Our first impressions of Assetto Corsa Evo: it’s barebones, but the handling already delights

The first thing that hits you is the sound. This is the first step of an epic journey for Assetto Corsa Evo, a slow, careful assembly of racing sim components that will reach completion later this autumn. We should be appraising its first build methodically, car by car, track by track, jotting meaningful things down, ideally on some sort of clipboard. Instead, we’re over-revving a Ford Escort RS Cosworth and nodding along to it like it’s a symphony.

This isn’t your dad’s AC. It’s running in an all-new proprietary game engine, built from the ground up by Kunos Simulazioni. It doesn’t have that distinctive Unreal Engine look that ACC has, nor does it look much like the 2014 original. There are big plans for Evo through 2025, including a quasi-open world map recreating the roads near the Nürburgring, a Gran Turismo-style game economy and car ownership/collection system, and of course, online racing competitions.

Right now though, on day 1 of its Early Access journey, AC Evo is just a handful of cars and tracks, which can be used for either practice or quick race modes. The Cossie is an early treat, willing to drift around Brands Hatch in a vaguely manageable manner, something of a novelty if you’ve been playing copious hours of ACC until now. But however much we’re enjoying finding that slipping point and trying to hold it through the apexes, it’s the throaty engine sound that defines the experience.

There’s a newfound fidelity to the audio mix in general, in fact. The rattle of gravel – not that we’ve heard any, you understand, our brake markers are infallible – and the buzz of a trackside rumble strip are crystal-clear and amplified in the mix to give you optimal information for racing. And the way your engine roar reverberates against the pitwall on the main straight is impressive to the point of distracting.

Speaking of distracting: the cars look alright, don’t they? Not just their exteriors, which capture even the minute details within headlamps and the panel gaps, but the textures of the interiors, too. Part of the rationale for moving to a proprietary engine for Evo was that it allows Kunos greater control over things like VR support, and that means it’s more important than ever to get cockpits right. Right out of the gate, that’s evident.

The Alfa Romeo Giulia GTAm that we take for a few tentative laps of Mount Panorama is picture-perfect inside, its interior materials so well rendered that you want to run a finger along them. Meanwhile the Ferrari 488 Challenge EVO and Porsche 992 GT3 Cup, thoroughbred motorsport vehicles, show you how much Evo has progressed from ACC’s interiors. The differences are subtle, but they’re there: there’s a sharpness to interior textures now.

The fidelity might come at a cost, though: on our RTX 2080 TI PC, on medium settings, AC Evo struggles to maintain a smooth 60fps. Perhaps there’s some optimisation to be done along its Early Access Journey.

What does it feel like to drive? Well, quite familiar. Particularly if you pick one of the GT3 cars, you can feel a lot of ACC’s DNA in the way your platform responds through corners and under acceleration. This is, of course, a good thing. ACC is basically peerless at simulating that category.

Head out in some less powerful road-legal machinery, though, and there are new experiences to be had. The Audi RS3, BMW M4 and even the Abarth 500 can be coaxed into getting sideways through the corners, and even though it does nothing for our lap deltas, playing with weight transfer like that in such a high fidelity physics model, with such detailed force feedback going into our direct drive wheel, is mandate enough for AC Evo’s existence in this stripped down form.

Tyre and brake modelling’s taken a step forwards. You can now see three separate tire temp zones on the HUD, and given how crucial it was to set and manage the right PSI for specific track conditions in ACC, that extra information and detail will be a vital part of the hardcore’s sim racing experience. As for the rest of us, well, we can nod sagely when we take way too much speed into Imola’s Tamburello chicane, watch our front tyres turn from green to blistering red and say to ourselves, ‘yep, that’s what would happen'.

You get the sense this earliest phase is about gathering community feedback about the handling, then. That’s inevitably why there are GT3 cars in its opening salvo – it’s going to be crucial for Kunos to nail that class if AC Evo’s going to house a competitive esports racing scene as vital as ACC’s.

But it’s equally important that treats like the Escort RS Cosworth are compelling to throw around the tarmac, because for many single player-focused racers, the AC Evo experience will be about amassing their fantasy collection of cars, racing offline for money, and enjoying the differences between vehicles.

It’s a modest first mission objective. And depending on how frequently the Early Access build is updated, the content could start to feel a little thin on the ground over the next couple of months without a persistent solo mode to progress in. But for right now, it’s mission accomplished. It’s a step forwards in many areas for visual and audio fidelity, the tracks look and feel just as detailed as their ACC versions, and you just keep wanting to put another lap in, for its own sake.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we simply must get back to revving that Cossie until it overheats.