REQUIREMENTS/IMPORTANT NOTES:
Well, it’s here! I know I didn’t give much advance warning but it’s been in the works for a long time now. Some background on me: I’m fairly new to the modding scene and sim racing in general. I only bought Assetto Corsa (as well as a basic rig and good enough computer to run it in VR) in May of 2020, and I started working on the Delage a month later. Since then I’ve enjoyed countless hours of fun (and frustration) trying out the hundreds of mods available in AC and learning the ins-and-outs of modding. And now I’d like to give back to the community by presenting my first mod for AC, the 1927 Delage 15S8.
Some history on the car and the Delage brand:
Louis Delage, born in 1874 in Cognac, France, began his automotive career as an engineer for Peugeot. In 1905, he left Peugeot to form his own automobile company, initially producing inexpensive cars, but going on to build some of the greatest sports cars of the 1920s.
Louis Delage had a deep passion for racing, and began building racing cars in 1911 before WWI halted the racing efforts. Delage returned to racing in 1923 with the 2LCV, which the factory campaigned until 1926, when a change in regulations necessitated a brand-new design. Albert Lory, tasked with designing the new race car, abandoned the previous V12 design and instead settled on a 1.5-liter straight-eight engine with twin Roots-type superchargers.
The car had the same brakes and transmission as the 2LCV, a similarly-designed chassis, and roughly the same power output, but was around 25% lighter. The new car was dubbed the “15-S8" after the engine configuration. Four models were built and entered into the 1926 AIACR World Championship Grands Prix. The cars were fast but had some serious flaws (such as having the exhaust pipe mounted on the driver's side, overheating the pilots as they drove). As a result, the car won only one race in 1926, the British Grand Prix at Brooklands.
Not satisfied with these results, Delage and Lory had the car seriously overhauled for the 1927 season, moving the exhaust to the left side of the car, replacing the twin superchargers with a single larger supercharger, increasing power output, and lowering the car's body. The new and improved 1927 Delage 15S8 was an enormous success, easily winning every race it was entered into and making it the most dominant Grand Prix car of the era. Robert Benoist won every championship Grand Prix in the 15S8, taking the constructor's championship for Automobiles Delage and becoming the World Champion of 1927.
Immensely satisfied with the domination of his cars, Louis Delage dropped out of racing and sold the 15S8s to privateers, who campaigned the cars in Grands Prix into the early post-war era.
MOD INFO
Data:
As other modders have noted, there’s very little information available for most inter-war cars, and this one is no different. There’s unfortunately a lot of guesswork involved in the physics, but I think it handles believably at least. I was able to get good data for the engine/torque curves and gear ratios so those should be pretty accurate. There’s also some conflicting information about the car—most sources quote a power figure of 170 BHP @ 8,000 RPM with 7.5 psi of boost from the superchargers. More modern dyno tests have shown the figures to be 155.8 BHP @ 6,900 RPM with 18 psi of boost, however. I’ve chosen to follow the more modern numbers, as those are likely more accurate and are the only hard data that I have.
Handling:
The car used the same brakes and suspension as the Delage 2LCV, but was heavier and more powerful (in 1927 trim). So I tried to get a similar handling feel to the 2LCV while making it somewhat more sensitive to inertia. You’ll find yourself braking earlier and deeper into the corners but turning out much faster laps. The car tends to understeer on corner entry but will switch to oversteer on exit if you pick up the throttle too much too soon. The key to fast laps is slowing down early and sliding the car through the corners as smoothly as possible, making sure to get the car mostly straightened out before getting back on the power. Acceleration is a bit slow and the gears are long, so you’re going to want to wait as long as possible to shift up or you’ll lose a lot of time. It’s a bit tricky, but if you can handle the 1923 Grand Prix cars you can handle this.
