Dirt Oval and Short Asphalt Oval Update News from Tony Gardner

April 19, 2023 ~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

iRacing president Tony Gardner provided more specific information about the upcoming dirt and asphalt oval update coming to iRacing in June.

Good day,

On February 3rd of this year I posted a development update to members. One of the main focuses of that update was to address concerns related to the state of oval dirt racing and oval pavement racing. I mentioned that we formed a team focused on tackling these issues head-on, beginning with dirt, and we have internally been referring to these efforts as “dirt racing refresh” and “oval racing refresh”. It actually is more than just a refresh, but we didn’t want to call it overhaul either, because that is also not the case. It has been a couple of months since the previous update and we are now cautiously optimistic that Dirt Refresh will ship in June, so I wanted to provide more details on what to expect.

Dirt Racing Refresh:

Tracks:

We updated the water content of the soil resulting in a greater difference in soil strength between “fresh” and “dry.” This results in a bigger variation between driving on the ‘fresh or tacky’ part of the track vs the ‘dry or slick’.
We updated the relationship of the dirt surface and the tire allowing for a more “in the track” feel.
We updated variation in track wear / track prep. There is a larger gap between low track wear and a lot of track wear as a result of laps being run.
We added track bumps through dirt and water variation. This adds a layer of variation in track prep session to session. Some races may have a smooth surface (think what is on members now) and some races may have a more rigid and bumpy surface. Bumpiness may vary session to session and change slightly throughout the track wearing process.
We added water variation scaling. This is another variable that may be noticed session to session. Think of a water truck watering the track. The higher parts of the track may be drier than the lower parts due to gravity and the water seeping to the bottom. For example, the top of the track may be drier than before and the bottom may be wetter. The water truck is not a perfect science so it may vary in how dry or wet specific parts of the track are race to race.

Vehicles:

Every oval car that races on dirt was tuned either through tires, physics, or both. This includes Stock Cars (Current NASCAR Cup Cars, NASCAR Trucks, ARCA Menards Impala) and as a bonus also includes the Off-Road Trucks (Pro 4, Pro 2, Pro 2 Lite)
Tire wear was introduced to the Dirt tire model, and independently tuned per vehicle. Whether a 75 lap super late model race or a 30 lap 360 sprint car race, paying attention to your race length and tires will be important.
Some vehicles received sound improvements and updates.

New Damage Model Enabled:

Super Late Model
Pro Late Model
Limited Late Model

New features:

The ability for Hosted Racing hosts to disable the virtual mirror for their session.

Bug Fixes:

A handful of dirt tracks had dark seams around their perimeter. This was visual only and did not affect the physics. This has been fixed.
Remote car wheels could seem to twitch oddly. This has been fixed.
Certain tracks did not have collisions applied to their catch fencing. This has been fixed.
Rebuilding DTI data to fix odd cushions at certain tracks.
And more…

While it won’t make our “Refresh” release, dirt AI is also in the works, although there are technical hurdles we still need to overcome before we’re ready to make it available.

As I mentioned last time, work is underway on an Oval Refresh as well. This project has similar goals to those achieved with the Dirt Refresh: a thorough assessment and tuning of all systems that combine to create the oval racing experience, in particular dynamic track and its impact on multigroove. Progress is also being made generally in regard to tires and the model.

We are also making significant progress on our new weather system along with rain and are still hoping to release these features later this year. This will bolster our service as a whole but more directly impact the road racing side of things. We also have several exciting tracks in our pipeline including we are doing a little tour of Italy this week, scanning Misano as well as Mugello. (I don’t think I mentioned Mugello in my last post.) As usual, plenty more in the works, but I wanted to simply focus on the dirt racing refresh with this update.

New dirt content will also be arriving later this year with the release of Kern County. Kern features both a dirt oval and half-mile pavement oval on the property, and the iRacing release will include both of them.

We are really excited about the results of these efforts, and our testing team has enjoyed the improved raceability of the cars and enhanced track dynamics. Thanks for your patience throughout this process, and know that we hear you and are working hard every day to improve the iRacing experience across our many racing categories and sim systems.

