New to iRacing and RD

[Todd Garner]

Hello all.
I and a couple friends of mine who race other sims are checking out iRacing for the first time and I would like to know if your nightly club fun races are still going on?

I have been a lurker here for some time and would love to get involved in some of those races to help build my SR rating with some people who care about what goes on on the track if you know what I mean.

So basically hello its nice to be here and let me know about the nightly club races your forum refers to. Also if they are going on I am just assuming that hosted club or fun races through iRacing still build your SR rating do they not? See what a noob I dont even know that yet


Thanks ahead of the time for your help and great site you have here.

 

[George Pilkington]

Welcome Todd, you and your mates are in the right place!
Join in buddy.
George

 

[Lars Strijdonck]

Hi there and Welcome Todd. Check out the Club events and leauge races. comming sunday we do a Indianapolis race with the dallara Indy car, there's a Star Mazda league running and there are several more hosted events planned iirc.

 

[Eric Estes]

Welcome Todd!. At the moment the iRacing club races are on a more or less bi-weekly basis, alternating with our league races. The iRacing club here is still relatively new compared to the RACE and rFactor clubs, and we are expanding the activities at a fairly good pace at the moment.

As to your question, unfortunately (depending how you look at it) hosted session races, like our club and league races, do not count for SR or iRating. They are an absolute blast to drive in, however.

 

[Todd Garner]

Thank you all for the great information.
Ok that makes sense as I didnt see anything actually scheduled in all of the many posts on the league or club forums that looked like a weekly schedule. I just wanted to make sure I wasnt missing something. I dont get to get on too much during the week sometimes with work and fathering duties but I will check out the schedule for sure and tell my friends.
As far as the SR rating and hosted club or league races. That is not a problem. Sometimes I think especially when your new to iRacing it seems real easy to get wrapped up in advancing your SR rating and you forget about just racing for fun. I know I have been guilty of that so far. It would actually be nice to be able to just race and not have to worry so much about wrecking my rating but still race with people who race like the rating still matters.

Look forward to it. I will look as see what the schedule is and see you all on the track at some point I am sure.

Have a great day!

 

[William Nowell]

Welcome Todd, seems like everyday iracing and RD gets bigger and bigger. My advice would be not to worry about SR so much right now. At the rookie level your SR gain and lost is the most forgiven. As long as you are a somewhat clean driver everything else will fall into place. Welcome aboard and see you on track.

 

[Todd Garner]

Thanks for the warm welcome all. Good advice William on the SR rating. I think I personally concern myself more with screwing up someone elses race then my own. I have raced online sims for a long time but not in such a serious structure so while I am enjoying it very much I have been almost afraid to get in a race that counts because I dont want to get in the way and cause someone else to wreck when it affects their rating. I am very much a clean driver but you know sometimes you can do more damage trying too hard to get out of the way haha.

It would be nice to be able to do some racing in iRacing where clean racing is obviously the name of the game but where the pressure of not screwing up someone elses rating is lifted. That would go a long way to helping me feel more confident in races on iRacing that do matter in the rating system.

So in your races here like the Star Mazda series I could race even though I am not yet licensed in iRacing for the Star Mazda or no?

Thanks again all.

 

[William Nowell]

You can join any hosted race as long as you own the car/track(there is a hosted tab on iracing main page). Take advantage of the practice sessions iracing offers as it is a good way to get use to the cars, tracks and iracing in general. Race as much as you like and have not fear of your SR at this point, chances are you will get wrecked at some point in the rookie races. The key is to learn to spot the out of control racers and stay clear of them. The more you race you will be able to spot the people that will race you hard but clean and those that are trying to win on the first lap or at all cost. Also the better you qualify usually the higher the split you will be put in, which is usually with the better/cleaner racers. Once you get some races under your belt it will all start to be clear as mud:wink:.

 

[Will Marquez]

Welcome to RD and iRacing Todd!

The guys have pretty much filled you in on the details. As for your question about the RD Star Mazda Series, since these are hosted events your current license does not matter. Everyone races clean, hard and most importantly are alot of fun! If you have the Star Mazda and the final 3 tracks (Road Atlanta, SPA and Daytona) you and your friends are more than welcome to join in.

 

[Will Marquez]

And just in case you haven't seen the upcoming RD Club Events for the summer here you go...
http://www.racedepartment.com/iracing/54407-summer-attractions-racedepartment-iracing-club.html

 

[Todd Garner]

Hey great thank you very much! Thats all great info.
I will pass info on tonight and you might just see us in there.
I dont currently have the Mazdas but planned on buying them anyway so I might go ahead and pick it up.
Being an Indy boy open wheel is where its at for me

Thanks again all.

 

[Brady Morris]

Hello all. I am one of the guys that race with Todd... but please don't hold it against me.

All very good information in this thread and questions answered that we have been tossing around on Teamspeak for a few days. As far as iRacing goes, I think that we were both pretty blown away by the quality of the sim. I have been racing rFactor for a while and Race07 (with the associated add-ons) for a bit. Both are great in their own right, but iRacing has really impressed me and I think it is the one that I will be sticking with for a while.

 

[Kevin Watts]

Good to see some new names in here, if you'd like to join any of our events just fill in an application here to become a RaceDepartment Licensed Member like Todd. We've got some fun events coming up over the summer that are open to drivers of all skill levels and because they are hosted sessions it doesn't matter what license level you are in iRacing, so long as you have purchased the content you can race with us.

 

[Brady Morris]

Thanks! I filled out the app (last name: Morris), and i am excited about getting into some of the events!

 

[William Nowell]

Fresh meat!!!!!!!

 

[Dazmaniac]

Todd,

Just to add a suggestion regards mixing it online, but worrying about ruining someone else's race. We all have to start somewhere, but I would suggest you jump in some populated Open Practice sessions and get used to running with others on the track. Open Practice has no effect on the SR or iRating, so no matter how many incident are racked up, you won't suffer and the sessions will help you build the confidence in a racing environment with other racers.

Should accidents happen, very often the other racer won't worry about it as its just a practice session, but you may get the odd one or two who get their knickers in a knot, lol.

 

[Todd Garner]

Thank you Daz. Thats good advice I am sure.
My plan is as you can probably tell if you look at my results in iRacing is to run a lot of time trials safe, and in between the lines not worrying so much about speed to get myself to 4.0 and hold it there at that point for promotion day and then once I get 4.0 I will spend all of my time next week and until promotion day racing in hosted races and open practices that are populated to get some serious time in with traffic. I have raced a lot with traffic in other sims but its very different in iRacing for sure but mainly I wanted to get my SR rating to 4.0 to get the fast track promotion and then focus on lots of work in traffic in hosted races and practices.

Hope that makes sense. Its past my bedtime and im about to fall over so it may not

Thanks again all, you guys rock!

 

[Dazmaniac]

I think the main difference with iRacing compare to say rFctor or GTR2 (to name just two) is that they have no 'SR' system in place, so if you have any car to car contact or run off road in rFactor/GTR2, you don't get penalised in any way. In iRacing, every incident you are involved in during an official race is going to have an effect on your SR, so you end up driving iRacing a helluva lot differently to any other sim out there.

It's not something to be afraid of, but it may require a slight change to your driving style if you are coming from another online sim universe.

;-)