Project Motor Racing: Full Gamer Review

It is strange to watch a racing sim arrive with the weight of several generations of design philosophy behind it while simultaneously feeling as if it is starting over from scratch. Project Motor Racing comes from Straight4 Studios, and its genetic trail is widely known: the Project CARS games, the Need for Speed: Shift experiments, and the old GTR simulations from the 2000s.The development process even changed names like a project searching for an identity, beginning as “GTR Revival,” shifting into “GT Revival,” and eventually turning into Project Motor Racing. It runs on GIANTS Software technology, the same engine used for Farming Simulator, and this is the first instance of that engine being asked to handle anything other than tractors and combine harvesters. All of this background sits there the moment you power up the game, and yet the actual experience never settles into a neat pattern.

I played the PS5 version using a review code from the publisher and spent the majority of my time with a Thrustmaster T248R wheel, although I tested the controller as well to understand the full spectrum of input handling. Before the actual track time, the menus surprised me because they play commentary and interview fragments from iconic moments in sports car racing layered over ambient tones, something that might seem ornamental but ends up anchoring the mood better than expected. The multiplayer panel technically offers ranked options, custom lobbies, and social play, and during one review period, it was completely inaccessible, making any assessment of its performance impossible at the time. When I did attempt the system later, the game required a short licence test race to generate a rating and then offered a playlist of ranked events filtered by car class. The sessions I could join appeared stable, aside from the occasional floating car, and the game confirmed it uses a hybrid system where peer-to-peer connections carry positional data while a dedicated server handles anti-cheat and state management.

Single-player becomes the real testing ground almost immediately. Race Weekend is structured to put players on track rapidly, allowing selection of opponents, difficulty, weather, and session lengths with minimal friction. The game includes 18 tracks at launch, such as the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the Nürburgring GP circuit, Spa-Francorchamps, Daytona, Mount Panorama, Sebring, Monza, Silverstone, Zolder, and Mosport. It also features Lexington and Derby, which carry fictional branding but are laser-scanned and built heavily from real-world inspiration, so the moment you actually hit the tarmac, the odd naming stops being noticeable. The overall impression from Race Weekend is that the developers wanted players in motion more quickly than many traditional sims allow.

Career mode shifts the tone entirely because it centers the entire experience on finances and risk rather than on a simple championship ladder. You choose one of three starting budgets, with the lowest being $100,000, which restricts the player to vehicles like a classic Porsche 911 or the Mazda MX-5. The highest, $2,000,000, opens the door to a Peugeot 9X8 immediately, which means the LMDh World Championship becomes available right from the start. Your team headquarters location affects travel costs because the continent you base it in determines the price of attending events. Championships unlock based on the vehicle you own. Sponsorship contracts come in eight different models, paying bonuses for objectives such as winning, setting fastest laps, or maintaining clean races. Every event requires an entry fee. Completing them generates income, and the ability to purchase or sell vehicles expands your championship options. The entire system feels like it is trying to copy the financial tension of real-world GT and endurance drivers who fund their own seats.

The harshest part arrives through repair costs because every collision or scrape deducts money from your balance. Authentic mode disables race restarts, locks AI to the greatest difficulty, and amplifies the financial pressure, making each mistake potentially catastrophic. If your funds hit zero, the career ends abruptly. Classic mode presents a softer version of this structure but retains the financial loops. The designer’s intent appears ambitious: you are meant to feel like an independent racer scraping through each weekend rather than an employee cushioned by a large factory team.

Challenge mode functions differently. Endurance Hall includes very long races such as 43 laps around Spa with LMDh cars and a 10-lap Nürburgring Nordschleife event in GT3 machinery.Factory Driver essentially acts as time trials, including challenges such as driving the Lamborghini SC63 LMDh on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, echoing the game’s cover art. These events can be compelling, although the delay when loading stats between attempts slows the momentum significantly. There are several events at launch, and more are planned over time. Driver Profile feels unusually barebones, giving control only over nationality and the colour of a racing suit, limited to three choices.

The game’s visuals fluctuate, never forming a single coherent impression. Car interiors are stunningly detailed with fully functional electronic dashboards on the steering wheels that display real-time data. Rubber buildup on the track is visible, which communicates usage, and puddles form during rain in a manner that feels situationally convincing, particularly at Spa-Francorchamps. Lighting during sunrise or sunset can create beautiful scenes because the engine manages warmth and contrast well. Seasonal options change lighting and track temperature, but do not create dramatically different landscapes, so winter lacks snow. On the other hand, unexpected texture pop-in, shadow flickering, and washed-out colour palettes at certain tracks, especially Sebring, interrupt immersion. Replays occasionally resemble older console generations or mobile-level visuals, which is a dramatic contrast to the detailed car interiors. Some rival cars display strangely blurred wheels during these replays.On PS5, performance remains near 60 frames per second most of the time, although heavy rain disrupts that consistency. On PC, raising the grid beyond 15 AI cars can produce severe stuttering despite official support for up to 31 opponents.

