Racing sims have often included managerial elements of varying degrees, letting you plan your team’s strategy before the race weekend, all the while reacting to weather changes, car damage and other factors once the lights go green.
More recently we’ve started to see an increase in dedicated management games like the F1 Manager series, which focus entirely on the action behind the scenes rather than putting you behind the wheel.
Endurance Motorsport Series is trying to give racing fans the best of both worlds, providing a deep management experience without sacrificing the ability to buckle up and drive cars at breakneck speeds and over long periods of time.
In fact, the most exciting part of Endurance Motorsport Series is that you can actually switch between roles at the press of a button.
After putting together a team of drivers, mechanics and engineers, you can start the race behind the wheel and get a feel for the track, or let the AI drivers handle things while you analyse the real-time racing data.
Engineers can keep an eye on the weather to better plan tyre changes, instruct drivers to drive more or less aggressively, change fuelling strategies, and watch a broadcast of the race to see what’s going on.
Bored of the technical stuff? No problem. Just switch back to the driver and burn some rubber. You can even drive another team car and support your star racer that way.
Having a strategy and reacting to changing circumstances is crucial in the world of endurance racing, where competitions run into the night, weather changes are more frequent and car degradation more extreme.
It’s easy to imagine how somebody playing solo could spend as much time planning your team’s next move and making strategical decisions than actually taking the wheel and flying around the track.
It’s like spinning plates at 100 mph+, and sounds almost as exhausting as the endurance races the game is inspired by.
Of course, you won’t actually be racing for 24-hours in the Endurance Motorsport Series video game, which supposedly condenses the longer races into around an hour of virtual racing.
There’s a chance we’ll get actual 24-hour races in the future, but it sounds like the development team at KT Racing needs to figure out how it will work online.
Indeed, online multiplayer is another rather exciting element of the Endurance Motorsport Series experience.
While I wasn’t actually able to try multiplayer during a recent hands-on session, the idea is that three players can form a team. Two players will be behind the wheel, while the other handles the technical stuff.
With the right set-up this has the potential to be a really fun and satisfying online experience. Without mini-maps and on-screen race positions, drivers will rely on their engineer friend to let them know how they’re getting on and when they need to pit.
You can see why this might be tricky to implement in one-hour races, yet alone 24-hour marathons, but fingers crossed we get there eventually.
Still, whether you’re playing solo and switching between roles, or frantically communicating with real-life friends and teammates, Endurance Motorsport Racing is showing enormous promise.
The game will launch with ten courses, including six real-world circuits and four custom creations, not to mention various customisation elements for your vehicles and uniforms.
It’s coming to PlayStation, Xbox and PC (via Steam), can be played with controllers and racing wheels, and will be available in 2026. We can’t wait.