WoMR Pt 5 24 Hrs at Le Mans [Stand Alone Version]

PREAMBLE We've called this '24 Hours at Le Mans' but we could equally as well have made it '24 Years of Le Mans' because that's exactly what you have in this package, twenty-four annual two-lap-of-the-clock races covering 1964 to 1969 (covering Ford's assault on this great race and their titanic battles with Ferrari and Porsche, including the debut of the legendary 917) and all the years from 1982 to 1999. [In this edition we have also included the years 2000,2001,2002 & 2006 so it’s now 28 years]

Part 5 of 'The World of Motor Racing' has been a long time coming and it has taken the 'prompting' of Philip Riviere and a vast input from him to push us down the road to publication. Philip has a huge knowledge of motor sport in general and the Le Mans race in particular, plus the happy knack of being able to convert the basic 'WoMR' system to this very special, almost one-off, form of motor racing. As has been said at many (every?) film Oscar ceremony in Hollywood, 'undoubtedly, without his involvement this would never have been made'.

For the past few months we have been working closely with Philip, polishing up his original 'WoMR' conversion, adding a few subtleties here, massaging out the odd design-deformity there, concentrating on making the simulation not only accurate and realistic, which it always was, but also eminently playable. Even those who saw the demo at our October 1999 Games Day, and seemed pretty impressed, will, we hope, be pleasantly surprised by the way the game has developed.

Each race consists of twenty-four hourly Turns, playing time is about two-and-a-half hours per race with 26 to 30 car and driver combinations. Each Incident Group of six has one potential Incident Car per Turn but a dice roll, modified if it is raining and/or during the hours of darkness, can produce Additional Incident Cars spread throughout the field. This ensures that 'things' can happen to more than one of the leading cars even if they all come from the same Incident Group. Each car/driver combination has three Split Ratings, carefully constructed to re-create not only the different driving skills of the various drivers within the team but also the skill of the pit crews at the routine fuel, tyre and change of driver stops (which are not dealt with individually in the game) and the car's 'consistency' in running, an essential ingredient in a race of this length, plus the fuel consumption factor during the years of Group C, 1982 to 1993. Each car's Reliability Rating is also capable of down-grading during the race as the wear-and-tear begins to take its toll. Finally, a Movement Modifier, which applies to whichever of the three Split Ratings is being used, reflects the possible down-grading of performance as the cars continue to circulate at AVERAGE speeds in the high 130's mph. Thanks to a massive contribution from Philip we feel we have created a simulation that really captures the magic of this great race, a vehicle with which to explore all those classic duels between some of the great marques of prototype sports car racing in the unique and famous setting of Le Mans. Good racing!