Hello iRacers,

The past few months have been busy in motorsports (both real-world and simulated), and time has flown by since we last provided our quarterly update. Between intense early-season championship battles across many of the world’s top-tier racing series and record-smashing participation in sim racing as a whole, it’s a great time to be a motorsports fan and sim racer. Thanks to all who participated in the iRacing Indy 500, and congratulations to all winners across the hundreds of splits. Saturday’s top-split Open race finished in a thrilling manner and with a dramatic final lap. Exiting turn four and in third place, Philip Kraus surged to the win in a photo finish alongside Robert Maleczka III and Jason Brophy. Moments like this are a great reminder of just how special this sport is, and we appreciate the time you all spend with us here at iRacing.

In just a few short weeks, iRacing’s Season 2 will reach its conclusion, and we’re going to start Season 3 off strong with a phenomenal update that our team has been working incredibly hard on and are all excited to get into your hands/rigs! Let’s get right into it and start things off with a full Season 3 preview. We’ll then touch on some longer-term initiatives and updates, future content, and more! We’ll begin by reviewing the new Season 3 cars and tracks, as well as what will be the largest set of updates and improvements to existing content we’ve ever shipped at one time.

Starting things off, our Season 3 tracks will include three main categories of release: 1) all new, 2) rescanned and remodelled, and 3) refreshed and upgraded. Note that with category 2 and category 3, I will list more tracks than we’ll ultimately be able to ship with S3 – our work is very dynamic right now, and we can’t guarantee exactly which will/won’t ship for another few weeks. Know that the tracks that miss the build will be released just three short months later, in the S4 build.

New Tracks

We’re excited to return to The Land Down Under, with the release of Shell V-Power Motorsport Park, known by many as “The Bend”. The Bend is located in Tailem Bend, South Australia – just a hundred or so km south-east of Adelaide. The Bend hosts or has hosted numerous national and international racing series, including Supercars Championship, GT World Challenge Australia, TCR Australia, Australian Superbike Championship, and endurance and prototype racing.

The design of The Bend was inspired by many of the world’s great racing circuits. It offers racers a great combination of technical sections and fast-flowing corners. The track has a surprising amount of elevation change that helps keep the racing action exciting. The Bend is a huge facility, and the iRacing implementation will feature seven racing configurations, including the full 7.77km GT Circuit, which is the second-longest permanent race track in the world.

Rescanned and Remodelled tracks

Our rescanned and remodeled tracks are tracks that already exist on the service but have since been repaved or changed significantly in the real world. These changes warranted an update in iRacing, and each track listed has been rescanned, with driving surfaces fully remodeled from scratch. Additionally, all artwork, such as buildings, catch fencing, scenery, terrain, trees, and more, have been recreated using our latest techniques and quality standards.

Every track in this category is offered as a *free update* for iRacers who already have these tracks.

• Iowa Speedway: Significant repaving work was performed in the turns, which our team has captured and recreated. This change transforms the driving experience at Iowa.
• Richmond Raceway: Richmond was rescanned, although not due to a repave—the same real-world pavement exists now as in our original Richmond. However, the facility had undergone a great deal of infrastructure change, and we had an opportunity to improve the circuit. We ultimately remodeled everything, including the driving surface.
• Sonoma Raceway:  This project took multiple trips across the country to complete, as our scan team navigated a dynamic repave project that required multiple rescans.  We are so excited to finally update Sonoma, which is one of the first great North American road circuits on the iRacing service.  It’s also artistically one of our oldest tracks on iRacing, and long overdue for a refresh.  Our new Sonoma looks amazing, with its vast rolling hills and drone-captured terrain, fully re-created with our new 5-layer terrain shader and modern art techniques.
• Worldwide Technology Raceway (Gateway): Worldwide Technology Raceway was repaved several years ago in preparation for IndyCar’s return to the circuit. The track currently features NASCAR, IndyCar, and a variety of racing across its road configurations. Note that our updated track surface will initially only feature the oval.
• Charlotte Motor Speedway: We have worked closely with Speedway Motorsports (SMI) for several years to prototype and test changes planned for the real-world circuit. This work was a significant factor in the 2018 redesign of the Roval and subsequent iterations. We have re-scanned Charlotte to incorporate this and last year’s changes, and updated the driving surfaces to reflect these changes.
• North Wilkesboro Speedway:  We will soon debut our first modern version of North Wilkesboro Speedway.  This has been a fun project to return to, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to do so.  For those who don’t know the backstory, read here.  We used that scan to create a historic 1987 version of the track, which debuted on the iRacing platform.  A few years later and thanks in part to this project, North Wilkesboro was renovated and repaired in the real world and then added to NASCAR’s schedule.  Now, at long last, we will be adding the modern North Wilkesboro to iRacing.

