Reiza Studios has published its September dev update, and this time it is not a warning about going quiet: an update for Automobilista 2 is imminent, with a free new car and what is probably the largest batch of AI improvements the sim has ever received in one go.

The version is V1.6.9.95. Renato Simioni writes it once as 1.6.6.95 in the article itself, but that is a slip: the number that repeats is 1.6.9.95.

The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 arrives for free

The new car is the Panoz Esperante GTR-1, and it is free for everyone — not DLC.

One caveat from recent experience: back in July, the content of the Historical Endurance Pack Pt2 was also free for a few days and then became restricted to owners of the DLC — with a single exception, the Milano 55 GT1, which remains free base game content. Here Reiza mentions no DLC attached to the Panoz, so the natural reading is that it is genuinely free; we will confirm it on release day.

Panoz developed it in 1997 together with Reynard Motorsport, and its most recognisable feature is its silhouette: an enormously long hood, front engine, in a class where every one of its rivals sat the engine behind the driver. That shape earned it the nickname "the Batmobile" among fans, and with it an almost instant cult-classic status.

Under that hood, a 600 HP Ford V8 placed just behind the front axle. Panoz traded the design conventions of the era for a distinctly American character, and the car still managed to stay competitive against the best in the class on both sides of the Atlantic from 1997 to 1999.

The GT1 class goes from four cars to five

Reiza says the Panoz takes the GT1 class — the fastest GT class there has ever been — to five models. We checked that against our own AMS2 catalogue (282 cars as of today) and it adds up: right now the GT1 class has four cars, and these are they.

• McLaren F1 GTR
• Nissan R390 GT1
• Porsche 911 GT1-98
• Mercedes-Benz CLK LM

With the Panoz Esperante GTR-1 in it, the grid of a late-90s GT1 race stops being a quartet and starts to look like an actual class.

Two things worth being clear about if you organise races:

• GT1 and GT1 2005 are different classes. The second one is the Corvette C5-R, Saleen S7-R, Aston Martin DBR9, Murciélago R-GT and company, and it already has eight cars. The Panoz joins the 90s class, not that one.
• AMS2 already had a Panoz: the Esperante GTLM, which races in GT2 2005. Different car, different class; the GTR-1 does not replace it.

What really changes: three things in the AI

This is where the weight of the update sits. Reiza has been touching the AI for several updates in a row, but this time there are three fundamental changes, and the studio says explicitly that the results will keep paying off all the way to V1.7.

1. The AI sees the track differently. How it detects the usable lanes at any given moment, and where to best place itself within them, has been overhauled — weighing performance and hazards at the same time. In practice: far fewer off-track excursions, fewer cars climbing kerbs and clipping walls, smoother and more purposeful movement — both while following the racing line and while negotiating traffic — and better race craft, against you and against each other.

2. Each car can run its own line. Until now there was one fast dry line and one wet line, and every AI car gravitated towards them. Now AI drivers can follow lines that differ from each other, and those alternatives can be self-generated from a set of recorded lines.

That also fixes a limitation of the previous update: the wet lines introduced back then only worked on the handful of tracks where somebody had hand-crafted them (21 layouts, in V1.6.9.9). They no longer need to be drawn by hand.

Reiza warns that the best of this feature is still to come — it matures in V1.7 — but that even in this version you should already notice a slightly more diverse and creative AI, especially when conditions switch from dry to wet or the other way round.

3. Two new settings: AI Traction Skill and AI Brake Skill. They work like the existing AI Wet Skill: they scale AI performance in one specific area, in this case traction and braking zones. They let you trim the AI's level to your taste, but also to your driving style.

The example Reiza gives is a good one: if you brake late, raise the AI Brake Skill and lower the AI Traction Skill. The AI will brake later than at the default scale, and pay for it by losing a little on corner exit. In other words, it will behave more like a human rival with your own style, instead of a car that is uniformly faster or slower.

The rest of the package

• Qualifying rules made user-configurable outside of presets, in all game modes — multiplayer included.
• Parc Fermé configurable outside of presets, but only in single-player modes.
• New 'Same Class' private qualifying option, in all game modes, multiplayer included.
• Improved CPU performance during weather slot transitions — it should clean up most, if not all, of those hitches and frame drops that showed up right as the weather changed.
• Fixed two critical multiplayer crash sources.
• Fixed the Live Track state being lost in single-player sessions after using an Instant Replay.

Of all that, what matters most to those of us racing on servers is the first two points and the crashes. Being able to change qualifying rules without depending on a preset, and having private qualifying per class, is exactly what multiclass leagues needed. Parc Fermé, on the other hand, is still out of multiplayer.

F1 and licensing: no change, and the brake is not on Reiza's side

In June's dev update Reiza explained the problem with the officially licensed F1 cars and the conflict that came up while trying to extend the agreement with McLaren Racing. This month's news is that there is no news, and it is worth understanding why.

Right after publishing that article, Reiza accepted the requirement it was handed: retaining a single official F1 manufacturer in AMS2. A new agreement on those terms was presented to them and they committed to it straight away. Since then, the other party has not signed it into effect. From the little Reiza has heard, an unfortunately timed personnel shuffle may be to blame.

Whatever the cause, until it is resolved one way or the other Reiza cannot touch those cars, which stay as they are for another game update.

And here is the deadline that matters: if the matter is resolved soon enough after the release, there will be another update to reflect it. If not, focus shifts to V1.7, currently targeted for later this year, and any change to that content will only happen then. With the focus on V1.7, Simioni warns, things may go quiet again: these are big structural changes and they take time.

A detail at the end of the article: a 917K at classic Le Mans

The dev update closes with an uncaptioned image: a Porsche 917K in Gulf colours carrying number 20 — the Steve McQueen film car — sitting in the pits of a period Le Mans, with the Marchal, Dutray and Esso signage in view.

Neither of those is in the game today. We measured it against our catalogue: among the 282 cars there is no 917 of any kind, and of the 230 layouts the only Le Mans versions are the modern one, the 2005 one and Circuit Bugatti. There is no classic Le Mans.

It fits what Reiza had already announced for 2026: part 3 of the Historical Endurance Pack, with Can-Am, 1970s Le Mans prototypes, late-70s Group 5 and circuits from that era — Le Mans 1971 among them. Reiza says nothing about that image and we are not going to make it up; but it is content you cannot drive yet.

Our take

This is one of the good updates, for an unglamorous reason: almost everything in it is free and affects how you race, not the shop window. A free car is nice; an AI that stops climbing kerbs and picks different lines changes the whole game.

If you mostly race against the AI, this is the version you have been waiting for, and the two new scalars will save you more internal arguments than any difficulty slider. If you race online, take away the configurable qualifying rules, the private qualifying per class and the two crashes fixed.

One practical note: as with every AMS2 version, the dedicated server has to be updated too as soon as it lands. Until that happens, an updated client cannot join an old server. We will be updating our fleet as soon as the version is available.

And if you want to keep track of which cars and classes exist right now, it is all in our AMS2 vehicle catalogue, and what comes in each DLC is in the DLC guide.

The images in this article are official Reiza Studios screenshots, published by the studio in its own dev update.

Source: “Automobilista 2 September 2026 Development Update”, by Renato Simioni, on the official Reiza Studios forum (10 September 2026).