2015 Season 4 Brings Big Changes to iRacing

iRacing will release the 2015 Season 4 build on Tuesday, September 8 [The 2015 Season 4 build was delayed 24 hours by iRacing]. Expect the iRacing member website to be down for around 5 hours beginning at 5:00 am eastern time.

This build brings a whole bevy of significant changes to the iRacing simulation as well as the member website. iRacing changes a lot of things that I don’t really see as all that important, so we’ll start with some of the significant website changes. Some of these involve the new dynamic track feature.

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• Tooltips were designed to provide descriptions of track conditions in official series and results.
• Members will be able to set and preview custom track conditions in test sessions and hosted sessions.
• The iRacing member website was modified to provide better compatibility with Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge. I never had any problems with it, but for those who did, this is good news.
• The schedule PDF will now display more race setup options as well as a clickable table of contents to find series or sections more easily.

The bigger, more significant changes are in the racing simulation itself:

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• EasyAntiCheat has been added to the software package that you will download with the new build. This is supposed to make it harder for cheaters to cheat.
• Dynamic Track Surfaces – This is the first of two major changes in the simulation. Track surfaces will now change with ambient temperature, rubberization, as well as the activity on the track. As races progress, the track will naturally get hotter as the cars run. There will be rubber buildup on the surface in proportion to how hard the tires are working. The rubber will roll up and marble. Initial track conditions can be specified for hosted and test sessions. Marbles can be cleaned off the track prior to the race session as well as during caution periods on ovals, or they can be left.
• New Tire Model – This is the second major change in the iRacing simulation. iRacing made a change in the lateral stiffness calculations of the v6 tire. This calculation was missing in all previous tire versions including  v6. All of the cars that were already on the v6 tire have been updated, and many more cars have been upgraded to the new tire model.
• All short track cars will be on the v6 tire.

In addition to the v6 tire model updates, some cars got additional updates:

• The iRacing Late Model got some additional rear end ratios, and a bug fix in the chassis ballast adjustment.
• The SK Modified got an 8:1 steering ratio option, and a slightly raised center of gravity. The engine efficiency was adjusted. iRacing offered no explanation as to what that means. The minimum tire stagger limit was removed. This was a useless update. If you run less than 2 inches of stagger on a Modified, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Aero revisions were allegedly made. Apparently there has been some sort of bug in the chassis ballast adjustment for several cars. iRacing claims they have fixed this on the SK and the others. It’s nice how iRacing keeps these things a secret until they quietly announce that they have fixed it. I’ve been trying to use ballast adjustments all this time. Now I don’t even know if they ever did anything. If they did, it wasn’t much anyway.
• The Tour Modified got the same updates as the SK Modified.
• The Super Late Model got the same updates as the Late Model.

In summary, the interesting things will be the v6 tires and the dynamic surface model, and that wraps it up for the important changes coming in the new iRacing build.