Refreshed and Upgraded tracks

Our refreshed and upgraded tracks are a category of update that we have done our best to keep up with, but have greatly accelerated these past few years. These are not rescans, but they are nearly complete rebuilds where we have recreated all artwork using current tooling and quality standards. Examples of refreshes include Okayama, Road Atlanta, and most recently in Season 1 and 2 when we refreshed New Hampshire, Bristol, Darlington, Dover, Homestead, Kansas, and Las Vegas. We have been working on the remainder of the NASCAR calendar and will release as many as possible in the Season 3 build, with the remainder shipping no later than Season 4.

Examples of Refresh tracks currently in the works include Circuit of the Americas, Darlington, Daytona, Indianapolis, Lime Rock Park, Phoenix, Texas, and more.

We’re thrilled to be nearing completion on our refresh of this critical category of race tracks. Our teams have already moved on to future refreshes, starting with another project focused on a different significant racing series (more info soon!). From there, we’ll keep the momentum going and continue to upgrade and update additional tracks.

Before moving on to cars, I owe a big shout-out and kudos to our hard-working art and production teams. From scanning and photography, through to pre-production, project planning and management, modeling, texturing, driving lines, race control, AI support, setups, QA, database, and more, these teams have rallied together to model, remodel, or refresh 30 tracks over the course of three iRacing seasons, in addition to regular new track work. This effort required folks to step up, grow, expand their comfort zone, and learn new skills. We’re fortunate to have such a world-class crew, and the rest of the team and I appreciate you all.

Cars

Featuring three all-new racecars as well as comprehensive physics model overhauls to three existing car classes, Season 3 is absolutely stacked, and we are so excited to share these projects with you.

Let’s start with the all-new racecars…

We are thrilled to offer the visually stunning and thrilling-to-drive Ferrari 296 Challenge. The 296 Challenge is one of the fastest single-make series customer racing cars ever. Weighing just 1495 kg, ready to race with 700 hp and 870 kg of downforce at 250 km/h (nearly 3/4 that of a GT3 class car), this is a potent machine capable of outrunning GT3 cars while providing a unique and exciting GT racing experience.

This is made possible through exceptionally engineered systems, including:

• A 120-degree 3.0 L V6 Twin Turbo that revs to 8500 rpm
• Reimagined aerodynamics with a focus on reducing pitch sensitivity
• An F1-derived 7-speed gearbox
• Full 4-wheel brake by wire system with advanced electronic brake distribution and ABS capabilities
• All new enormous (408 mm!) carbon ceramic brake discs
• Comprehensive 2-Stage driver-adjustable traction control
• Electronically controlled differential
• Fast ratio electronic power steering
• Bespoke tires

This is genuinely a unique car, with close to zero parts crossover between it and the GT3.

The sound on the 296 is phenomenal and a good example of the depth that a binaural format can achieve. The format has the depth to make a solid-sounding onboard, along with great backfire, turbo, and BOV sounds.

The Ferrari 296 Challenge will be raced in our Ferrari 296 Challenge series, which will be retooled to feature this car rather than the 296 GT3 car. This series is raced at the D level.

And now for something completely different – we are happy to share that the previously announced Gen 4 Cup car project has been completed and is ready for release. In all, we will be releasing two car packages: the 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo and the 2003 Ford Taurus. Each car package will include two distinct car bodies: Stockcar and Speedway Stockcar. During this era of Cup racing, the car bodies were dramatically different in shape, and this presented a new challenge for our architecture. While we already have many cars with track-specific variants, the 2003 variants are so unique that we could not use a singular paint template and had to split each variant into its own unique template. This required engineering and UI support, and was more work than one might imagine. The end result was worth it and pushed us to improve functionality in how we present similar cars in the UI. Going forward, painters will be able to select the specific track type they’d like to view in our UI paint kit.

The Gen 4 Cup cars will be raced in our Gen 4 Cup series, taking the place of the current Gen 4 car. This series is raced at the C level.

While that covers our new cars, we’re only getting started, so let’s explore the car and car class overhauls…

INDYCAR is one of our closest and most longstanding partners, and we are thrilled to offer a comprehensive update to the IR18 that brings it up to spec with the 2025 real-world iteration. This project was completed in collaboration with Dallara, INDYCAR, and real-world INDYCAR drivers. Together, we have rebuilt the physics using our latest tools, processes, and quality standards. The improved systems include the fundamental tire itself, aero modeling, and the addition of a wet tire. Additional details and changes include:

• Setup range limits have been more accurately tailored to each track type.
• Barge board options have been added to both the Road Course and Short Oval configurations, as well as the large oval configuration.
• All tire types have been updated, resulting in improvements to driving feel and feedback and more accurate tire conditioning.

