personally expecting from this Caterham Academy vehicle would be to feature in the rookie matchmaking series instead of the Alpine Cup. This would fit perfectly, as the current season is set to run out on August 7th, just 1 day before the Caterham's release.

But whether that can come true is to be confirmed. In the meantime, let's just enjoy this grand addition to rFactor 2.

Are you excited about this announcement? Please let us know in the comments down below!
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About author
Julian Strasser
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

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Comments

Slapped
Catiorro F1 said:
They are marketing the game as "the most diverse sim" and those cars are there to reinforce that it seems. not gonna complain, at least the caterham is free
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I think something got lost in translation there, I think they meant:

“The most divisive sim”

;)
 
S
Slapped said:
They really have no idea what they're doing or where they're going with rF2, do they?

A couple of months ago everybody thought BTCC was coming to rF2, but no, just a couple of cars and a couple of tracks. Since then there's been nothing at all BTCC related announced or said - it's like the whole idea just vanished in a puff of smoke, except there wasn't even any smoke.

Now we're getting a free Caterham - free is good, but where does it fit? And then there's a future paid for content drop with a Mini in it, but no info on what's going to drop with it. Something related? or just more random unrelated content?

It's a great sim from a driving viewpoint, but S397 really needs to start giving rF2 some kind of direction, and refinement, if people are going to take it seriously.
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Nobody said we will get all BTCC tracks, that something people started to think, but it was never annouced, nor promised. Basically dont expect things that arent annouced!
Brands Hatch and Donnington have been 2 of the more recognizeable british tracks, that alone doesnt mean its BTCC from there on.
As for the cars, there will be still more of those BTCC´s, tomorrow is the last annoucement, so maybe then or later, but this has actually been annoucent back then, that is a fact, not just someone speculating on it, still that doesnt mean the focus is solely on those BTCC´s, there are multiple project happening in parallel, so that everybody has something.
And the Mini will drop with Gateway and whatever will be annoucent Tomorrow.

The thing about rF2 is, that the goal here is to have a lot of very different stuff, its not about focusing on just one series, for this there will be, or are different games.
 
P
MJQT said:
It can be fun to race whatever wherever, for sure. But I personally prefer to sim race in a full field of cars from a given season of a real world series on a (roughly) period-correct track used in that season – using sim racing to learn about and simulate real world motorsport. So I know rF2 will allow me to race Caterhams in multiclass with historical Minis at Gateway in the rain... but I won't want to :roflmao:
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Everyone has its own preferences of course. I would welcome a dedicated BTCC, Indycar, Le Mans game as well for example, but that is not was rFactor 2 is about. Looking at current racing sims, maybe only ACC fits that bill?
 
Slapped
sbabb said:
As for the cars, there will be still more of those BTCC´s, tomorrow is the last annoucement, so maybe then or later, but this has actually been annoucent back then, that is a fact, not just someone speculating on it, still that doesnt mean the focus is solely on those BTCC´s, there are multiple project happening in parallel, so that everybody has something.
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When I’m interviewing a company or firm that’s invited me to work for or with them, and I hear that then it’s often a big red flag. Depending on the size of the company it means that there‘s a lack of focus, and/or that resources are spread way too thin to be managable, meaning the team that I’m supposed to be leading will often be working an 80 - 100 hour work week, which in turn means lower productivity and bigger screw ups.

I reject these applications.

S-397 is not a big company from what I can make out.
 
mantasisg
parzival2022 said:
We should get a historic racing sim. I mean AC basically covers that with mods but it would be nice for something more professional with proper servers and career modes
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AC will soon belong to the past. It made superb impact for simracing. But its time to move.

gianlucaP said:
Looking forward to see what the modders will do with these two cars: they are the best possible base with the tires and the other .ini files made by S397. Any modification can be shared with a workshop upgrade.
A Z-Car Mini Hayabusa comes to mind, the Mini with two engines seen in the Historic GT and Touring Cars mod of rFactor 1, a Cat with the 620R numbers and gear ratios. Oh yes. :p
Great to see all these updates/upgrades to the game. Keep it up guys!
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Unfortunately probably no one will ever is going to be able to extract anything from rF2 encrypted physics. It would be useful in some cases, I would certainly benefit with that size wheels. I just keep having troubles associated with small wheel size for Mini Marcos reping car from 1967 endurance pack.
 
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Ole Marius Myrvold
Staff
Premium
Slapped said:
When I’m interviewing a company or firm that’s invited me to work for or with them, and I hear that then it’s often a big red flag. Depending on the size of the company it means that there‘s a lack of focus, and/or that resources are spread way too thin to be managable, meaning the team that I’m supposed to be leading will often be working an 80 - 100 hour work week, which in turn means lower productivity and bigger screw ups.

I reject these applications.

S-397 is not a big company from what I can make out.
Click to expand...

