Half a year ago, Low Fuel Motorsport, this external competitive system for sim racing looked like a solid alternative for structured online racing. But as is often the case in sim racing, what started strong has slowly faded away, like sugar in water.
For the uninitiated, LFM offers matchmaking, scheduled races, splits, and ranking systems across various sims. It’s an ambitious system trying to replicate what others already do—but in a more open format. Sadly, it’s been idling for months.
The painful truth: no players
Let’s be honest: a competitive system needs people to function. And right now, participation is modest at best. On day one of the season, I managed to join four different races without being completely alone—which already says a lot.
Some weekly races were even worse. Literally.
There’s no magic fix, but here’s a simple suggestion: less is more.
Limit simultaneous races to two: one Rookies event and one featured race. If we can concentrate the few players available into fewer events, we might see better competition and fuller grids.
Maintaining 4+ scheduled races every couple hours only scatters what little user base remains. Instead, they could run highlight events once per day, rotating different cars and tracks to keep things fresh and appealing.
Low participation not only affects numbers—it also wrecks race quality. With minimal splits and weak license filtering, skill gaps are massive, and races often turn into crash compilations.
I include myself in the mess I spun out in one of the better Spring Race sessions just from being overconfident. The matchmaking can’t work with such limited pools, and the license system doesn’t help much here.
The good: small technical progress
One positive note: Automobilista 2 now allows direct server connection from external apps, much like other simulators do. Click, and you’re in no need to search manually. It’s small, but very welcome.
Stability and netcode seem improved since half a year ago. No major bugs across the four races I ran, and while practice sessions had some oddities, the races were functional. This might just be due to lower player counts, but hey, it works.
Months ago, I thought the problem was 50/50: developers and community. Now I believe Reiza bears most of the responsibility. If you build a brilliant simulator and refuse to implement a native
LFM gave it a shot and miraculously still delivers sparks of brilliance from a very small user base. But relying on third parties for something the core game should provide by default is a path with a shelf life.
Yes, there are still people eager to race in Automobilista 2. But for how much longer if nothing changes?
Happy Racing!
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