Ever since the announcement that the RACE07 expansion pack would be delayed, there has been no info whatsoever on what this pack will be about. This changed today when a new demo of RACE07 surfaced on STEAM. Titled “Crowne Plaza Raceway Demo”, the new demo is only available to those who have the original RACE07 demo in their STEAM games list.

The demo includes the fictional Crowne Plaza Raceway track and more interestingly, a Vauxhall Vectra from the 2007 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). Its just speculation but this could very well indicate on what the expansion pack will contain. The BTCC series would perfectly match with the existing content in RACE07 and would hopefully bring a batch of great UK tracks to the game.

Officially, the RACE07 expansion pack does not even exist as Simbin has yet to confirm their pretty obvious plans. The pack’s future publisher Atari seems to be sure about its existence though, as our friends at Drivingitalia.net report. Atari has pushed the release date to June 2008, indicating that the still unknown content of the pack needs more time to be completed.

Theoretically, this opens up the doors for the pack to include the 2008 WTCC season. I still find that highly unlikely, 2008 is the final year of Simbin’s WTCC license and I am sure they will make the most of it by releasing a full-price game next winter. The speculation can continue though, is it the Nordschleife that takes the Simbin guys longer than expected to complete?

Looks like my intuition was just right regarding the possible FIA GT expansion for RACE07. Drivingitalia.net has published some more info on the upcoming pack, kindly translated by RSC user VELOCIPEDE.

The expansion RACE 07, which arrive in March 2008 as GTR Evolution, adds several new features to the game, including four other new classes, new car fleet already rich in the basic version, a new league and a faithful reproduction of the legendary digital track of all time, that of Nürburgring in Germany.

So the name of the pack will be GTR Evolution? That tells us which cars will be featured, although GT1 and GT2 only fill two of the four classes. What will be the others? GT3? Something very different?

Still, the statement just reads Nürburgring, not Nordschleife. So there is a slight chance the pack will only include the GP Circuit, although that can not be called legendary at all. But could it really be the Nürburgring Nordschleife? And would Simbin sell that plus four new classes of cars for just 15 pounds? If so, I expect major sales and a massive rise of RACE07’s popularity as this pack would open the game to a whole new group of interest.

Edit: Uff points out that the name of the pack will not be GTR Evolution, this fact was lost in translation - Thanks for clarification!

Back in October last year, I reported that an Italian online magazine mentioned a possible expansion pack for Simbin’s RACE07 which may or may not include the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Just as we were all forgetting about this thing, some new indication about a possible expansion pack surfaces, dug up by users in the RSC forums.

1) Play.com lists a RACE07 Add-On to be released on 28/03/2008 for the price of 14.99 British Pounds

2) The following image can be found on Simbins site:

As you can see, the banner features the BMW 320si and the Formula 3000 car known from RACE07. The yellow car on the left is the Carsport Holland Corvette C5-R, the green car is the factory Aston Martin DBR9. Both these GT1 cars raced in the 2005 FIA GT season.

The 2005 season was to be featured in Simbin’s GTR for XBOX360 which has been rumored to be scraped after publisher THQ dropped the game last year. Now, I am just letting my imagination swing wild but as I see it, a FIA GT addon for RACE07 is somewhat of a logical possibility. If Simbin really had to give up the XBOX360 project, the work on the cars would go to waste. It would be a smart choice to soften the financial blow by selling it as part of a RACE07 addon.

What other content would there be for a potential addon? With that release date, the 2008 FIA WTCC season is out of the question. The WTCC is still planning to hold an exhibition race on the Nürburgring Nordschleife so that may be it too. But would most people be willing to pay 15 pounds for a single track?