The Last Garage drew a lot of interest from sim racers at Sim Formula Europe 2025 - and not just because of its role in the on-site competition. Creator Marcel Offermans talks about the sim's progress, feedback he received, and what's still to come.
Image: Marcel Offermans (right) with Sim Formula Europe 2025 Super Final winner Devin Braune.
Sim Formula Europe 2025 attracted plenty of sim racers, with many of them enjoying the event at MECC Maastricht for the exhibitors, its on-site competition, or giveaways at the OverTake booth. One title that many showed particular interest in was The Last Garage - seen for the first time at the same place in 2024.
For 2025, it even was the sim that the on-site competition was run on, even though - or rather because - it is not available anywhere yet. This way, none of the participants could practice beforehand, leveling the playing field in a way that had not been possible previously.
Of course, this also meant that The Last Garage creator and former Studio 397 Managing Director @Marcel Offermans had plenty on his to-do list to get the sim that is very much still in its infancy ready for Sim Formula Europe 2025. Considering this, the competition went very well - and those who tried The Last Garage outside of the competitive environment also felt quite positive about the sim, as Offermans shared in our interview.
Image: The Last Garage
OverTake: One year after debuting The Last Garage at Sim Formula Europe, how far has the platform come along? What was the biggest area of progress compared to 2024?
Marcel Offermans: If I have to name one, it’s multiplayer. I’ve created a foundation for multiplayer that allows different types of cars, each sending their own specific data, to run together on the same track. With a more modular engine, that ends up being a bit more work but I think it all performed quite well and it’s great to see full suspension movement on all cars in a multiplayer event.
That’s definitely not the only area where the platform has advanced. We’ve added VR support (based on OpenXR), added a lot of little physics modules, and things like session management, race control and broadcast tools.
What were the challenges of making The Last Garage work well as a multiplayer competition platform?
As you know I’ve been around sim racing for a long time, so I pretty much know all the little things you need to have to run and live stream such an event. A lot of it is about control. You can’t just rely on sessions that you pre-program as you often need to manually sync them with a broadcast, make sure all drivers are ready, etc. So we’ve focused a lot on making those tools available. They certainly were not perfect yet, as we ended up taking about an hour longer for the whole event than planned, but we’ve learned a lot so next time it will be even better.
As you have recently stated in a comment on OverTake, it was initially not planned to develop TLG into a standalone sim racing title, but you have since reconsidered this. Is there anything you can share in regards as to which direction this might go in?
Indeed, last year when I got asked this question, I did not yet know what direction I wanted to take, but as the year progressed I developed a strong belief that it makes sense for me to create a title myself. That does not exclude other options, so we might end up with this code showing up in multiple places.
In terms of direction, I know my focus is on the driving experience. That is my unique selling point. I want people to sit down, start driving and enjoy themselves purely because of the accuracy of the handling model. For that I want to try and pick a relatively small selection of cars, typically cars known for their handling, and to them well. Now that’s all the direction I have right now, so I don’t have a list of cars, or tracks yet, but that will come over time.
Speaking of cars: Could you give us a short overview of how the BAC Mono R found its way into The Last Garage? How well does TLG lend itself to such a unique car?
I’ve known David Hatton from FlatoutSimulations for a long time and he is working closely with BAC on a digital twin for the Mono R for quite a while. Roughly half a year ago I pitched him the idea to try and model that car in my new sim and he liked the idea.
I think we have a great platform for such cars, as we can model the more complex suspension it has literally in the same way as it works on the real car. We also use a tire model that can easily be adapted based on real-world data. This is not specific to BAC but for any car where we have enough data, we can make a pretty good model.
Image: The Last Garage
How did you land on Anglesey Circuit as the track for the Final? Were there other lesser-known tracks that were considered?
We actually did consider another, lesser known track, but in the end settled on Anglesey as this is the track where BAC does all of their track testing for the Mono R, and we had an accurate laser scan for it, so it made sense to use it and compare data. And from what I’ve heard, people very much enjoyed the combination, so I guess we made a good choice.
What was the feedback like from those who tried The Last Garage at Sim Formula Europe 2025? Have you also had feedback from the competitors?
I’ve had a lot of people try it and then come to me to give feedback. The overall conclusion was definitely that people enjoyed the driving a lot. Of course there were all kinds of little point of feedback and I wrote all of those down. In terms of “competitors” I know some people from Studio 397 were around and to quote one of them “Overall the experience was truly remarkable and I don't recall the last time I had this much fun racing a sim, especially not competitively. That's the biggest takeaway for me.”.
You showcased a brake fading simulation in cooperation with Simucube and their Active Pedal. Is it planned to simulate this kind of behavior even on “passive” pedals?
Brake fade and in general brakes performing worse when they overheat is nothing new. It’s been in all of the rFactor related sims and many others. So the pure fact that I’ve also implemented that in my sim by itself is nothing special.
What makes this demo unique is that for the first time, by using a brand new API in development at Simucube, there is a much tighter and better integration between hard- and software. So not only does the software simulate the brake fade, the hardware can now also make you feel it.
Getting a bit technical, you can probably compare the feeling to a brake where the spring used in that brake progressively gets softer, until at some point it is so soft that you easily floor the pedal to its end stop where it will go no further. With all the other pedal brands, you simply do not have that control. They all use springs. You can’t magically make those feel softer. So this is one thing “passive” pedals can’t do.
With a unique competition format as Sim Formula Europe’s, could you imagine a bespoke tournament sim that is not available anywhere outside of events to be a thing in the future?
I think that is a very realistic possibility as I’ve already had a few talks about something like that and I truly think this is a nice format for esports that takes away the biggest pain: having to grind for hours, days, weeks or months, something that has nothing to do with how things work in real racing. I could even imagine that in the sim I end up releasing some of that is built in, that some content just is not available 24/7 and only unlocks for specific events. Of course that is, at this time, just a rough idea, but something I am considering.
Image: The Last Garage
Is there anything planned regarding a closed or open beta?
No plans right now. For me these events (ed. note: like Sim Formula Europe) provide a wealth of feedback that help me steer in the right direction, but before I start an open or closed beta I want to be at a point where I am convinced everything is working well. Right now my “to-do list” is still so big that I don’t need much feedback to know what I need to do next. I think it will come, but not in the next couple of months.
What are the plans for The Last Garage in 2025 (that you can share)?
Let me wrap up this interview with one project I am pretty excited about and that is an R&D project with Donkervoort and Heusinkveld to create a digital twin for the successor of the F22, currently under development at Donkervoort. We want to see if we can optimize the design of this car more in the simulator before the first car is built and tested on the track. We will kick that off later this month, and it’s a two year project, so I’m sure I’ll have updates of that as we go along.
Another highlight on the calendar for The Last Garage will be the cooperation with Race of Champions, which is set to take place in Sydney, Australia, on March 7 and 8. The Last Garage will be jumping into action in a competitive way again, as Marcel's sim will power the sim racing portion of the event called eROC.
It should be exciting to see how The Last Garage will develop throughout 2025 - we will make sure to keep a close eye on the sim to bring you any updates we can!
What do you think of The Last Garage? Were you able to try the sim in Maastricht? Let us know in the comments below and join the discussion in our The Last Garage forum!
