iRacing Reviews 17

am ending my long-term subscription to iRacing due to a fundamental breakdown in their stewarding system. While the physics are industry-leading, the 'protest' system has become a liability for paying members.
​Recently, I was issued a one-week ban for a '0x' (zero damage) incidental contact under yellow—an interaction that had no impact on the race. Conversely, when I reported a driver for a blatant, high-speed ram after the checkered flag, the stewards used my own footage to ban me for two weeks, claiming an 'overcorrection' from bounci g off the wall i was slammed into was retaliatory.
​As a customer, it feels less like a racing service and more like a legal minefield where your investment (cars/tracks) can be locked away on a whim by inconsistent moderation. I have moved my hobby budget to console-based alternatives like NASCAR 25. It offers 90% of the fun for 10% of the hassle and cost. If you value your time and money, be wary of the 'guilty until proven innocent' culture here.

Terrible stewards, terrible racecraft, terrible customer service. They will literally steal your money and can get away with anything with their trash ToS. Corrupt pieces of trash.

i lvoe iracing the customer support is super cool and helps alot...wracking and ramming still a problem but sens ei know that i can di time trial too repair my safty rating when others ramming and wracking my car:( im happy time trial i s like pve mode and youc an elarn so cool driving and the track i even did endurance race with time trial 2 days 4 hours racing always 20 min and than a little break for tea or toilet than i go back so i got 4 hours in spa:D whas really cool sadly i buyed the wrong porsche int he shop instea dof the porsche 963 i got the porsche 919 hu is outdated and is tillw aiting the iracing support helps my and change the porsche or refund it so i can buy it again is no 3 days and they dident write back:((

iRacing delivers incredible driving realism but is undermined by a flawed penalty and lazy SR system. For GT3 enthusiasts, the climb to SR B feels unnecessarily punishing, often forcing players into defensive, non‑competitive strategies just to progress. How can they label Iracing as the most realistic racing sim, when they only punish for incidents. REAL motor sports punish the driver who's at fault.
Until the system is reviewed, other alternatives offer a less stressful and more fun GT3 experience without having to waste precious time grinding SR. If iRacing revises its penalty mechanics, it could easily reclaim its place in my opinion as the premier sim racing platform and would warrant better review scores - but right now, due to the price to fun reward ratio, buyers should be aware of the limitations and frustrations before investing.

iRacing markets itself as the most realistic and fair competitive racing platform. When everything works, it’s excellent. But several core systems contradict what the service claims to deliver.

1. Incident System Ignores Context

The penalty model punishes outcomes instead of behaviour.
If you’re brake-checked on a straight, deliberately rear-ended by someone who stays full throttle into a braking zone, stuck in a Nürburgring track blockage with nowhere to go, netcode-launched into the sky, or overtaken off-track by someone who refuses to yield, you receive the same penalty as the offender.

Safety Rating also ignores the nature of the race. Wet conditions, first-lap chaos, and unavoidable pileups are treated the same as clean, empty-track running. One unavoidable 1x can ruin an otherwise flawless drive.

Fix: Use basic telemetry to identify obvious offenders and reduce penalties for victims. Scale SR to the average incident rate of the session. Stop overvaluing 0x races.

2. No Control Over Server Assignment

You can’t choose your server region or set a maximum ping.
You only see your ping after joining — when it's too late to leave without taking heavy iRating/SR penalties. This disproportionately affects players outside the USA/EU.

Fix: Add region preferences, a max-ping setting, pre-join ping visibility, and no-fault protection for the first few disconnects. Nullify races where multiple drivers suffer identical server-side issues.

3. DX11 Limits Performance and Visibility

The aging DX11 engine struggles with shadows and reflections — especially in rain, where reflections are required just to see the racing line. You effectively need a high-end GPU for basic visibility, not graphical luxury.

Fix: Move to DX12/Vulkan, optimise shadows, and separate critical rain-visibility effects from GPU-heavy reflections.

4. Pricing Expectations

Given how expensive iRacing is, the expectations for fairness and polish are much higher. The issues above would be more tolerable in a cheaper sim, but at this price point you simply expect better.

Final Verdict

iRacing has an outstanding competitive foundation — strong physics, structure, and racing quality.
But the penalty system, server logic, rendering tech, and overall fairness tools all need modernising. These aren’t small annoyances; they directly contradict the realism and fairness iRacing advertises.

With the right updates, iRacing could genuinely meet the standard it claims to set.

iRacing, though pricey, is the best Racing Sim on the market.