Performance:
The car has handmade LODs, a custom sound, and custom driver animations. It’s also got one of the most complicated interiors I’ve ever seen in a car, which I didn’t realize before starting the project. I’ve optimized it to the very best of my ability, and I think most people should be able to get decent performance from it. I’m able to get 90fps hot-lapping at 1967 Silverstone in VR with full world detail and around 89fps with a full grid of 20 cars. In single-screen mode I’m able to get 215fps in hotlap mode and 185fps in race mode with all of the same settings. Performance will obviously vary based on the track but I get similar performance at other Kunos tracks. Mod tracks are a little more variable but performance will still be good at any (well-optimized) track. At 60’s Watkins Glen I’m able to pull 89-90fps/88fps and at Lilski’s Road America I get 88-89fps/81fps (hot-lapping/20 car race respectively). I only get 68fps with a 20-car grid of KS Maserati 250F V12s at Road America (in VR), so I don’t foresee any performance issues for anyone who can run Kunos cars smoothly. I do have a pretty beefy PC though, so your mileage may vary.
Skins:
In the AIACR championship era, cars were assigned different race numbers at each round instead of a car/driver combo keeping the same number for an entire season. I didn’t really see any point in recreating all of the numbers the cars wore over the season since most were only used once (and some numbers were used by multiple drivers) and the paint scheme never changed, so I just selected one actual race number for each of the four drivers who drove for Delage in 1927. I know some people like creating skins for mod cars, so I have included skin psd files for the body material and the front grille material. They’re in the templates folder if you’re interested.
I’ve spent about 800 hours and over 3,500 km of testing into the car over the past year, and I’m finally satisfied with the results. There shouldn’t be any major issues with the car at this point, but I definitely could have missed something, so please let me know if you run into issues and I’ll do my best to fix them. I think it’s one of the better mod cars I’ve driven, but then again I am the author so I’m probably more than a little biased
Sorry for the absurdly long release page, I like to be thorough. I hope you enjoy driving the car as much as I enjoyed making it. Happy racing!
- Requires CSP for extended instruments functionality and real mirrors. I haven’t implemented any extended physics so the car should load and run in vanilla AC, but some features won’t work. (I have tested the car without CSP in vanilla AC and gotten it to drive). Tested with CSP versions 0.1.60 and 0.1.73.
- Requires Nicecuppatea’s Driver 23 driver model which can be downloaded here on RaceDepartment. AC usually will sub in a different driver model if you don’t have it downloaded but if it doesn’t, you can modify ext_config.ini to swap in another driver model.
- VR users: Because of the seating position in the car I couldn’t find a view that worked well for both single-screen and VR. I’m exclusively a VR user but I know most people use single-screens/triple screens so the driver’s eye position in car.ini is for single screens. I have added a view.ini file in the extensions folder that can be used to adjust the view for VR users. Simply place the file in Assetto Corsa/cfg/cars/delage_158 (create the folder if necessary) and the head position will automatically adjust.
Well, it’s here! I know I didn’t give much advance warning but it’s been in the works for a long time now. Some background on me: I’m fairly new to the modding scene and sim racing in general. I only bought Assetto Corsa (as well as a basic rig and good enough computer to run it in VR) in May of 2020, and I started working on the Delage a month later. Since then I’ve enjoyed countless hours of fun (and frustration) trying out the hundreds of mods available in AC and learning the ins-and-outs of modding. And now I’d like to give back to the community by presenting my first mod for AC, the 1927 Delage 15S8.
Some history on the car and the Delage brand:
Louis Delage, born in 1874 in Cognac, France, began his automotive career as an engineer for Peugeot. In 1905, he left Peugeot to form his own automobile company, initially producing inexpensive cars, but going on to build some of the greatest sports cars of the 1920s.
Louis Delage had a deep passion for racing, and began building racing cars in 1911 before WWI halted the racing efforts. Delage returned to racing in 1923 with the 2LCV, which the factory campaigned until 1926, when a change in regulations necessitated a brand-new design. Albert Lory, tasked with designing the new race car, abandoned the previous V12 design and instead settled on a 1.5-liter straight-eight engine with twin Roots-type superchargers.
The car had the same brakes and transmission as the 2LCV, a similarly-designed chassis, and roughly the same power output, but was around 25% lighter. The new car was dubbed the “15-S8" after the engine configuration. Four models were built and entered into the 1926 AIACR World Championship Grands Prix. The cars were fast but had some serious flaws (such as having the exhaust pipe mounted on the driver's side, overheating the pilots as they drove). As a result, the car won only one race in 1926, the British Grand Prix at Brooklands.
