Low Fuel Motorsport (LFM) has integrated an iRacing style license progression and organised events into ACC and rFactor 2. In this guide, we look at exactly how LFM works.
Low Fuel Motorsport has entered the realm of challenging iRacing for the top spot of being the premiere online sim racing platform. Although, LFM goes about things in a very different way to iRacing.
In this guide, I’ll run through exactly how Low Fuel Motorsport works, how you can sign up and gain your LFM license and more.
Low Fuel Motorsport is a sim racing platform, powered by the sim racing community. It offers sim racers who enjoy racing Assetto Corsa Competizione and rFactor 2 a full and comprehensive license and rating system, similar to that of iRacing.
Sim racers can compete in different race series across structured seasons against other sim racers while building their ELO and safety rating. This in terms serves as a matchmaking system to allow you to compete online against drivers of a similar skill level.
Each race you participate in will affect your ELO and safety rating, which will in turn affect which LFM license level you are in. You can be promoted and demoted across licenses in a very similar way to how iRacing operates.
The big difference is that LFM utilises both Assetto Corsa Competizione and rFactor 2 as their sim of choice. On top of this, LFM is completely free to use, doing away with the ongoing cost of an iRacing membership.
So I have just touched on the outline of how LFM works, but let’s jump into some specifics. LFM is a platform that is aimed to give some additional structure to competing online in titles such as ACC and rFactor 2. It serves to give sim racers a platform to track their progress and easily compete against sim racers of a similar skill level.
Low Fuel Motorsport works seamlessly with Assetto Corsa Competizione by hosting private servers. You can join sessions by searching for specific servers through ACC’s online platform.
All results from each session are recorded directly into LFM without any manual input needed from the driver. And after each session, you can quickly see your progress and results from that session.
This allows for drivers to compete across structured race series and seasons without any hassle of the typical management that comes alongside online championships in ACC.
Unfortunately, LFM doesn’t work with consoles and is only compatible with ACC and rFactor 2 on PC. We don’t know if this will change at a later date or is in LFM’s future plans.
Getting started with Low Fuel Motorsport is a very easy and painless experience. You can create your account in just a few simple steps. After this, you can attempt to earn your LFM license via the license test. And once you complete the license test, you will be free to start racing in the rookie series online.
One of the big differentiators between Low Fuel Motorsport and iRacing, is that LFM is completely free to use. There is currently no payment required to create an account, and no subscription to use their service.
Signing up to Low Fuel Motorsport is a relatively easy affair. The platform is completely free, and you just need to link your Steam account during the sign up process.
You will be required to enter a few details including your first and last name and choose an avatar. From there you will be ready to attempt to earn your Low Fuel Motorsport license.
The very first step after signing up for an LFM account, is to earn your license. Gaining a license will allow you to start competing against other sim racers in organised races.
There are a few criteria that you need to meet before you can gain your license. The first is that you need to have Assetto Corsa Competizione installed, and your Steam account linked to LFM. And most importantly, you need to have a minimum safety rating in ACC of SA 80.
Once you have an SA of 80 in ACC, you can then attempt the LFM license test. This test consists of you driving a hotstint of 7 valid laps. Then, the average lap time of those 7 laps will be calculated, and it must be faster than 107% of the lap record of the license track.
Currently, the license track is the Hungaroring in ACC. This means that to earn your license in LFM, you need to lap on average faster than 107% of the lap record which is currently 1:42.167. So 107% would mean you need an average lap time faster than 1:49.319.
The license hotstint is conducted on a private Low Fuel Motorsport server, which is where you will practice and attempt your hotstint.
As soon as you complete a 7 lap hotstint with a faster average lap time than 107%, you will earn your Rookie license and can start competing in races online.
Low Fuel Motorsport takes a lot of inspiration from how iRacing operates and does away with the cost involved with running an iRacing season.
Low Fuel Motorsport shares a lot of similarities with iRacing, and you can see the iRacing inspiration throughout LFM.
LFM utilises a similar rating system to rank your performances and dictate your progression through the licenses. There is a safety rating and an ELO rating which rate both your safety on track and your overall speed and skill respectively.
You’ll find license classes from Rookie through to Alien which are achieved by meeting the safety rating, ELO rating and minimum completed races criteria.
On top of this, races are hosted in private servers with specific requirements such as pit stops, set weather conditions, and are races are hosted every hour. This allows sim racers across the globe to always find race sessions that are available to join.
The safety rating in LFM is very similar to the one found in both Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. The LFM safety rating is completely independent of the SA found in ACC. LFM’s safety rating is only affected by races that are run via LFM. Therefore it will be different from the SA found in ACC.
The LFM safety rating spans from 1.00 up to 9.99, with the higher figure being better. Every driver will start with a safety rating of 2.50 once they have gained their LFM license.
Then, after each race is completed via LFM, the safety rating will either increase or decrease based on the on track safety. The safety rating gain per race is capped at 0.30 SR, with a bonus 0.10 SR available if the race is completed with zero incidents. On the flip side, a driver can lose up to 0.50 SR if they race recklessly and rack up a high number of incidents.
Incident points are calculated in a similar way to how iRacing distributes its incident points, although there are fewer tiers on LFM.
Much like iRacing, once you achieve a certain safety rating (in LFM’s case, the magic number is 4.00), you will receive a boost to your rating of 0.50 SR.
In another similarity with iRacing, safety rating points are only distributed during race events. While practising and during qualifying, no safety rating points are calculated.
There are a range of license classes in LFM, and these are structured differently from iRacing. The following license badges are available in LFM;
Low Fuel Motorsport uses seasons to divide up their racing schedule. An LFM season spans across 12 race weeks, with your best 10 results used to calculate the final season standings. This means you can miss 2 races per season before being disadvantaged in the final standings.
Much like iRacing, each week will feature a different race, with that race being active for an entire week, before changing the following week. This gives all sim racers the chance to compete in that week’s race event on a schedule that works for them.
The Best F1 23 Racing WheelsYou can compete in as many races as you like each week, with your best result being the one used in the final standings.
Your ELO rating, which is your overall skill rating, is used to divide sim racers into divisions. As your ELO rating improves, you will move up to more competitive divisions where you’ll be racing against higher skilled drivers.
The LFM division breakdown is;
Despite sharing a lot of similarities with how iRacing works and operates, Low Fuel Motorsport does have a fair few points of difference.
The first difference is the ELO rating. While iRacing utilises a skill-based irating system, LFM uses its own ELO rating system. The ELO system originated from chess and calculates the expected finishing position of each driver. If a driver surpasses expectations, i.e. finishes high than they should, they will earn ELO. If a driver finishes lower than expected, they will lose ELO.
ELO rating is also lost if a driver doesn’t finish the race or quits part way through. There is an additional factor called K-factor. This takes into account the length of the race, which affects how much ELO can be earned or lost.
Drivers can act as stewards in LFM races, reporting incidents that they think should be reviewed. These are then reviewed by a team of LFM stewards to decide the outcome. This puts some power into the hand of sim racers to report on incidents that they feel need reviewing. Although there is a strict reporting policy, so drivers can’t report incidents that do not need reviewing.
With the racing on offer across LFM events incredibly close, sim racers often look for advantages wherever they can find them. And car setups offer the perfect advantage.
Many Assetto Corsa Competizione car setup creators utilise scheduled seasons on LFM to base their ACC car setups around. Setup creators can tailor their car setups to the specific conditions and race duration of each race event during an LFM season.
View our ACC car setups, where you can find LFM-designed ACC car setups.
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