I've said it before, and until I am proven wrong, it's what I am going with. The partial BTCC, partial IndyCar and the Bahrain track that will drop (#WEC-Track) is things made for the BTCC-game, the IndyCar-game and WEC-game. Now, if we will ever see those games or not, that's up to everyone to decide for themselves, but that rF2 would get parts of that content regardless of what happens with the games. That's something I think have been clear for quite a while.
 
S
Slapped said:
When I’m interviewing a company or firm that’s invited me to work for or with them, and I hear that then it’s often a big red flag. Depending on the size of the company it means that there‘s a lack of focus, and/or that resources are spread way too thin to be managable, meaning the team that I’m supposed to be leading will often be working an 80 - 100 hour work week, which in turn means lower productivity and bigger screw ups.

I reject these applications.

S-397 is not a big company from what I can make out.
Click to expand...
they have more staff now thanks to MSG, thats why we get so much new stuff in such an unusual short amount of time compared to prior. They are not EA level, but more than before, this year alone we got 4 tracks already and 5 cars, plus the stuff now and in Q4, thats never happend before
 
D
Love me a Caterham, but AMS 1 and AMS 2 already have a great Caterham-roster.
 
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T
Slapped said:
They really have no idea what they're doing or where they're going with rF2, do they?

A couple of months ago everybody thought BTCC was coming to rF2, but no, just a couple of cars and a couple of tracks. Since then there's been nothing at all BTCC related announced or said - it's like the whole idea just vanished in a puff of smoke, except there wasn't even any smoke.

Now we're getting a free Caterham - free is good, but where does it fit? And then there's a future paid for content drop with a Mini in it, but no info on what's going to drop with it. Something related? or just more random unrelated content?

It's a great sim from a driving viewpoint, but S397 really needs to start giving rF2 some kind of direction, and refinement, if people are going to take it seriously.
Click to expand...
I have no idea how you come to the conclusion that the content offerings have no focus nor that they don't know where they are going with the sim. It doesn't take more than five minutes to find out that Gateway perfectly fits the Indycars and Nascars and that the Mini and the Caterham feel right at home at twisty tracks like the recently released UK tracks. And I am pretty sure that there are more BTCC cars and tracks to come, but that they need time to be developed. Would also be a bit boring to drop two full blown BTCC packs after another if you ask me. And it has been no secret that rF2 lacked a free entry level everyday-car like the Caterham or the Miata for a long time to feed the CS.

And Bahrein for Q4 focuses more on the FPro and Endurance content in the sim. How much more focus do you need? There are very few sims that get this right or make it better. AMS2 and AMS1 are the benchmark in that regard but rF2 is slowly catching up with a wide variety of content from Karts, to GT cars, ELMS, WEC, IMSA, Indycar, F1 or FE, now BTCC and propably some historic content. You just need to combine official and 3rd party mods and you have endless options depending on what you prefer.
 
V
Premium
Slapped said:
That is probably the phrase most uttered when rF2 enters the conversation.

There’s nothing complete about it. So many promises, so many carrots dangled in front of our noses, yet nothing ever actually comes to completeness. For the most part it’s just random cars and random tracks.

At this point I’d be happy if they stopped with actual race cars, and concentrated on high performance road cars, then we could legitimately use the sim for what it is - a track day hotlapping sim.
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No, you wouldn't be happy. Regardless of whatever would be done, complainers complain.
One day is "DLC is expensive", then a free car comes... "there is no direction", etc, etc, etc...
The Caterhams and the Minis race on their own.
There are plenty of tracks to race them on, including high quality mods of some of the tracks which hopefully will come as DLC for rF2 within the BTCC side of things.
 
V
Premium
Slapped said:
When I’m interviewing a company or firm that’s invited me to work for or with them, and I hear that then it’s often a big red flag. Depending on the size of the company it means that there‘s a lack of focus, and/or that resources are spread way too thin to be managable, meaning the team that I’m supposed to be leading will often be working an 80 - 100 hour work week, which in turn means lower productivity and bigger screw ups.

I reject these applications.

S-397 is not a big company from what I can make out.
Click to expand...
So stop demanding results which only a big company can output :-D
 
Leonardo Ratafiá
I wonder how they will simulate the rear suspension on the Academy being De-Dion. Really looking forward to try is as I love this car in AC1 though the rear suspension is more adecuated to what it's possible to simulate within the game.
 
Nitro McClean
Premium
Let's just say that this is a very special way for me to fix a problem. rFactor 2 is in many ways my favorite sym. And until recently the Caterham 7 was my favorite mod for rFactor 2. Until the sound update. That was a big improvement for new cars, but not for old cars. And for the Caterham 7 it was an unmitigated disaster. I'm assuming this is all a coincidence and that S397 doesn't know that I drove the Caterham 7 a lot (or is there sneaky spyware inside rF2 so S397 can keep track of exactly what we're all driving?). But my sound problem will probably be solved to a large extent with the release of an S397 Caterham which will be using the great new sound system.
 
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