Not satisfied with these results, Delage and Lory had the car seriously overhauled for the 1927 season, moving the exhaust to the left side of the car, replacing the twin superchargers with a single larger supercharger, increasing power output, and lowering the car's body. The new and improved 1927 Delage 15S8 was an enormous success, easily winning every race it was entered into and making it the most dominant Grand Prix car of the era. Robert Benoist won every championship Grand Prix in the 15S8, taking the constructor's championship for Automobiles Delage and becoming the World Champion of 1927.
Immensely satisfied with the domination of his cars, Louis Delage dropped out of racing and sold the 15S8s to privateers, who campaigned the cars in Grands Prix into the early post-war era.
MOD INFO
Data:
As other modders have noted, there’s very little information available for most inter-war cars, and this one is no different. There’s unfortunately a lot of guesswork involved in the physics, but I think it handles believably at least. I was able to get good data for the engine/torque curves and gear ratios so those should be pretty accurate. There’s also some conflicting information about the car—most sources quote a power figure of 170 BHP @ 8,000 RPM with 7.5 psi of boost from the superchargers. More modern dyno tests have shown the figures to be 155.8 BHP @ 6,900 RPM with 18 psi of boost, however. I’ve chosen to follow the more modern numbers, as those are likely more accurate and are the only hard data that I have.
Handling:
The car used the same brakes and suspension as the Delage 2LCV, but was heavier and more powerful (in 1927 trim). So I tried to get a similar handling feel to the 2LCV while making it somewhat more sensitive to inertia. You’ll find yourself braking earlier and deeper into the corners but turning out much faster laps. The car tends to understeer on corner entry but will switch to oversteer on exit if you pick up the throttle too much too soon. The key to fast laps is slowing down early and sliding the car through the corners as smoothly as possible, making sure to get the car mostly straightened out before getting back on the power. Acceleration is a bit slow and the gears are long, so you’re going to want to wait as long as possible to shift up or you’ll lose a lot of time. It’s a bit tricky, but if you can handle the 1923 Grand Prix cars you can handle this.
Performance:
The car has handmade LODs, a custom sound, and custom driver animations. It’s also got one of the most complicated interiors I’ve ever seen in a car, which I didn’t realize before starting the project. I’ve optimized it to the very best of my ability, and I think most people should be able to get decent performance from it. I’m able to get 90fps hot-lapping at 1967 Silverstone in VR with full world detail and around 89fps with a full grid of 20 cars. In single-screen mode I’m able to get 215fps in hotlap mode and 185fps in race mode with all of the same settings. Performance will obviously vary based on the track but I get similar performance at other Kunos tracks. Mod tracks are a little more variable but performance will still be good at any (well-optimized) track. At 60’s Watkins Glen I’m able to pull 89-90fps/88fps and at Lilski’s Road America I get 88-89fps/81fps (hot-lapping/20 car race respectively). I only get 68fps with a 20-car grid of KS Maserati 250F V12s at Road America (in VR), so I don’t foresee any performance issues for anyone who can run Kunos cars smoothly. I do have a pretty beefy PC though, so your mileage may vary.
Skins:
In the AIACR championship era, cars were assigned different race numbers at each round instead of a car/driver combo keeping the same number for an entire season. I didn’t really see any point in recreating all of the numbers the cars wore over the season since most were only used once (and some numbers were used by multiple drivers) and the paint scheme never changed, so I just selected one actual race number for each of the four drivers who drove for Delage in 1927. I know some people like creating skins for mod cars, so I have included skin psd files for the body material and the front grille material. They’re in the templates folder if you’re interested.
I’ve spent about 800 hours and over 3,500 km of testing into the car over the past year, and I’m finally satisfied with the results. There shouldn’t be any major issues with the car at this point, but I definitely could have missed something, so please let me know if you run into issues and I’ll do my best to fix them. I think it’s one of the better mod cars I’ve driven, but then again I am the author so I’m probably more than a little biased
Sorry for the absurdly long release page, I like to be thorough. I hope you enjoy driving the car as much as I enjoyed making it. Happy racing!