As always, thanks for being members and good racing!!!!

iRacing 2019 Season 2 Release Notes Highlights

March 1, 2019March 2, 2019 ~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

Season 2 brings us some interesting changes and updates. League admins and owners should be very happy with some of the updates in this release! Here are the highlights from the iRacing 2019 Season 2 release notes.

iRacing Beta User Interface

Vehicle damage is now optional for hosted sessions created within the iRacing beta user interface. You can toggle damage ON (the default setting) or OFF. With damage off, the cars in the session are indestructible. There will be no damage from collisions of any kind and car performance will not be adjusted for any damage that would normally result from an impact. All iRacing official series or any other non-user created events, vehicle damage will remain ON. The no-damage feature is for hosted events and test sessions only.
For all table views, you can now sort the table by clicking the header in a column. These sort values will be saved when leaving the screen and when exiting the application.

League Seasons

League seasons can now be configured to drop races. This is especially valuable for leagues since the Dan Lisa scoring system is broken in terms of the way it handles consolation races.
League seasons can now be edited to change the season name, the point system, or the number of races to count (i.e. number of dropped races). Changes to the season only apply to the races run after the change was made.
A new point system has been added as an option, called “Dirt.” This option corresponds to the 2019 USAC non-Silver Crown point system. The USAC system is shown below.

Competition points are based on finishing position in the feature event. In addition, three (3) competition points are awarded to the fastest qualifier, and three (3) competition points are awarded to the leader of the most race laps (most recent lap leader breaks a tie). Participants utilizing a “Provisional Starting Option” will earn Feature Race points.

Qualifying	Heat Races	Consolation Races	Feature Race
1st --- 6	1st --- 8	1st --- 4	1st --- 70
2nd --- 5	2nd --- 7	2nd --- 3	2nd --- 67
3rd --- 4	3rd --- 6	3rd --- 2	3rd --- 64
4th --- 3	4th --- 5	4th --- 1	4th --- 61
5th --- 2	5th --- 4*	5th --- 1*	5th --- 58
6th --- 1	6th --- 3*	6th --- 1*	6th --- 55
	7th --- 2*	7th --- 1*	7th --- 52
	8th --- 1*	8th --- 1*	8th --- 49
			9th --- 46
			10th -- 43
			11th -- 41
			12th -- 39
			13th -- 37
			14th -- 35
			15th -- 33
			16th -- 31
			17th -- 29
			18th -- 27
			19th -- 25
			20th -- 23
			Balance of field: 23 points each

*These points are only awarded to entries finishing 5th on back in a Heat Race and transferring directly to the
Main-Event.
Participants earning Heat Race points will not be eligible for Semi-Feature points.
Entries utilizing a “Provisional Starting Option” will earn Feature Race points but will forfeit semi feature points.
When applicable entries utilizing a “Race Organizer Option” will not earn Feature Race points but will retain any
points previously earned during the race meeting.
All licensed car entrants and drivers will receive ten (10) points if not transferring to the feature event.

For anyone reading this who has little or no league owner/admin experience, all of these league improvements are a very big deal!

League Heat Race Results

For League Heat Races, the ‘Points’ column now reflects the points earned in the heat race segment. A new column called ‘Agg Points’ has been added. This column displays the total points accumulated from the first segment to the current segment.

Engine Model

iRacing has added an engine cylinder torque model. This will cause some cars to stall at very low RPMs (below idle rpm). The anti-stall aid should be disabled to experience this action.

New Tire Model Version 7

The New Tire Model Version 7 (NTMv7) will roll out during 2019 Season 2 beginning with the Skip Barber Formula 2000, aka the Skippy. If you want to try this tire model this season you will have to do some testing in the Skippy. This tire model has significant enhancements in rubber compound and tire carcass dynamics. The tire model should be on every vehicle soon®.

League Racing

League Heat Races cond now earn championship points.
The Feature Race, or Main, is allocated points based on the season’s selected point system.
Qualifying, Heats, and Consolation Races can be allocated points if properly configured and the point system is not set to ‘None.’
Points schedules and rules for Qualifying, Heats, and Consolation Races are based on USAC’s 2019 points schedules for non-Silver Crown races. See the points table above for details.
Stacked consolation races only allocate points to the final consolation race.

iRacing Dirt

Reduction to tire grip on dirt surfaces as the hardpan is approached has been amplified.

Admin Commands

iRacing has added a new Admin command, ‘!trackstate’. A session admin can now view and change the track state for the next session. Example: An admin can view the track state near the end of practice and change the track state for the next session, if so desired. This is a great addition. I can see using this to simulate some track re-prep before the feature.

