Interview with Marco from the media event. It's in italian though. If you watch carefully you can spot some interesting stuff.
Rough translation, copied from the forum:
0:46 KUNOS Simulazioni has its headquarters inside the Vallelunga autodrome, what are the advantages of this solution?
Marco: The main advantages are that you can do R&D in a very massive way, relying also on the fact that our presence here lets us to keep in touch not only with the car manifacturers but also with the main characters of the motorsport world, not only the pilots but also race engineers that often are more useful in our job because by cooperating with them we get to know exactly how the cars react on the racetrack, the performance, what kind of setup is being used and these factors allows us to create a better experience also in the physics and technical sector, you know... at high level
1:40 You mentioned some new modes and also career mode, when are they coming?
Marco: Starting from the last question: career mode will come in the 1.0RC of the game, which will come soon. It will let you to participate in a series of event, starting from the slower cars to finally reach the more intresting ones, the championships with the GTs. Speaking about the new modes: we have planned for the next year the relase of more contents, not only DLCs but additional free contents, new special events, a more predetermined career and a bunch of options that will not be in the v1.0 but will come later with free updates like extending the pitstop feature from a MP-only feature to SP too. Speaking of career mode we will have a series of events that will give a "family feeling" like the Gran Turismo series, to reach and make the game more enjoyable for the casual gamers and there will be a lot of special events available for your selection allowing a more customisable career instead of a fully predetermined one where you can take and choose different paths
3:10 What can you say about the future of Assetto Corsa? Will we receive updates of the damage model?
Marco: Speaking of the damage model the version that will come out soon will include full damage simulation both aestetical and mechanical, and damages will be toggleable, there will be different kind of damages: not only to suspension, engine and gearbox relating to the drivestyle or the collisions that may happen but also there will be damages related to what the driver does: this means that there might be punctures if you get too rough on the kerbs, especially with road cars that aren't meant for that.
This will give very realistic experience to the players
4:03 Assetto Corsa is an indie, what are the main challanges of this approach?
Marco: When the publishers started to look at us, we received a lot of proposals and they're still coming.
What we are doing with Assetto, especially with the PC version is continuing on the line that we've set in the beginning. The Early Access program from Steam has gone incredibily well, far exceeding our expectations and this has given us a lot of earnings. So we decided to continue our original path by reinvesting a good amount of our revenues in the acquisition of new licenses, new contents and expanding the team from the inital six to fifteen people, fifteen very good elements and crucial to the development of the game.
Our idea is to continue, maybe even while collaborating with the big companies, to pursue our initial goals by keeping our indipendence especially in the game design and what strategies to apply, by continuosely delivering to our customers, our fans what they expect.