iRacing 2015 Season 2 Release Notes

Here are some interesting details for the iRacing 2015 Season 2 build.

Website

• The global wrapper for the member website has been cleaned and polished. The navigation has been reorganized (thank God!) to help both old and new users find things more easily.
• The News Room, Race Guide, and Hosted Races pages now have buttons to help members jump to popular activities such as practice, popular races, official races, and hosted races.
• Many redundant dashboard widgets have been removed. The Race Planner and Service Status widgets remain, and can be reordered but not removed.
• The What’s Hot widget has been removed and replaced with a Popular Races guide. (I liked the What’s Hot widget. I used it every day. I’ll reserve judgement until I see the replacement but I don’t like the sound of that.)
• The Settings panel has only one pane of settings because there are no widgets to configure, and no tickers.

Thrustmaster T300RS GT Steering Wheel & Pedal Set

The T300 is a proven mid-range wheel with smooth belt-driven force feedback and a responsive brushless motor for clear track feel. An 11-inch leather wheel, solid three-pedal GT set, and PS5, PS4, and PC compatibility give racers the precision to brake later, hold tighter lines, and improve lap after lap.

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Documentation

• The Quick Start guide has been revamped so that it will actually be quick.

Next Level Racing Wheel Stand 2.0

Master your laps without dominating the room. The Next Level Racing Wheel Stand 2.0 stands rock-solid for direct-drive wheels, yet folds away in seconds when real life calls. Full adjustability for wheel, pedals, and shifter lets a man settle into his proper position the honest way. A clever chair cradle keeps your seat planted under hard braking, while predrilled mounts welcome Thrustmaster, Fanatec, Logitech, and the rest. Upgrade later to a full cockpit with the GTSeat add-on. Serious performance, sensible footprint—no compromises required.

Buy on Amazon

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Leagues

• On the page for ignored league applications, clicking the red X will now delete the correct entry. (Yes! Yes! Finally, 6 months after I reported it, it’s going to be fixed. Probably. Maybe.)
• League Seasons are now sorted by the most recent races that have occurred.

Simulation

• The total number of fast repairs available for a race are now displayed on the session’s Info tab.
• Improved the suspension modeling to account for flexibility of the suspension mounting points. This softens the resulting wheel rate of every car by 2-20% depending on the car. Car setups are likely to fail tech inspection and will need to have their ride heights adjusted to restore their previous levels, and also may need to have slightly stiffer springs selected to offset the extra flex and to regain desired handling characteristics. Most cars have had some degree of tuning to make sure there are no problems with suspension travel and to make sure enough range of adjustment is available.
• All cars have updated iRacing setups for the suspension changes.
• All cars now spawn with a warmed up motor. They start at about 170° Fahrenheit instead of ambient air temperature.
• All cars now have a checkbox in the F4 Fuel black box to allow the driver to choose whether or not they want to use a fast repair in the upcoming pitstop. Also shown beside the checkbox is the number of remaining fast repairs. If a race is configured for unlimited fast repairs, that will show as 255 remaining. The checkbox will not check when no fast repairs are remaining (0 shown). Fast repairs are only available for use during races, so during testing or practice or qualifying you will see 0 fast repairs remaining.
• Updated general drafting behavior a little to improve racing.

Cars

• Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS (Late Model), Legends Ford, SK Modified, Tour Modified, Street Stock, and Super Late Model – The pit crew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged.
• Super Late Model – Changed from adjustable packer and bump stop stiffness to adjustable packer only.

That’s all of the relevant updates for the upcoming iRacing season. I look forward to testing the cars with the suspension changes.