Dirt Late Model (All)

The front packer adjustment increments have been changed from 1/4 inch to 1/16 inch.
Minimum damping is enforced while in the garage. Damper (shock) adjustments will no longer influence static heights and weights.
Default setups have been updated. Custom setups may have to be adjusted.

Dirt Midget

Minimum damping is enforced while in the garage. Damper (shock) adjustments will no longer influence static heights and weights.
Default setups have been updated. Custom setups will probably have to be adjusted.

Dirt Sprint Car (All)

Minimum damping is enforced while in the garage. Damper (shock) adjustments will no longer influence static heights and weights.
Default setups have been updated. Custom setups will probably have to be adjusted.

Dirt UMP Modified

Minimum damping is enforced while in the garage. Damper (shock) adjustments will no longer influence static heights and weights.
Default setups have been updated. Custom setups may have to be adjusted.

Super Late Model (Asphalt)

This car needs some serious updates. Let’s hope it becomes a race-worthy vehicle again. iRacing has made the following changes to the SLM:

New aerodynamic information has been applied.
Brakes have been updated.
Small front-end geometry tuning.
Three inch ride heights are now legal.

From that, it sounds like the iRacing Asphalt Super Late Model is probably dead until there is a major overhaul.

Charlotte Motor Speedway

Numerous additional track configurations have been added, including:

The full NASCAR Oval has been updated.
Roval Long
Legends Oval updated
Legends Road Course Short – .72 mile
Legends Road Course Medium – 1.25 miles
Legends Road Course Long – 1.5 miles

That’s about it for most of the updates. League owners and admins should be pretty happy with the much-needed attention to iRacing league systems.

iRacing Dirt 2019 Season 2 Update

February 28, 2019February 28, 2019 ~ Jeff Kendrick ~ 2 Comments

Steve Reis, iRacing Vehicle Dynamics Engineer — Steve Reis, iRacing Senior Vehicle Dynamics Engineer

iRacing Senior Vehicle Dynamics Engineer Steve Reis provided an update for iRacing Dirt changes coming in the 2019 Season 2 build. Reis says that uncounted caution laps are coming. I’ll have to take his word for it. I think he believes it. I’m not sure if I do. Anyway, here is all of the information that Steve provided.

The non-wing sprint cars will both have their cockpit shock adjusters re-enabled.
The “damper adjustments no longer influencing heights and weights while the car is sitting in the garage” has been applied to all of the sprint cars, midget, late models, and modified. It has a fairly large impact on the sprints and midget, and much less so on the late models and modified. Expect your old setups to need some height/corner weight adjustments to pass tech, especially in the sprints and midget.
There has been no major development on dirt tire wear. I’d expect it will happen once V7 is fully up and running on the asphalt side of things.
Caution laps not counting is still a work in progress. It will happen eventually!
Outside pits is not something we are currently pursuing.
I’d expect the tire/track interaction update to go out at this point. As Tyler Hudson mentioned, it’s a fairly substantial change in grip, feel, and lap time between the tacky and the slick.

iRacing Dirt Updates and More In Patch Four

April 24, 2017 ~ Jeff Kendrick ~ 3 Comments

iRacing rolled out 2017 Season 2 Patch 4 today, and here are a few things you can expect for dirt racing.

Paint Kit – No more solid black cars. Cars that have never been painted will automatically have the member’s helmet color scheme applied along with a random pattern and random sponsors. If you never painted your helmet, you get a random pattern and color scheme that will also be applied to your cars.
Dirt – The dirt and dust that the cars sling when they dig into the cushion has been updated. Does that mean rooster tails?
Dirt Late Model – First gear has been removed.
Engine sound samples have been improved.
Opponent’s car wheel positions have been adjusted.
Dirt Sprint Car
Cross weight bounds were increased.
Fuel economy has been adjusted. Now maybe 35 lap races will work.
No more tech on tube heights.
Maximum rear stagger reduced from 17 inches to 14 inches.
Opponent’s car wheel positions have been adjusted.
The damage model has been updated.
Engine sound samples have been improved.
USAC Non-Winged Sprint Car Introduced
USAC 360 West Coast Sprint Car
USAC 410 Sprint Car

For the dirt tracks, the starting stalls have all been angled slightly to the right. At Volusia Speedway, pit entry should no longer cause off-track penalties.