Overall, the changes will result in a positive change for realism.

One detail we have deferred to the future is the new hybrid system. This system debuted midway through the 2024 season, with 2025 being the first full year in competition. We are taking our time to make sure we get this right, and we’re also in the midst of a fundamental hybrid model architecture rewrite, which has implications here as well.

The IR18 has also been updated visually to match the current year, including an all-new Cosworth steering wheel and the road course-specific aeroscreen. Additionally, we sent our sound team on the road to capture the vehicle using our latest and greatest hardware and techniques, and our new sound model is phenomenal. You can now hear nuanced elements of the power train, and the engine makes a cool anti-lag sound, which, in the words of our sound designer, Aussie Greg, sounds like a “Chewbacca-gurgle.” This happens mostly with partial throttle between 6000-8000 RPM and is extremely audible out of the exhaust from external views.

Our Gen 7 NASCAR Cup car has also undergone a significant overhaul. It features our latest release-ready tire (first debuted on GTP) and improved aerodynamics that bring the car closer to how teams now have the cars operating. Teams have made performance advancements over the last few years, and we have integrated similar increases in performance. The updated tire is a significant change that will refine many characteristics of the tires, including conditioning, limit feedback, and slide recovery over the limit. Finally, we will introduce a new Gen-7-specific CFD-based drafting model that will bring the driving dynamics in traffic closer to how the real cars behave. This work was done in partnership with NASCAR and has taken the realism of these cars to the next level.

Our most significant car project this season was a whopper that spanned six months of intensive development—a comprehensive redevelopment of our entire GT3 racecar class. I am going to get pretty detailed here, so bear with me. Whether you’re a GT3 fan or not, these details are well worth a read and offer insights into the level of detail our passionate developers pursue with their work.

Starting with the tires, we have developed new Dry and Wet tires; both use iRacing’s newest tire physics model (first debuted with GTP). To develop the GT3-specific model, we utilized customized software and tooling to simulate a vast set of tire constructions and models at faster-than-real-time speeds. These models were then thoroughly tested and iterated by our vehicle dynamicists and driving specialists, in collaboration with external professional drivers who race the same cars in real life. Many things have been improved, culminating in tires that behave more like those in the real world.

Additionally, we have overhauled the aerodynamics on the majority of the cars in the GT3 class using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling. We have updated ride height maps, yaw and roll sensitivities, and the effect of changing rear wing settings. After tires, aerodynamics has the greatest impact on in-car experience so we put a lot of effort into capturing both aerodynamic performance and nuances that impact subjective feel.

Here is a detailed list of highlights and things you will notice as you acclimate to the changes:

• One of the most important goals in tire development was to reduce tire surface temperature spikes to a reasonable level. This reduced sensitivity to sliding is a significant step forward in our modeling, resulting in tires that are more resilient to short-term sliding and have better post-slide grip recovery. Critically, a spin or off-track event no longer destroys a tire’s grip for the rest of a run.
• The temperature of the tires when the cars leave the pits has been lowered and is now closer to that of a tire sitting in the hot sun. Out laps will require extra patience as the tires come up to performance temps and pressures.
• The fastest lap on a set of new tires will be around the fourth or fifth timed lap (depending on track length, weather conditions, and driving aggression). Late in a fuel stint, it is possible to abuse the tires and suffer more lap time degradation. It is also possible to conserve tires and have a chance to push for fast laps late in a stint when the fuel level is low. Expect to change tires each time a full tank of fuel is added.
• The tire spring rates are now closer to those currently used in real life. Compared to the current tires, the vertical rate is softer, and the lateral stiffness is higher. This means that the chassis will deflect more under vertical (aerodynamic and/or banking) load.
• To assist with dynamic ride height control on these more compliant tires, we have added bump rubbers and the ability to adjust their static gaps to cars that did not previously have this Garage setup option.
• The updated aerodynamics have different sweet spots in ride height from what you are used to. Some setup work will be needed to ensure you are extracting the maximum from each car’s aerodynamic platform.
• You may notice that the cars behave differently in small and large slides. This is partly due to the updated aerodynamic yaw modeling. Different side view body shapes provide varying degrees of stabilizing side force. Similarly, different complete aerodynamic packages perform better and worse when it comes to downforce and aerodynamic balance. Our updated aerodynamic modeling does a better job of capturing this nuance.
• Another step closer to reality is the addition of front splitter height as a determining factor in passing technical inspection. The front splitter at its lowest point, front ride height at the axle centerline, and rear ride height must all be above 50mm. Most cars will need to run higher ride heights.
• Current setups will become obsolete. Save a record of ride heights (and rake) that work with specific rear wing angles to use as a starting point for 2025 Season 3 setups (or use the iRacing recommendations).
• The BoP for this season does not include any changes to mass or engine power levels. Only aerodynamic downforce and drag have been adjusted.

