I got a 3 month trial to iRacing with my Fanatec CSL pedals and hopped into it today. After years of farting around on AC and PC2 and finally coming to terms that I'm just too poor to race professionally, I figured iRacing would be a good foray.
Man, is it fun! Luckily this week's MX-5 race started off at Laguna Seca, a track I'm very intimate with since GT4. WOW is it a difference in VR and "the most accurate" sim models. I found myself pushing harder and harder in practice, finding track and car limits so naturally and setting a solid mid field qualifying.
Then came the actual race... my conservative driving put me 10 seconds behind, I got DQ'd for too many track exits (I dipped the inside wheel into the gravel at turn 6 one too many times), and overall I was dead last and couldn't catch up to the pack. I always hear racing is so much more different than hot lapping but it's crazy to see the difference. It's uncomfortable pulling in so closely to the car in front and playing brake chicken. I learned a lot and can't wait to get back into it!
One comment I have is that VR is great for immersion and track day type driving, but in traffic it can be a rather big step down from a monitor (especially multiple, or super wide monitors). The lack of peripheral vision in most (affordable) VR headsets means you really need to crank your head around to see cars beside you, especially those coming up behind and to the side, unlike actual driving.
I am not sure what positional warning (artificial radar) systems iRacing has, but in AC I don't think those work very well in VR.
Welcome! I have like 1722 hours in iRacing since 2021 when garage61 started tracking it. Here's an infodump I usually share with all the resources and utilities that I find useful with iRacing:
- https://garage61.net/ - Telemetry and setup sharing
- https://thecrewchief.org/ - Spotter / Engineer utility that uses voice activation to give information, set up pit stops, calculate fuel, etc.
- https://gabirmotors.com/tools/specmapping - Visualizer for spec map appearance when creating a livery
- https://iracing-week-planner.tmo.lol/ - Schedule app for official races; tell it what cars and tracks you have and know what races are coming up
- https://www.irbg.net/ - A useful tool for determining how often a car or track might appear in officials before you buy it
- https://www.simracerhub.com/scoring/configs.php - Database of useful info on every track combination
- https://discordbot.iracingreports.com/ A huge amount of info, get personalized reports on a driver's stats, official series population, car balance of performance, and more!
aircooled said:
One comment I have is that VR is great for immersion and track day type driving, but in traffic it can be a rather big step down from a monitor (especially multiple, or super wide monitors). The lack of peripheral vision in most (affordable) VR headsets means you really need to crank your head around to see cars beside you, especially those coming up behind and to the side, unlike actual driving.
I am not sure what positional warning (artificial radar) systems iRacing has, but in AC I don't think those work very well in VR.
iRacing uses audio / text / both callouts when a car has overlap with you. If you have the mirrors turned on and you have any sort of spatial reasoning it's not that difficult to go wheel to wheel in VR.
Best of luck to you, sounds like a lot of fun. 
In reply to red_stapler :
Thanks for the resources!
I am biased, but go to tradingpaints.com and download the Downloader so you can stop looking at the ugly base paints.
It ain't much but gaining 3 places while keeping a (mostly) clean race is exciting! This was my first actually competitive race. I would've finished 5th if it weren't for some mistakes on the last lap. I'm sure Evan was really excited on that overtake on the last turn, gotta give him props I think we had a great battle for rookie field. I didn't realize that replays don't save automagically so I don't have any footage from that.
tarach
New Reader
4/27/25 1:48 p.m.
Focus on consistency over speed early on and practice following cars closely in test sessions. It will help a lot with race comfort and avoiding off-tracks.
In reply to tarach :
Thanks, I've been focusing a lot on just consistency. I have to keep telling myself "let the race come to you".
Learned what an off day is today. MX-5 on Charlottesville roval, excellent course. Very high speed. Ate curb on turn 3 and binned it, couldn't recover. Next race I couldn't get back in the groove during practice or quali so I dropped out early.
