Articles by Heather, Product Reviews
iRacing – Part 1: Getting Started
I kept hearing and reading tweets about iRacing and decided to do a little research about it.
This is part one, about getting started, with more to come in the following weeks.
I went to the person I know has been iRacing for awhile, Tj Majors, who spots for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
What did I need to get started?
“You basically need a computer with a steering wheel and pedals as well as a internet connection. You can go to iracing.com and sign up for their service.” Majors replied.
What computer things do I need like video card, internet connection, things along that line?
Majors answered,” You need a decent gaming computer. Home built computers work great too. A good video card and a good internet connection would be good!”
When does season start?
“There are iRacing seasons. I’m not sure when they all start and end but they have a schedule laid out on their website you can follow.” Majors said.
Since I’m a beginner what’s the best area to start?
Image courtesy of iRacing.Com
Majors advice,” Rookie legends or street stocks. Learn to just finish races. It pays better to just finish than it does to finish 2nd with some incident points.”
Is there a better time of day to race?
“There is racing all day long. The evenings are usually really good times though, lots of racers on!”, responds Majors.
What is the biggest piece of advice for a beginner?
Majors answers,” Just finish. Don’t wreck. Race it like a real car. You will learn more and move up faster if you use your head. If you are wreck less in the beginning it will take you longer to dig out of that hole.”
You can also access the iRacing site through NASCAR.com. I know up and coming drivers use it, and even Sprint Cup drivers can be found there.
I’ll have part two of this article in a couple of weeks.
Image courtesy of iRacing.Com
Editor’s note: iRacing is not just about NASCAR, either. It looks like there’s just about any kind of motorsports you’d like to compete in there, from road racing to short track Saturday night shootouts, etc.
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Tj is right about the most important thing is to finish each race as incident free as possible. Secondly you need to be polite and let the faster cars pass you cleanly, just as you would do in a real race.
iRacing is generally broken down by road and oval racing with seperate licenses for each. And your license generally sets the cars you can race. There is also a rating attached to that license. So I have a C license with a 4.25 rating so I can race R, D, C and B class as long as my rating is above C+4.
One note is that it can get pricey. You get a few cars and a few tracks, but as you progress you need to buy cars and tracks. As a rule each car and track costs around $12 each, with a top price of $15 for a few tracks.
Overall iRacing has a great group of people participating. Unlike a lot of SIMs iRacing people try to keep their actions as close to real world racing as possible. And as you move up through the classes the raceing becomes more fun.