What is Your Favourite Touring Car Simulator?

Ever raced touring cars? The close-knit fields around some of the most beautiful venues in the world offer door-rubbing action for everyone. But in our simulated world, who does touring car racing best? Let’s have a look at some of the contenders.

RaceRoom​

Coming from a background of offering dedicated touring car simulators, the developers of RaceRoom sure hit the mark. Their official ongoing partnership with the WTCC may be reason enough to see that tourers are a strength of the Swedish-based game.

Furthermore, offering a wide variety of racetracks to race on, the yearly updated WTCR vehicles offer stunning racing across the globe. Not to forget about the beautiful sounds these digital engines produce.

But RaceRoom is surely not a game for everyone. Being not moddable and from 2013, the rough edges become ever more visible.

rFactor 2​

With the assumed early retirement of the official BTCC game, rFactor 2 inherited some officially licensed content recently. Both the front-wheel-driven Toyota Corolla GR Sport and the rear-wheel-driven Infiniti Q50 are available to drive on the vast sea of rFactor 2 tracks. Alongside these cars, the newly released British circuits Donington Park and Brands Hatch offer quite the spectacle of racing action.

rFactor 2 itself also updated its UI to be more user-friendly and pairing that with the known strength of arguably the best physics in any sim, this package is more than complete.

Of course, there are also caveats. Also being from 2013, this sim has seen a fair share of action. Some of it is not quite favourable. Specifically talking of the unfriendly UI that has been prevailing in the past. Add to that a quite pricey DLC system. It’s not the most expensive in the market, but probably the runner-up.

iRacing​

Featuring a selection of touring cars, iRacing is another contender for the best touring simulator. The undisputed strength of this sim is the official ranked online multiplayer mode. And there is even a Touring Car Challenge, in which you can drive the Audi RS3, among those.

Of course, I probably don’t need to tell you about the Membership program that is required for access to iRacing. In case you didn’t hear, this monthly subscription model is a deterrent for some sim racers. Add to that the price of DLCs and you are looking at a hefty invoice.

Assetto Corsa​

There is a rule-of-thumb in sim racing. If it exists, there is a mod for it for Assetto Corsa. And so, TCR vehicles made their way to the Italian sim as a mod. You can race up-to-date touring cars on virtually any modded track that ever existed if you excuse some of them being simpler conversions.

With how easy it is to mod Assetto Corsa, creating your livery for those mods may be another reason to get excited.

However, these mods may not be the most realistic representation.

Or Any Retro Title?​

Remember Race: The WTCC Game or STCC The Game? Or their respective follow-ups in that case? These dedicated touring car games I have eluded to before as the original titles that led us to receive RaceRoom.

SimBin Studios, in those days, really had their finger on the pulse of the touring car community. Furthermore, being moddable, these games even enjoy newly-released content to this day, almost 2 decades afterwards!

Of course, with age come a few problems, like working on newer operating systems. Also, the online crowds for these games might not be the biggest anymore.

The question is, was anything forgotten about? Or is any of the aforementioned titles your go-to touring car sim? Feel free to let us know in the comments below!