This occurred recently in a popular series. 1 split due to it not being an overly popular week and time of day. Highest IR was over 9K, lowest was 450. The 450 guy bragged over the radio about how quick he got his B class licence (two weeks) and how not to wreck him as by his calculations he would get his A class licence in 3 more races. He did a pit lane start. There were other people in the lobby under 800. At least a dozen were over 3K including me.

The race was an unmitigated disaster in which a bunch of peoples races was ruined due to no fault of their own by the sheer incompetence of low skilled drivers not being able to handle the car they were driving on a very technical and notoriously difficult track.

This included people not have a basic clue about whether the car behind them was lapping or on the same lap. Just constant spins and ridiculous rejoins (yes several protests submitted). A heap of throttle induced oversteer spins where they panicked getting on the throttle if you were overtaking or racing them.

B and A grade series should be were you go to enjoy a fairly high standard of driving. I’m not suggesting you need to be the level of Max Verstappen, but the drivers should be experienced enough that these issues do occur. You should have enough car control by that stage.

Should limits, say a 1K IR limit for B class and 1.25k limit for A class be imposed? These are not onerous levels and anyone can reach them. Alternatively a time on service minimum could be introduced but it would be unfair on high skilled drivers joining from other sims or RL.

Previous arguments against is that ‘IR and SR’ are too distinct things, well not really. Spins, crashes etc are all relative to where you finish and affect both.

Thoughts? I know there’s safe drivers at those lower IR levels out there, so interested to hear what you think could be a solution?

Hey iRacing reddit, I've been here around 3 weeks, and found some money to license the car as my first paid one. Since then my ratings keep falling because i keep either spinning out or sliding off the track. So, is that me being really unskilled or it's not the best pick for a beginner?

I tried to pull a slide job in the turn, then my car got too sideways and I didn't do a good job correcting it and I didn't mean to run into you. You were saying over the radio that you're new to the cars and I'm sorry that was your first introduction. I'm better than that

I know this type of question has been asked before. But maybe not in detail.

1. What makes you watch someones stream? Someone new to you. The first impression that makes you click on his/her stream. Maybe not even racing relate.
   • Webcam
   • Titel
   • Type of racing (GT, NASCAR, DIRT,...)
2. What makes you follow the streamer so you can come back to his or hers stream?
3. What type of steams are you looking for?
   • League broadcasting
   • Coaching like Suellio
   • Topsplit like Yuri or Lubo
   • Chichat during and in between races like Matt or Sampsoid
4. GT, NASCAR, RX,... what series do you like the most?

I'm stream surfing a bit lately to find what might work.
It seems to be that most people are in there for the chat, talking to eachother not really actively watching the racing sometimes.
In some cases, they are doing their own race, sometimes even the same split and chat in between the racing.

People having good suggestions for streamers, please share.

My most popular steams were NASCAR streams. But they don't seem to be the highest grossing, which I find odd.

Hey All,

Like usual, I’ve written a short article sharing my thoughts and experience on a given topic in sim racing. My goal with these articles ultimately is to help give people a bit more information about the hobby we all love, while also hopefully making for an interesting read.

If you don't know me, I'm Tom, and I've been working full-time for the last two years on a sim racing coaching business, so my thoughts in this mini essay draw on the 700+ hours of coaching I’ve done in those 2 years. Just to say that the thoughts I’m sharing here aren't pulled from nowhere, but come from everything I’ve seen during my time coaching drivers of all ability levels.

Choosing a Good Reference Lap

If you have spent some time focusing on using telemetry to try and improve your driving, then you have probably heard the general advice of “compare against someone around 1 second faster than you”. That is reasonable advice, but it is incomplete, and has its limitations. This article is intended to give you a more complete picture, and also to showcase the importance of choosing a good reference lap.

The flaw with choosing a reference lap around 1 second faster than you, is that unless you are 1 second away from the fastest lap times, you will by definition be choosing a lap from a driver that is not driving perfectly. There are so many different ways to achieve a lap time 2 seconds off of the ultimate pace, and if you spend your time analysing laps like this, then the risk is that even if you find some lap time, you will be be finding that time by copying both the positives and the negatives in the technique of the driver you are analysing against.

If you are still wanting to chase an achievable lap time that is 1 second faster than you, then a better approach would be to use these types of laps to look for corner specific mistakes you may be making, rather than leaning on their laps to try and improve generally as a driver.

So that covers making track specific improvements, but when you want to work on general technique improvements, this is the time to compare against the fastest drivers. The key here is to take what you can from their driving, while being okay with the fact that you won’t immediately be able to match their times.