For under $10/month, I am able to play and compete against similar skilled opponents on the most realistic racing sim out there. Sure, having to "rent" the cars you race seems a little outdated, but it is well worth it.

I raced over 600 races mad a mistake 3 times and got banned for 2 weeks. Yea i never botherd playing it again after that.

Stay away. This is a complete waste of money with terrible management.

Gave up on Internet races ages ago because they're carnage, full of idiots (it is online after all...).

Easy to buy cars and tracks and then find there's no series for you to use them online, which is poor.

Also far too easy to collect incident points online - cut a curb an inch too far or go slightly wide and that's another one...cue a drop in iRating. That quickly started to feel like a total grind, and that's not what I'm after while gaming.

I found it much better with AI racing (all on my own) where you can set huge or infinite incident-point rules. You can buy tracks and cars, and actually use them in anger.

Having said that, the AI racing is still failing in some really basic ways:
AI drivers don't seem to suffer tyre wear like you.
AI doesn't seem to notice when it starts raining (except they get quicker!?!), until it's full wet then they're super-slow.
Can't force AI drivers to change tyres or make a pitstop, unless you make the races long enough for them to need fuel...!
Can't save part-way through an AI race or between sessions.

Also annoying was things like altering the P217 spec so that none of my setups worked anymore, which took ages to develop. Why not a "Legacy P217" option so we can just get back onto the SIM after a bit of a break and get playing quickly...?

Far too many short ovals that are no use for any sensible cars (try running a P217 or Indy at Oxford...!) and too many IndyCar street courses missing. Would love St. Pete, Toronto, Detroit, and they totally ignored the Nashville street race...

Really looking forward to Adelaide (more V8 courses please!), but they're also hamstrung by FIA deals by the sound of it so we'll probably never get Singapore, Monaco or Baku.

So I dunno...some days it feels like great fun.
Pros: Honestly, the rendering of the circuits is absolutely amazing (Long Beach and Belle Isle are my two favourites) and the racing does feel quite real.
Cons: The AI racing isn't bad but it's missing some obvious simple settings which is frustrating, and the online aspect was soul-destroying.

too many kids on this game, it is like racing in all other free games, you get smashed every race you make! after investing almost 600$ in the games, i regret it for real

Game has sadly gone in the wrong direction.

As a user of a G29, all I can afford, it's now basically impossible to race against loadcells or direct drive, drivers.

iRacing support doesn't care sadly, so plenty of other games which you can have fun on a G29 with.

They realised a Supercar and it was nearly impossible to drive on a set of G29s.

They banned me because I forgot to log out of a race. I begged for forgiveness and now every time I race someone smashes into the back of me. And guess what? They (the othe driver) doesn't get banned. I'm trying to cancel my subscription but they are making it difficult. I've subscribed to this service for over 6 years and this is how they treat me. Typical money-grabbing company.

Placed an annual order by mistake, asked for a refund. They refused to refund me, funny way to treat potential customers.

No idea if their software is any good, but if it's anything like their customer service, it's awful.

The realism and ability to log the cars telemetry like in real life makes this an amazing Sim App. The time and money spent to laser scan each track so it (according to the pro drivers) has same exact bumps, seams etc as in real life. If you only want to say run NASCAR that is 3 cars to buy and the misc tracks, but you can race with online members at 1 AM, 5 AM 24 hours straight (If young enough) Started 12-2018 use it at min 3 X a week at max 2-3 daily

Excellent. Probably not for everybody and it can be a bit spendy. But it's great. I have no regrets.

“account suspension for suspected suspension bypass”
with this motivation they decided not to even let me start the game, which I had actually bought for the first time (and here it gets really absurd!) 🤣🤣🤣
because "for a suspicion" (not a certainty), they decided to suspend the account without being able to get me to start the screen! Of course, no refunds and even the public denial of this happened on Twitter! even if there is so much ridicule that those who use this video game are the same ones who deny everything in front of the evidence like perfect lobotomized people. So, iRacing is proof that it can not only be bad for your pockets but also for your mind! not for this reason, every member seems to belong to the band of the average racist troglodyte.
There is more titles good, better, realistic and with honest prices/service around (but not iStealing)

Do you like Online racing, have some money to invest, at least a g29 and a decent PC? That is the game that you looking for. On the downside, subscriptions+dlc's are pretty expensive for people like me. But totally worth it!
Also, if you are handicapped like me, Iracing wilt helps you get the best experience.