It’s not a huge update, but there’s some pretty good stuff here. Most notably, the removal of first gear on the Dirt Late Models, and the fuel economy adjustment on the Sprint Cars. I look for bigger stuff in the new build coming up in May.

Tyler D. Hudson Joins the iRacing Team; Dirt Gets Closer

January 28, 2017February 4, 2017 ~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

iRacing Dirt Late Model - January, 2017 — iRacing Dirt Late Model – January, 2017

In case any of you missed it, Tyler D. Hudson, a guy some of you may have raced against, and a former iRacing World Champion, has take a job at iRacing. He’s still in training now I believe, but he has the perks, and one of those perks is the opportunity to try out iRacing Dirt. He blogged about it:

Just this week I accepted a job at iRacing working in the customer service department working with Nim, Susan, Angela and the rest of the team including helping Shannon as well with the WC series. I am very excited about it and chomping at the bit to get going. I look forward to doing my best to help iRacers for many years to come. I don’t officially start for a couple weeks. I will be flying up to Bedford to start my training on the various systems they use and start my training. The only bummer is I will not be allowed to race in the NASCAR Peak World Championship Series but I’ll still be racing everything else when I can so that will be fun!

I also already started to get some employee perks. The guys let me try out the dirt content last night and after sending Steve a wall of text about it he thought it would be a good idea to post it in the forums! I’m also told Dirt is going to all alpha testers this week.

First, let me start by saying most of my real world racing experience is on dirt tracks, from karts, mini stock and street stocks to late models. Not an extraordinary amount, but more than any other form of racing. So I can honestly say that climbing into iRacing’s version of a dirt late model took me by a huge surprise. From the start I had the sensation I was back in my race car; not from the adrenaline rush as much as the fact that the driving sensation and feedback were like no other car I’ve ever driven in the sim.

There is so much to say about the many different cars iRacing is developing, but I’ll make this as short as possible. These guys have nailed it. Sure, there are some minor issues as with anything in development, but they blew this one out of the park. Maybe it’s because we dirt fans/racers have been left out for so long, we haven’t had anything worth playing since the PS2 game World of Outlaw Sprint Cars or Dirt to Daytona, but believe me, this is the real deal.

The track changes…. A LOT, visually and grip wise. That is a huge part of what makes dirt racing what it is, so you’ll be happy to hear that. You legitimately have to search for moisture in the track for grip. After 10 laps around the bottom at Eldora, the grip had fallen off by half a second and – visually – you could SEE the track change color from wet to dry dirt.

I followed the moisture every lap until I was up by the wall. Then I went back to the bottom and was 3 tenths slower than up top where it was still a little damp. Eventually, I had gotten all the initial moisture out of the track from the bottom to the top, and virtually from the inside wall to the outside wall ran almost identical lap times. This will be great for searching for grip and racing.

Oh, but that’s not all. I backed out, set the track state to 100% and went back out. THERE’S A CUSHION!! I couldn’t really see the cushion, as I understand that’s still in development, but boy you sure can feel it! And the grip it provides will make dirt racing on iRacing genuine, authentic and as real as it gets.

I’ve seen a lot of forum posts by people worried by some of the pictures that the late model won’t “get up on the bars.” Well let me tell you, it took some messing around in the garage, but it does. I haven’t found a way to make the car as far up on the bars as I’d like, but maybe that’s another item in development — or for a crew chief way better than me!

I was able to twist the rear end and float the left front – everything you see in pictures of real race cars. I’m telling you guys, I am amazed at what iRacing has done. I am thrilled to be a part of it, to help develop it and I can’ wait to see how much further we can push the envelope in motor sports simulations. This is groundbreaking stuff: No other game on the market has even scratched the surface at what these guys have already done with dirt – and it’s getting better every day.

As I understand it there is still quite a bit of work to do but all the hype will be worth it. I can’t wait to turn laps with other cars on the track. Oh, and did I even mention the Ford Fiesta?!?!? No? Well we’ll save that for another day. =)”

-Tyler D Hudson

That iRacing Dirt is starting to sound better every day!

The release date is clearly getting much closer. iRacing Dirt has been in alpha testing since January 18 and, in addition to Tyler Hudson, Rico Abreu, Kevin Swindell, and Cling Bowyer are now testing it.