To sum things up, with our now more realistic model, GT3 cars in iRacing will drive far better at the limit, and if you go over the limit. The driving experience is more accurate and enjoyable, and we can’t wait to share this work with you all in a few weeks. We are incredibly proud of the result, and our team has set the standard for GT3 racing in the entire sim racing landscape.

As exciting as the above three car redevelopment projects are, note that projects like this span multiple seasons, and there are additional similar projects underway with different cars and car classes that we are not ready to announce. Expect a stream of additions and improvements as we move forward with our continuous pursuit to provide the most realistic and authentic simulation of real motor racing.

Last but not least, a few additional miscellaneous car updates…

• Season 3 will include the release of rain tires on the Lotus 79 and Super Formula.
• The F4 has received a full dry and wet tire rework.
• The BMW M4 G82 GT4 has been upgraded to the Evo version. The car will update automatically and you don’t need to do anything specific to get this new version.
• We have updated the steering wheel on the BMW M Hybrid V8 to reflect the current wheel and dash button panel used this year.
• Last season, we released Phase 1 of a two-phase effort to improve the realism of the GTP class and its supporting physics systems. An overhaul of the hybrid system was identified as Phase 2, and we intended to complete that work in time for Season 3. This work is well underway, but we have determined that the sim would benefit from a more comprehensive overall overhaul of our foundational hybrid system code. The result is we need a bit more time, but it will be worth it. Thank you for your patience.

Features

Season 3 will offer a healthy selection of new features and functionality, along with key improvements to many existing systems. Let’s run through many of them, and keep an eye out for the full release notes, which will be released in the days leading up to the release.

VR is a key focus at iRacing, and has been since the beginning when iRacing and Oculus collaborated to add VR support to a prototype version of their first VR headset. We are excited to share that Season 3 will include the release of quad-view fixed foveated rendering support for RTX2000+ Nvidia GPUs. This implementation of foveated rendering uses four different views to render the scene, with higher fidelity and processing power focused on areas in line with the driver’s head, and lower fidelity around the fringes of the scene. The result is fewer overall pixels rendered with expensive pixel shaders. This rendering optimization will offer additional performance and headroom as we all eagerly await the release of the new rendering engine that is well underway.

We have spent significant time working on our rain systems to bring our rain visuals more in line with actual wetness represented in the dynamic track physics systems. There has been a subtle divergence over the past couple of seasons that has made it more difficult than it should be to visually discern the level of track wetness. Our team has done a phenomenal job re-tuning these systems and has things back in tip-top shape. Now with the surface wetness appropriately tuned, this same team has turned their attention to accomplishing a similar goal with the spray generated from the tires and cars – note that it’s TBD whether or not this second phase will make it for Season 3.

Adaptive AI was released last season and has been a hit. While not perfect in every situation, this feature has gone a long way to make AI racing in iRacing more accessible and easily configurable than ever before. When we released this feature, we shared that additional improvements would follow, and our first batch of follow-up improvements will debut in Season 3. To begin, the Adaptive AI behavior between sessions in a race weekend is improved, leading to more consistent and predictable race starts. Additionally, Adaptive AI support is coming to Hosted racing. This addition offered a unique challenge, requiring system support for several real racers rather than just the singular racer in a single race. The addition is testing well, and we look forward to the wider release.

Hardware
We are rolling out additional 360 Hz support across multiple wheels and are close to adding haptic support to multiple wheels. More info to follow…

That covers many of the highlights of season 3, but again, keep an eye out for those release notes.

Ongoing/Future Development

The following updates will be provided in an abbreviated format, as we spent a great deal of focus on S3 and there will be plenty of opportunity to share more soon.

New Sim UI: As we have shared in previous updates, we have a sizable group working on the New Sim UI, which is an all-new and modern UI framework and a fresh interface design. This project has been underway for a couple of years now, and it’s hard to convey just how massive a project it has been to add a new UI to our mature product with decades of legacy and code, hundreds of features, and thousands of elements. The current status of the project has reached engineering completion. This is a critical milestone for us, and we are in a great position as we shift our focus to testing feedback, fit and finish, and iterative improvements.

