Project CARS 2 vs Project Motor Racing: How Is an 8-Year-Old Game Still Better?

Project CARS 2, the game released back when we still wondered whether VR was the future or a passing novelty somehow feels more complete, more honest, and more finished than Project Motor Racing, a title fresh out of the oven and marketed as the next big revolution in sim racing.

Install PC2 today, run it, and go racing. That’s it. No drama. No chaos. Everything works. It’s so normal that it almost feels luxurious nowadays.

Meanwhile, Project Motor Racing greets you with textures that look conflicted about whether they want to exist, shadows that feel like unfinished drafts, and trackside details that seem stuck in loading limbo. It looks less like a full release and more like a public beta disguised as premium content.

Look, nobody said the AI in Project CARS 2 was perfect. It has its quirks especially at race starts where some drivers behave like they’ve forgotten to clean their visors. But despite the flaws, they race. They defend, they make mistakes logically, they battle.

Then you jump into PMR and encounter an AI that feels like it woke up 30 minutes before the game launched. The kind that brakes where it shouldn’t, doesn’t brake where it absolutely should, and approaches corners with a sort of existential denial.

It’s not just bad; it’s incoherent. And incoherent AI is far worse than dumb AI.

The online in Project CARS 2 was never a masterpiece, but it worked. You joined a lobby, raced, and left. Simple, straightforward, functional.

PMR’s online system, however, feels like a social experiment gone wrong:

• Multiple scheduled races starting at the exact same time
• Forty-minute gaps between the next available events
• No practice sessions neither online nor offline while you wait
• If you exit the menu, you lose your registration
• Some sessions never launch, or launch incorrectly
• Finished races that don’t count for anything

It’s a competitive system seemingly designed by someone who has never participated in an online race. Actually, someone who may not even play videogames.

Driving Feel

This is where PMR claimed it would shine realistic physics, groundbreaking force feedback, sensations that would redefine sim racing.

The reality?

Behind the wheel, PMR feels odd. Not broken or unusable… just strangely artificial. As if the car were whispering: “It’s not me, it’s you,” while both of you know perfectly well that no it is absolutely the car.

Project CARS 2, meanwhile, has that balance physical, tactile, credible. Not perfect, but convincing. Every lap feels like it has weight and intention. PC2 communicates. PMR just murmurs.

So… How Is This Possible?

How can a game from 2017 outperform a game from 2025?

The truth is painfully simple:

Project CARS 2 is finished. Project Motor Racing is not.

PC2 is a product. PMR is a prototype wearing nice shoes. One is complete, stable, and coherent. The other is a bundle of ideas tied together with a string that snaps every few minutes.

And that’s the saddest part PMR should be better. It should surpass PC2 in every category. But it doesn’t. Not because it can’t, but because it simply isn’t ready to be what it claims to be.

There’s a strange lesson hidden in all this: in gaming, just like in life, being new doesn’t mean being mature.

Sometimes an older game, with all its imperfections, stands taller than a modern one trying to sprint before learning to walk.

Project CARS 2 isn’t flawless, but it’s a simulator.
Project Motor Racing wants to be one, but isn’t there yet.

Until that changes, we remain in the bizarre reality where an 8-year-old title still wins the race without even starting on pole.

If you want to purchase PMR, there are several options, and you can buy them with a discount by clicking here:

• Project Motor Racing
• Project Motor Racing Year 1 Bundle
• Project Motor Racing Group 5 Revival Pack
• Project Motor Racing GTE Decade Pack

Happy Racing!