Gran Turismo bids farewell to FIA, which now partners with Assetto Corsa Competizione

Polyphony Digital and Kazunori Yamauchi proudly showed the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile logo on titles such as the now old Gran Turismo 6 or, mostly, on a Gran Turismo Sport, which was very focused on the competition, as its name implied. However, that logo was nowhere to be found on the recent Gran Turismo 7 that seems to have steered again away from simulation and esports, which might have had an impact on the Federation's newly announced decision.

According to the organisation's press release, the FIA Motorsport Games 2022 will be played with Assetto Corsa Competizione, the simracing game that will boast the prestigious license going forward. The title, which is developed by Kunos Simulazioni at the Vallelunga circuit and published by 505 Games, has become the go-to game for competitive simracing in the past few years, even taking the place of classics such as iRacing or rFactor, despite (or thanks to) focusing on just the GT categories. The competitive possibilities of the Italian sim, together with its proven structure or its bet on PC as main platform, undoubtedly facilitate the organisation of such events.

This year's competition will include 17 motorsports categories, among which there is ACC esport. The in-game cars will be limited to GT3 (the main class represented on Assetto), the same chosen for the IRL GT, GT Sprint, and Endurance. The FIA underlines the possibility of using "digital versions of the same cars", along with the versatility of Kunos' software platform. "It is one of the most popular esports titles in the industry", says FIA's esports lead Niroshan Pereira.

For the FIA event, the Italian studio will provide a new version of the Circuit Paul Ricard, the French racetrack where the simracing finals will be held on October 29. There's no mention to the real cash prize pool as of yet, but it's worth mentioning that there was none for previous iterations of the Gran Turismo World Series, a competition that recently started its 2022 edition, now sans the FIA support and switching from GT Sport on PS4 to GT7 on PS5.