We know there’s substantial anticipation and excitement for this new UI update, and we appreciate everyone’s patience as we make sure to get the project done right and not rush things out the door. We strike a tricky balance with these development updates; we’d love to tell you everything we’re working on, but at the same time we need to protect against disappointment when things take longer than anticipated. Sometimes we share things too early, sometimes not early enough – we do our best. It’s a process, so thank you for navigating this along with us.

New Rendering Engine: This project is going tremendously well, and every day, the team reaches a new milestone or significant achievement that brings company-wide excitement. To catch newcomers up, we are building an all-new rendering engine (graphics engine). This engine will transform the look and performance of iRacing and features a GPU-driven architecture and minimal CPU overhead.

Last quarter, we shared progress made with an all-new shadow system that will transform this sim’s overall appearance. This week, we reached another milestone: the integration of our Dynamic Track system into the new renderer. The project is far enough along that it will be the feature of our next “Town Hall,” an employee-only gathering where project teams share their work with the entire company.

Physics: We are focused on improving physics in iRacing on a continuous basis. You see these improvements in every single build, whether it’s a new car using a new tool or process, or an extensive overhaul of an existing car (recent examples: GTP, IndyCar, NASCAR, GT3). While balancing these continuous improvements, we have a team focused on longer-term and more fundamental improvements, with a current focus on improved FFB, improved peripheral support, higher physics rate, and the next generation of our tire model. Recently, adjustments have been made to the architecture of the next-generation tire that will facilitate quicker and more collaborative development. Our physics team has grown substantially, and this change will allow us to better capitalize on the opportunity and immense talent that this growth represents.

Career Mode: We took a momentary side quest from our career mode project to ensure we have some core sim systems and AI systems in place that this mode will require. Some of these improvements have already made their way to you, such as Adaptive AI. Many other supporting systems are in the works, and our foot is now firmly back on the gas to move forward the backend and UI systems that will power this new sim mode forward. We’re not ready to set expectations on a release, but know that it’s a priority feature for us, and we’ll also continue to look for opportunities to use this feature to fuel improvements that can be enjoyed in many areas of the iRacing experience.

Miscellaneous: A few quick improvements of note are as follows…

• We moved off our older Oracle on-premise solution and into Oracle’s cloud (OCI). This should allow us to continue scaling as we grow and reduce or eliminate the database-specific maintenance periods we have needed each year. More uptime is more opportunity to race—a win for all!
• Demo Drive and Maintenance are now integrated directly within the application. These were foundational steps to allow for other types of offline access, like Career Mode or AI Championships.
• We are developing additional AI templates that let you select a car from a class. The result is that you can finally select the car you want from a full multi-class endurance AI season.
• Our launcher UI has been updated to the latest version of React, and now runs smoother and faster.

Future Track and Car content

Our team is already deep into development on our September car and track releases, as well as December.

Currently, the track team is pushing most intensely on Mexico City, which is going to be quite the substantial effort by the time we’re done. It’s going to look and drive great. We updated our Miami data now that the Grand Prix has had its May race buildup and are working through transforming the facility to more accurately represent race day. We also have a handful of city tracks in the pipeline.

The car team is working on many interesting projects, including exciting additions to GT3, GT4, and GTP. There have been some fits and starts, but we are oh so close to having the data we need to enhance and extend our Dirt Road car offering. Our high-performance open-wheelers will see an exciting addition in the near future that will allow us to represent a new tier of real-world competition better. We’re just scratching the surface here, with more to come down the road.

I could keep going, as we have so many critical initiatives underway, such as our full Audio team, who are working on transforming the auditory experience of sim racing in iRacing, our great UI team, AI-powered feature R&D, tooling, and more. There will always be a next time, so let’s defer some updates until then.

As always, thank you all for your support, for being a vital part of our community, and for choosing to do your sim racing in iRacing. For our worldwide team of developers here at iRacing, this is a passion as much as it is our career, and we’re fortunate to have you, the best group in all of simulation and gaming, supporting us and racing with us every day. We’re also fortunate to have the best assembled group of talent in the business, which has taken years to assemble and expand. We now have 200+ people across four continents and 16 countries. Motorsports and sim racing are global passions. iRacing is a global company powered by a global community, and we’re fortunate to be connected with you all to enjoy sim racing together.

We look forward to seeing you all out on the track when Season 3 is released in a few weeks.

-Greg