Sound design holds the presentation together. Older turbocharged cars deliver deep, throaty tones that resonate strongly. The N-GT class, including the Mosler MT900R and Marcos Mantara LM600, exhibits powerful engine audio. The MX-5 Cup sounds appropriately lively for an entry-level racer, and the 1989 Roush Mercury Cougar XR-7 emits a satisfying roar, especially noticeable around the Nürburgring. A fair few of the modern cars do sound more artificial compared to these older models. Impacts, oddly, mimic the sound of a wooden spoon striking a kitchen counter rather than metallic collisions.

Once the actual driving begins, the sense of ambition meets inconsistency. The tuning menu offers detailed control over tyre pressures, chassis configuration, suspension with granular adjustments, aero balance, drivetrain behaviour, and pitstop planning. Assists are disabled by default, so players need to enable them manually if required. The cockpit view includes options for field-of-view, camera height, and mirror positioning. The control settings include steering sensitivity, force feedback gain, and deadzone adjustments for throttle and braking.

Using a controller proved challenging, as small steering inputs produced exaggerated reactions. Low-gear throttle produced instant over-rotation, and I struggled to find settings that allowed clean exits without immediately spinning the rear tyres. Dampening the inputs could calm the handling, but significantly reduced authenticity and still required extensive trial adjustments. Switching to the T248R wheel transformed the experience because force feedback transmitted surface texture, bumps, kerb hits, and even drain covers in the pit lane. GT cars and older classes felt especially grounded. Clean laps and race wins came with a sense of achievement.

The handling varies dramatically from car to car. The N-GT class featuring the Mosler MT900R and Marcos Mantara LM600 felt brutal but consistent, requiring cautious throttle control and mindful braking. The MX-5 Cup behaves as an entry-level vehicle should. The Porsche 911 GT3 Cup produced peculiar braking behaviour, with light pedal pressure clamping the brakes aggressively, and throttle application in low gears frequently spinning the rear tyres. The force feedback amplified the effort required to catch slides. Many cars struggled in the off-camber first corner of the Nürburgring GP layout, producing repeated brake lock-up issues. Flat spots exist visually and thermally, but cannot be felt through the wheel. Mosport’s Moss section caused consistent lock-ups or off-throttle oversteer because the suspension appears unable to reconcile elevation changes with braking and steering.

LMDh cars proved extremely difficult to manage across all sessions. Their sensitivity made the experience feel reminiscent of driving on snowy rally stages in Sweden rather than controlling modern prototypes. Traction control intervenes with such force that flooring the throttle out of corners triggers aggressive power cuts, and the game lacks TC Cut or TC Slip Angle settings to refine this behaviour. The hybrid system offers no tangible efficiency benefit. GT3 and Hypercar classes understeer with their default setups, and early downshifts can destabilize the rear even with auto-blip and downshift protection active. Adjusting differentials by raising preload to 250 and setting power and coast ramp angles to 90 and 75, respectively, created a more stable handling profile. Despite that, smooth inputs and early short-shifting remained necessary.

Force feedback is informative but suffers from oscillation that requires smoothing and reduced gain. Once adjusted, it became more coherent.

The AI falls far below expectations. On lower settings, they offer minimal resistance and can be overtaken without meaningful defence. They never form perfect single-file lines, but also never behave with total authenticity. In some situations, the AI can produce compelling battles, especially on straights and during acceleration from corners. On opening laps, they bunch together too tightly. In high-speed corners, they lift excessively, while in slow sections, they accelerate with surprising intensity. Their awareness is unreliable; if you make a controlled inside pass and are fully alongside, they often turn into the corner as if your car is invisible. This transforms into collisions that damage your car and trigger incorrect penalties.

Collision detection exacerbates these issues. The front of my car passed through the rear quarter of AI vehicles several times, and minor side contact produced damage in places such as the roof. The track limits system is equally contradictory. A mistake that sends the car into the gravel outside of Zolder’s first corner results in a two-second penalty, and so does fully cutting a chicane. The system treats accidental off-track excursions and intentional corner cuts with identical punishment. Championship menus do not always show the number of races or laps before committing to them. Sponsorship descriptions refer to “prestige” but never explain its meaning.

Modding provides one of the few unequivocally forward-looking features. Third-party PC modding works as expected, while the internal browser allows approved cross-platform additions, including community-built liveries, professional driver setups, single-player events, licensed cars such as the Praga Bohema, and eventually tracks.

Throughout my time with the game, the most memorable moment came from taking the 1989 Roush Mercury Cougar XR-7 around the Nürburgring, where everything aligned long enough to show how strong this game could be with refinement. Still, that experience contrasted heavily with the inconsistency across other cars, the unpredictable AI, the visual fluctuations, the controller struggle, the penalty system that behaves in contradictory ways, and the performance dips across platforms.