Category: Miscellaneous Thoughts

New iRacing Late Model Stock Car Confirmed

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Late Model Stock North Wilkesboro
~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

February 27, 2023 2:40 PM Central:

Developing: This Twitter post from Dale Earnhadt Jr. appears to confirm the pending release of  a new iRacing Late Model Stock Car for the 2023 Season 2 build.

I’ll continue to monitor this story and update as it happens.

February 27, 2023 2:55 PM Central:

Joining a myriad of popular race cars set to appear in the 2023 Season 2 build, iRacing will release a brand spanking new Late Model Stock car just in time for the new season which begins in March. In the iRacing simulator/game, the new car will be used in the iRacing CARS Late Model Stock Tour, the result of a new partnership agreement that will also make iRacing the Official Racing Game of the CARS Tour.

iRacing’s updated Late Model Stock is based on JR Motorsports’ CARS Late Model Stock Tour entry, which won both the driver and owner championships last year with Carson Kvapil. Weighing in at 3100 pounds, the Late Model Stock produces more than 400 horsepower and features fiberglass body panels designed to take the abuse of wheel-to-wheel short track racing. Dale Earnhardt Jr., iRacing executive director and owner of both JR Motorsports and the CARS Tour, was hands-on in the development of the car, spending hours testing and giving feedback to help tune the car to match its real-world counterpart.

iRacing Late Model Stock Car

“Late model racing is taking a big step forward in 2023, and it’s awesome to have iRacing be a part of that,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “The Late Model Stock is a blast to drive in the real world, and I can’t wait for people to have that same experience in iRacing. It’s also great to be able to bring iRacing and the CARS Tour together—it adds further legitimacy to the in-sim product, while also giving CARS Tour fans an official home for their sim racing fix. We’re really excited about the future and can’t wait for the car to drop as part of 2023 Season 2!”

Current CARS tracks available in the iRacing simulation include

  • Hickory Motor Speedway
  • Langley Speedway
  • North Wilkesboro Speedway
  • South Boston Speedway

The new Late Model Stock car will replace the venerable but aging iRacing Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS Late Model. If you own the Monte Carlo, you will receive the new Late Model Stock car for free.

OSR League Update for January 31, 2017

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

Latest News

I have created a league for dirt racing which appears to be right around the corner. Join here if you’re interested. We will see what iRacing releases first and continue from there. I’m hoping we can start testing, practicing, and hosting races in Street Stock and/or other cars soon, then move on to serious league racing in the near future. Each separate class/car will have its own league under the OSR name.

I expect the league to eventually become a dirt league, but I would like to continue running some asphalt if time permits.

Last Week’s Race Winners

  • Modified – Royce Scrivano
  • Pro Street Stock – Jeff Kendrick
  • Late Model Stock Car – Royce Scrivano

Coming Up

This Friday night, the Modifieds will race at Concord Speedway in the late afternoon. Practice begins at 9:00 pm eastern time with qualifying at 9:30 and racing at 9:35. We will be using this setup: [wpfilebase tag=file id=2035 tpl=filebrowser /].

Sunday night, the Pro Street Stocks visit the high banks of Bristol Motor Speedway for a race under the lights. The setup for this race is not a baseline setup. Instead, I made a small camber adjustment on a setup I built earlier this season and selected it for the league race. After thoroughly testing both setups, I found that the one selected is faster and stays faster longer than the baseline I made for Bristol. Bristol is a tricky place so it would be good to try to get some practice on this setup: [wpfilebase tag=file id=2032 tpl=filebrowser /].

For our feature race of the weekend, the Late Model Stock Cars head to USA International Speedway Sunday night at 9:00 pm eastern for a long 75 lap night race. USA is pretty amazing at night so this will be fun. We will use this setup: [wpfilebase tag=file id=2034 tpl=filebrowser /]. It says baseline, but this setup runs like a flaming pig. It’s not too much different from the other setup I built for USA this season which you can get on the iRacing Late Model Setups page.

1957 Chevy Super Stock at Dixie Speedway

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ 2 Comments

Here’s a short video I made showcasing the Dirtworks Designs 1957 Chevy Superstock I’m driving at Dixie Speedway. I’m not good in these cars yet. I had to reduce the quality a good bit for this video, unfortunately.

Dirtworks Designs made this mod for rFactor 1. It includes 1950s Fords, Dodges, and Chevys, and later model stock cars such as Chevelles all the way up to Monte Carlos and lots of others as both Pure Stocks and Super Stocks.

If anybody is interested in loading this mod and tearing up some dirt, I’ll help in any way I can. I’d love to start a league built around these cars. You can download the full version of rFactor at the link below.

Download the full version of rFactor 1 right now. I also have a detailed installation and configuration tutorial. You can also find me in TeamSpeak if you need help.

You can also download the DirtWorks Designs Stocks you see in the videos here:

2015 DirtWorks Designs Stocks V1

And a great dirt track pack to run them on here:

2015 DirtWorks Designs Track Pack V2

The options with rFactor are limitless, including winged sprint cars (World of Outlaws style), Dirt Late Models, Crate Late Models, Mini Sprints, and tons of other dirt and asphalt mods.

