Racing seasons and series iRacing.com operates in seasons lasting 13 (rarely 14) weeks, four seasons per year. New content and features are typically released in the week before the start of a new season. iRacing.com sanctions many different race series on its service, some of which are meant to correspond to race series held in real life. These are called official series, and can be ranked or unranked. In ranked series, the player's performance affects their iRating and Safety Rating (described below). With few exceptions, a series uses one car, one class of cars, or a few car classes throughout the entire season. Typically, a series runs on a different track each week of the season for 12 (rarely 13) weeks. In the last week of the season, so-called Week 13, most regular official ranked series are suspended, and temporarily replaced by unranked races designed to showcase the new, just released content, and to provide a slightly more relaxed racing experience. There are five disciplines of auto racing available for players:
sports cars (cars with
fenders),
formula cars,
oval, dirt road (composed of
rallycross and
trophy truck racing), and
dirt oval. Before early 2024, sports cars and single-seater (formula) cars were included in a single
road discipline. Each series has three session types for the given week: Open practice, Race, or Time Trial. In most cases, a Race session is immediately preceded by a short two-lap lone Qualifying session which determines the starting order for the race. Some series use detached Qualifying session, whereby the best lap time achieved by the player in any Qualifying session they participated determines their relative starting position for all subsequent races in this week. Each series has its own seasonal championship for Race and Time Trial, and also a separate, non-series based Time Attack mode. Users are allowed to create their own race or practice sessions and their own full series and seasons using
iRacing's Hosted Sessions and Leagues features, respectively. Hosted races and leagues are always unranked.
License classes After the "Rookie" license, which all players start at,
iRacing uses a letter-grade licensing system, with grades of D, C, B, and A, from lowest to highest. There is also a Pro license, which is reserved for drivers who qualify for the premier eSports series hosted by iRacing.com, such as the
eNASCAR iRacing Series and the Porsche eSports Supercup. Licenses are specific to each of five iRacing disciplines. Advancement of a license class is determined by a player's participation in sessions that have a minimum required license that isn't lower than the player's current license (called a Minimum Participation Requirement), and advancement of safety rating. Official series require a minimum license level to participate, e.g. to participate in a race in a C-level series, the player must possess a C, B or A license, while players with Rookie or D licenses generally are not allowed to join such race.
Safety rating system The safety rating system in
iRacing is a no-blame system for determining how "safe" a player is on the track by assigning "incident points" for events such as going off the track, losing control of the car, and contact with an object (usually a barrier or wall) or another car. At the end of an official race session, the ratio of corners driven to incident points incurred ("corners per incident", CPI) is calculated over a large number of most recent corners, usually covering more than the most recent race. The exact number of corners depends on the player's current license level. The resulting CPI figure determines the player's Safety Rating, calculated separately for each iRacing discipline. Players can be penalized in-race or disqualified from a session for incurring too many incident points. In case of contact between cars, the system does not assign fault, and all players involved in the incident incur the same number of incident points.
Driver rating system iRacing also includes an
Elo-type driver skill rating system called iRating, used to split drivers into different race sessions and championship divisions for better competition. Like Safety Rating/license class, iRating is tracked separately for each of iRacing's five disciplines. iRating and Safety Rating are only impacted in iRacing.com-sanctioned official ranked races. Additionally, a minimum number of players (usually 6) must participate in the race for iRating to be affected. ==Content==