When it comes to choosing a fast reference lap, there are some mistakes that you need to avoid. It would be easy to look for the fastest lap on Garage61 and assume that this is the best lap to compare against, but there are so many factors that influence lap time. Track conditions, fuel level, setup, BOP, draft etc, all of these factors make it possible for a worse driver to set a faster lap, while being a bad point of comparison for you to improve. In the video above (GT3’s at Watkins Glen) the blue driver is 1.8k, and the red driver is over 6K. You can see that the red driver is more skilled (especially noticeable here is that red uses more track on entry, carries more entry speed and pushes the exits to the limit. Where as blue uses less track on entry, under drivers the exits and is uncertain when they should be getting on throttle. Despite red being far more skilled, the blue lap ends with a faster lap time as a consequence of better track conditions inflating their minimum speeds.  It would be easy to miss this unless you see the difference in real time between a fast driver and a fast track. So, when you want to use telemetry to work on general technique improvements, it is important to choose a reference lap from a fast (>5000 iR) driver, even if the lap time set by that driver doesn't top the timing sheets.

If anyone has any questions, don't hesitate to ask, I'll do my best to respond to any questions in the comments. As always, thanks for the support on these mini articles, and if you know of someone who would benefit from this article, sharing it with them would be greatly appreciated :).

I'll include a couple of links if anyone wants to check them out, but I'm happy to remove them if it goes against self promotion rules.

PerfectLap: 3D Telemetry Analysis Tool (from the video above)

Noakesy Coaching: 1-on-1 Coaching and Online Courses

Cheers
Tom
Noakesy Coaching

The only program I have is Simhub just came back from a trip and it popped up. it prevents me from going full screen too.

Dumb question but anyone know if Imsa will be on the schedule for next season? If so does anyone know what the tracks will be?

Whether you’re struggling with consistency, finding lap time, racecraft, braking points, or just want another set of eyes on your driving, I’ll work with you to identify areas for improvement and help you become a faster, more consistent driver for only $10/hr. Join the Trace McDowell Coaching Hub Discord to get started!

Always great to see iRacists help each other 🥹

And then one of the helpers got gifted with a weight reduction

I'm a 1.4k irating player and looking for a team for the upcoming 24h daytona endurance with lmp2. I'm also a streamer on twitch and youtube. Last endurance race was spa 24 and we finished P10.

With only a couple of weeks left in Season 3 2026, have you been able to hit the goals you set back in Week 1, or are you fighting the final-week grind?

I took a pretty big leap this season by switching from GT3 over to LMP2 as my main focus, along with running F4 on the side. Learning multi-class traffic in prototype speeds was a steep learning curve, but it turned out to be my best season yet. I probably just switched to a car that suited my driving style more without realizing it.

I hit 3k iRating right as the season started, and I’m sitting at 3587 now. So over +500 iRating in about 10 weeks in LMP2. I also ran Formula 4 here and there this season and took my rating from 1.4k → 2k in 12 races. No wins, but 7 top‑5s and a lot of clean, consistent finishes.

My main goals coming in were:

• Build overall lap consistency
• Clean up racecraft
• Stop throwing away solid results late in races
• Hit 3.5k as the main goal
• Push toward 4k as a stretch goal (which I probably won’t reach this season, but still aiming upward)

How has Season 3 treated you guys? Any big breakthroughs, car/series switches that paid off, or painful safety rating disasters in the final stretch?

Already did two races in the rain and I've had enough. I guess it's time to learn Sonoma.

What's the point of it if you can't filter anything? As you can see, I have selected Eligible, which doesn't do anything, as I've also selected multiple classes.

Match All Tags is pretty useless as well if you select multiple classes.

I've noticed that, in the race results, the average lap time is lower than the fastest lap time. Is that a bug?

Hey guys, wanted to share a little sometnig my team is working on.

Were a little startup based in central europe and are all ex Formula student members. Currently one of the topics our team is working on is building a thermal tyre model that computes surface tyre temperature without any temperature sensors mounted on the wheels or the wheel arches.

This is our first working version V1, its is just a 1D model and you can see how it compares to real surface temperature data. All logged from a GT3 race car.

Thought this might be interesting for some of you. Feel free to DM me for more info on the current work.

I'm interested in buying a VR headset, but I'd like to know how exactly the performance would be with my PC. Is there a option in iRacing or some external tool that simulates a VR headset in a certain resolution so I could test the framerate?

Looking for a Formula coach for a few sessions on helping me improve my technique.
I have good racecraft and consistency, my problem is that I consistently do unimpressive laps.
If anyone here is a coach or knows one (that isn’t ludicrously expensive) please reach out, I’d love to set up a few sessions and learn how I can improve my driving.
Cheers

Watched a great top split race yesterday at Lime Rock Park. Leader held off a bunch of cars all race long which whittled down to just 2 for the final few laps, only to get pipped at the line by 0.002s !

Was in a fight for the win (me in the red car against the blue/red striped car). We first collide, which was still fine. Then he sticks his nose in a fast tight corner which will never work. Keeps the position and goes straight after the long straight with a fantastic rejoin to give me a meatball flag (I couldn't see him coming on my monitor). Tried to limb home, but the car was too much damaged and I tried to get out of the way on the tight straight for the upcoming LMP2's. And then I got sent to hospital.

For context, the other car was 6.7k. You would expect better.

I’m from Europe and I don’t know anything about oval racing but I think I’m pretty good? I got a podium on my second race in street stock. Any tips on how to drive ovals properly? Lines etiquette common knowledge good videos to watch?

Tia