Here’s another video I made back in April. I left the quality just a little higher, but, as you can see, the video is a bit choppy. This is night racing at The Beehive, Talladega Short Track.

Again, you can download the full version of rFactor at the link below.

Download the full version of rFactor 1 right now. I also have a detailed installation and configuration tutorial. You can also find me in TeamSpeak if you need help.

DirtWorks Designs Stocks:

2015 DirtWorks Designs Stocks V1

DirtWorks Designs track pack:

2015 DirtWorks Designs Track Pack V2

How to Stay in Rookie Street Stock

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ 2 Comments

iRacing Rookie Street Stock FlipHere is a piece written by an iRacer by the name of Elliott Smith of the Australia/NZ Club. Apparently Elliott wrote this after watching the Rookie Street Stock split during Week 13. I found it very entertaining so I thought I’d share it here.

I wrote a list of how to STAY in rookies.

1) Drive hard. If you can’t hear your tires squealing, you’re not doing it right. Slam the brakes and throttle on every corner, and jerk the wheel. You should be sideways off every apex. If you start losing traction by lap 15, blame the tire model. If you spin, blame whoever was closest.

2) Fight for every position. What are you, a loser? It doesn’t matter if it’s the first corner of a 40 lap race or the last corner on the final lap and you’re being put another lap down by the leader. If you see someone in your rear view mirror, start braking late into corners and tracking out into the dirt on exits. Block if you have to. On the other hand, if you’re chasing, dive-bomb every corner. If they go high or wide, go inside them even if you don’t think you can hold your line. Remember – if they hit you, it’s their fault! You had the right of way. Make sure to tell them that.

3) If you hear someone wrecking, or your spotter warns you about a stopped car, this is your chance! Get on the throttle hard; it’s a lot easier to pick up positions when your opponents are sideways, stationary, and on fire around the next blind corner. Same thing goes if the guy next to you gets loose – he’s going to lose speed, so definitely don’t compromise your run by giving him room. Haven’t you seen Days of Thunder? Foot on the floor and drive on through!

4) You just wrecked. This sucks. You have a few options, though. You’ll want to save time, so forget about changing down gears or holding the brakes, just mash the throttle and slowly point it in the right direction. It’s everyone else’s responsibility to drive around you. If you’ve been given a meatball flag, towing takes way too long, so just drive around on the racing line until you get to the pits. If you’re reading this and you’re currently sideways in the grass doing 180 km/h with no hope of recovery, be sure to point the car where you want to be and stay on the gas. This way, when you eventually do come to a stop, you’ll have at least moved closer to the pits. Do this even if it’s going to send your car shooting across the track.

5) You’re in the pits with 8 minutes of repairs on the third lap of a 20 lap race. There’s really no point continuing now, so spit some choice words over the mic at whoever’s fault it was, and quit the session. You probably have time to get into the next one and win that instead.

If, on the other hand, staying in rookies is not your goal, you might want to consider removing one or more of the aforementioned from your repertoire.

The Missing What’s Hot Widget

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

When I read the iRacing release notes and saw that they planned to remove the What’s Hot widget, I didn’t think I was going to like it. I was right.

The What’s Hot widget was the simplest way to find races on iRacing. The filters were good. You could find what you were looking for at a glance. The new design just makes it more difficult to find races.

It’s no secret that I don’t like NASCAR or anything related to NASCAR, so the Popular Races & Practices button is pretty much useless to me. I figure, since NASCAR is popular, most things listed on a page of popular races is going to be NASCAR related. I can’t really tell what’s going on on that page either. Mostly I just see a long list of broken images, and a lot of tracks that don’t interest me in any way. I’m a short track guy 100%. Talladega bores me. Charlotte puts me to sleep. I don’t own Gateway and I never will. I don’t have any interest in Autodromo Nazionale Monza, whatever that is. I did see South Boston there. If I didn’t already know, I wouldn’t be able to tell what car is running there without doing some additional clicking. I didn’t have to do that with the What’s Hot widget. It was all there at my fingertips with one quick glance.

So that’s Popular Races & Practices. What if I want to run something that is unpopular? I guess I’m just the redheaded stepchild then. I guess I’ll just take a cold tater and wait.

Then you have the Official Races button. This just takes you to the old Race Guide page. That’s something I never liked and never used before. For one thing it only shows races. But, worse than that, it doesn’t update automatically. So if you’re looking at the car count on the Race Guide page, you’ll have to reload the page to get it to update, which renders the page pretty much useless. I did find one solution, though. You can get an addon or plugin for your browser (Chrome or Firefox) to set a page to reload every X seconds. I just set the Race Guide page to reload every 30 seconds. I sure am jumping through a lot of hoops just to use the iRacing service. Wouldn’t it be neat if they had something like a What’s Hot widget so I wouldn’t have to do all this?

And while we’re at it, why not make filters that will filter by car and track. That way I could filter out everything over one mile, and all cars that I’m never going to run; anything other then Street Stock, Late Model, Super Late Model, SK Modified, and Tour Modified. Why can’t iRacing just simplify when something needs simplifying, and leave well enough alone?