iRacing 2013 Season 3 Schedule Released

iRacing has released the 2013 season 3 schedule. I’ll discuss and post the short track oval portion of the schedule here, if you’re interested.

Let’s start at the top with the Legends cars. Legends are running pretty much the same thing they run every season, same tracks, same laps. There are a few variations, but it is a repetitious schedule as always, with the second half of the season pretty much the same as the first half. This series would be much better if iRacing would stop trying to molly-coddle the cheap skates who refuse to buy a track, and throw in a couple of new tracks, one in each half of the season. It’s clear that the staff at iRacing have their own ideas, regardless of what the customers might want.

And while I’m discussing iRacing’s ideas and what customers actually want, let’s discuss Street Stock Class C. iRacing has continued in it’s quest to kill this class. This quest will end soon, because soon nobody will want to fool with 100 lap races in a Street Stock. People just don’t have that kind of attention span. The one prevailing theme that I heard about this class all season is that the races are way too long. What did iRacing do? They did nothing. They changed the tracks around a little, but the races are just as long. I also heard a lot of talk about a fixed setup class, but iRacing shows no intention of doing that either, despite the fact that there is no fixed setup short track class in existence on iRacing. It’s peculiar that every league administrator on earth can figure out that people want to race Street Stocks with fixed setups, but iRacing can’t get a grip on that fact. Let me lay it out for you iRacing. STREET STOCK CLASS C: SHORTER RACES AND FIXED SETUPS. Get a grip people. Find the idiot that had the idea to make Street Stock races this long and FIRE him or her immediately. But if failure is your goal, you’re doing a great job with Street Stock Class C.

And now we come to one class that, I believe, saw a little improvement in the schedule, and that is the Late Model tour. The big tracks are out on this schedule, and the smaller tracks are in, and it looks like they shortened the races just a little. They seem to have the race lengths about right in this class, which is odd because the races in the Street Stock class are quite a bit longer, and that just doesn’t happen in the real world.

Since I’ve touched on the subject, I do have my opinion of what iRacing should do with Street Stock Class C. I believe it should be a D license class, and should have fixed and open setup divisions. If nobody wants to race in the open setup division, do away with it. Most people don’t because they don’t have the time and/or the patience to fool with making or testing setups, so that division probably wouldn’t last. Also, reduce the laps to about 40% of what they are now.

To fill the gap left after moving Street Stock from class C to class D, iRacing should move Late Model from class D up to class C, and also create a fixed setup division for Late Model Class D. The move to class C would give Late Models full course cautions. It might be a good idea to increase the number of laps in the races by about 10% or so, but I don’t think it would be necessary. This makes a lot more sense than having Street Stocks a step up from Late Models where license class is concerned. Late Models are a step up from Street Stocks in every other sense. Why are they a step down on iRacing?

Enough of the soap box. Here is the short track oval portion of the iRacing 2013 Season 3 schedule.

Rookie Class Series

D Class Series

C Class Series