Mercedes F1 Cars Are Coming to iRacing

Mercedes F1 iRacing.png
iRacing has announced that a pair of Mercedes Formula One cars are coming to the sim.

In a tweet that has caught the attention of many in the sim racing community, iRacing has announced a partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team to bring the Mercedes-AMG F1 W12 E Performance F1 car along with the 2022 Mercedes car to iRacing in the future.


Renouned Strategy Director James Vowles was quoted in the official press release as saying that iRacing and Mercedes F1 had been working on developing the 2021 car for iRacing since early this year.

This is potentially big news in the sim community on many fronts. iRacing fans who feel disappointed by the limited selection of Formula One cars will now have another option to drive. Also, Formula One is infamous for limiting licensing of F1 cars outside of the official F1 game, so this is potentially a vanguard for a new crop of licenses being issued outside of the F1 game. Plus, those who feel the official F1 game is, well, a game rather than a pure simulator will be able to enjoy the driving physics on offer from iRacing.

With the real-world 2021 F1 season being just past the midway point of the season, it’s not surprising that the details on the 2022 car being brought to iRacing are vaguer. The 2022 F1 regulations will be a significant jump compared to recent seasons.

No release date has been given for the cars, but the 2021 W12 could reasonably be expected to be released to the public before the end of the F1 season. This is an intriguing step forward for both iRacing and for Formula One’s presence in the sim world. No plans were announced for what iRacing will do with the car in sim, but a collaboration with such a huge presence in the racing world has the potential to be very popular.
Let us know your thoughts on this teaser in the comments below, and whether you plan to buy the car.
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

So a single F1 car? Do you race it alongside the stock cars or Indy cars or GT cars..or have a mixed class race? I dont see the point unless you have all the teams. Its a bit like going to a smorgasbord and just eating toast!
Regardless the end result would be the same. If they scanned every teams car you would still have have a grid filled with Mercedes in order to be competitive. Instead the best alternative is to run it like a spec series and let users load in their favorite liveries. The only true sim with a modern day F1 car using real world data provided by the team, from the sound of it Mercedes will be pretty involved so expectations will be high.
 
never have tried iracing but damn always hearing about it has made me want to bite the bullet and sub to it like for a few months to try it out!
 
Cool, lemme just put this on the list of "things I'll think of subscribing to once I have a stable income" real quick....
 
never have tried iracing but damn always hearing about it has made me want to bite the bullet and sub to it like for a few months to try it out!
Like the galactic Emperor and the big sports brand said: Do It! I've been a subscriber for almost ten years now (2 months to go) and have never regretted it. The first two years you pay a lot to get hold of all the items you want/need but then it evens out to about 08-15 Euros a month, which is fine by me as the service gives me exactly the kind of gaming experience I want 24/7. Just do it :)
 
I'll always wish iRacing would let you play offline against AI (or just hotlap) without a subscription. At the moment you can pay a fortune for content and if you stop subscribing it's all lost to you.

The biggest draw of iRacing is, I believe, the online championships/being able to race real life stars, which people would still want to subscribe for, I expect.
 
Wait, Kunos had licensed Ferrari F1 cars from 2013, 2015 and 2017 in their game, the 2017 car even while the season was still ongoing.
Yes, all Ferrari cars, true. And yes, IR is only releasing the Mercedes.
Still, I am hoping it is a sign of better thing to come, grids of official content in SIMs of F1 cars as official FIA license. Not saying it is.
Just hoping, as new cars in IR does nothing for me as I am not driving that SIM and I am not driving F1 20XX either because I am on a strict diet of no pancake. ;)
 
Yes, all Ferrari cars, true. And yes, IR is only releasing the Mercedes.
Still, I am hoping it is a sign of better thing to come, grids of official content in SIMs of F1 cars as official FIA license. Not saying it is.
Just hoping, as new cars in IR does nothing for me as I am not driving that SIM and I am not driving F1 20XX either because I am on a strict diet of no pancake. ;)
It's very unlikely that this has anything to do with an official F1 license. Forza 7 also has a Renault F1 car, and GT Sport has the 2017 Mercedes for example.
 
Premium
I'll always wish iRacing would let you play offline against AI (or just hotlap) without a subscription. At the moment you can pay a fortune for content and if you stop subscribing it's all lost to you.

The biggest draw of iRacing is, I believe, the online championships/being able to race real life stars, which people would still want to subscribe for, I expect.
However the chance that you got to race with a prominent real world driver is really low unless you've got a rating high enough and are lucky to be in the same split. In my active iracing years I've seen Barrichello, Kovalainen, Verstappen and Norris in some open practice sessions but that was it. Never had a race with a prominent driver.

Regarding your first remark: totally agree. Racing offline shouldn't cost a monthly fee.
 
Premium
Yes, all Ferrari cars, true. And yes, IR is only releasing the Mercedes.
Still, I am hoping it is a sign of better thing to come, grids of official content in SIMs of F1 cars as official FIA license. Not saying it is.
iRacing also already has a McLaren and a Williams F1 car. As much as I'd like an official F1 2022 season in a sim, I honestly don't think it means much.
 
Well I hope it helps, but over the last 13 years lots of professional drivers and teams have provided data and feedback to iRacing. I'm skeptical that all of a sudden it will transform the handling. I think iRacing simply stands behind the way their cars drive, or else they surely would've been able to develop it towards being more to their own liking over more than a decade..
 
So a single F1 car? Do you race it alongside the stock cars or Indy cars or GT cars..or have a mixed class race? I dont see the point unless you have all the teams. Its a bit like going to a smorgasbord and just eating toast!
This really makes no sense as a comment to me. You race it against... other people? Why would you need teams? iRacing is divided into divisions too, so you race comparatively against the same people week in and week out.
 
Staff
Premium
However the chance that you got to race with a prominent real world driver is really low unless you've got a rating high enough and are lucky to be in the same split. In my active iracing years I've seen Barrichello, Kovalainen, Verstappen and Norris in some open practice sessions but that was it. Never had a race with a prominent driver.

Regarding your first remark: totally agree. Racing offline shouldn't cost a monthly fee.

I actually raced a public rookie MX5/Miata race with Mattias Ekström. That felt rather random.
 
I hope this would motivate people to drive in GP series in iracing, because now there are too few participants, races with 3-4 cars are not a rare occurence in the sim. F1 is vastly popular worldwide, in iracing it is not popular at all.
 
The McLaren MP4-30, the car Alonso famously said "GP2 Engine!" as he drove it at... I think Suzuka?
Yes you are correct. But aliens have a thread in the forums about real life laptimes and the MP4-30 matching, if not beating them in the game. Maybe the real car is broken, or the sim version is on par with design targets, or iRacing physics is broken. I know it's a can of worms. The kid in me won't care.
 
Yes you are correct. But aliens have a thread in the forums about real life laptimes and the MP4-30 matching, if not beating them in the game. Maybe the real car is broken, or the sim version is on par with design targets, or iRacing physics is broken. I know it's a can of worms. The kid in me won't care.
Seeing as track grip will differ easily +-5% per any given session (and from surface to surface), it's not super useful to try to match laptimes only unless you have good tire data and can dial down/up the track grip appropriately to correlate LatG. If you don't have the tires figured out then you won't really know which it is, the track or the car.

Either way doesn't really matter because there is no way iR has good data for any F1 cars. Or more precisely, it's more like nobody has to my knowledge. I doubt these cars are very much alike the real one at all, at least when it comes to tire and aero.
 

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