VR.N Beginner’s Guide to iRacing 2022 Edition:
Get started for (almost) free!
This beginner’s guide to iRacing is meant to help get novice drivers started on their path towards winning in iRacing. There are many pitfalls that we see derail many racers from having a successful experience with getting themselves and their equipment up to competetive level on iRacing- so this Beginner’s Guide to iRacing is really a guide to getting up to the competetive level that you have the ability to achieve podiums and wins on the iRacing service.
Whether your path will include oval racing stock cars, road racing endurance and open wheel cars, dirt oval or rallycross.
The iRacing Simulation Platform offers a realistic sim racing experience to drivers young and old around the world. With just a small amount of sim racing equipment, a driver can begin their virtual racing “career” on iRacing – aquiring competition licenses and earning iRating by doing well in official iRacing races. To keep it fair, you will also be given a safety rating, but more on that later.
- Requirements
- Your First Laps
- Your First Race
- Getting Faster with Advanced Driving
- Setup Tuning
- Acquiring D-C-B-A iRacing License
- Buying More Tracks and Cars
- Series Championships & Leagues
- Resources
What does it take for you to get started? Actually not that much.
1. Requirements
-
- Computer Spec
- Wheel and Pedals (or a Gamepad to start)
You can get started with a gamepad, but because buttons or joysticks don’t have the range of motion of a car steering wheel (which has over 1000 degrees of rotation), or proper auto pedals. - A Desk or Sim Rig to Mount Your Wheel To
- An iRacing Subscription
- A LOT of Patience
Setup Tuning – a Beginner’s Overview
As we learned in the previous section, adjusting your driving to suit the characteristics of the car is a great way to go faster. But, what if we could adjust the race car to better suit the track? For instance, short tracks don’t need long gears, and super speedways don’t require high downforce aerodynamics. To adjust these components to suit the track will make you faster and allow the car to handle properly and consistently.
The great news is that iRacing has the ability to get your hands greasy by getting under the hood and adjusting many components on your car. How many components you can adjust, and how much adjustability is allowed per car is determined by iRacing. Some cars, like the beginner free cars such as the Mazda MX-5 and the Formula Vee, have little to no adjustments allowed. Most cars, however, allow for at least minimal adjustments such as steering angle and brake bias. It’s clear from the moment you begin adjusting the brake bias on your race car, shifting the balance from front to rear, that there is a lot of opportunity to make or lose time on the track from making these adjustments. And every adjustment has an effect – to adjust the brake bias to the front changes the handling while on the brakes, but can also overheat the front tires, cause lockup, or unc
Every race car is a complex network of components – including suspension, transmission, and aerodynamics. Each component has a range in which it can be adjusted, allowing you the ability to achieve a consistent and appropriate response from the car. Imagine as much as you have control over the exact position of your seat in your passenger car, what if you could control your sim racing car’s supension, transmission, aerodynamics and other components with equal precision?
Acquiring D-C-B-A iRacing License
Buying More Tracks and Cars
Series Championships & Leagues
Resources