Iracing License
Iracing is about online racing primarily. You can practice by yourself and that works fine but the real point is the other people racing online. Their license system ensures that you will end up with people who are trying to race not run into each other. May 02, 2011 Saturday was a day to finally complete the work I wanted to do in the D-class cars, with a couple of additional time trials and a race at Mosport in the Skip Barber car. To get Pro (in Road). First you need your A License. Then you need to finish in the top 10 (of those who are not already Pro or Pro/WC) in the A Class Grand Prix series for either Season 1, 2 or 3. Before we move forward to race series, let’s go over license classes. Your license class acts as sort of a skill ranking system – it determines which series you are qualified to participate in. Everyone starts off with a rookie license. From there, you can work your way to class D, C, B, A,. Thanks for linking those two, they're really helpful in explaining. I just kind of assumed it from something iRacing put out that said something along the lines of 'only the top drivers make it to pro license' and since I knew iRating is used as a measurement of skill I thought it would be connected with that.
Many people who join iRacing seem to treat license progression as a “gaming” aspect, with the primary objective of the “game” being to increase your license level and move up the license ladder to race in another series in order to get promoted to the next level so you can increase your. Presenting our in depth tutorial on getting started in iRacing and getting up to your D License. This tutorial also points you to all the resources you'll need to go down the right path on your iRacing career.
You don't know what you're getting into. iRacing is seriously like a drug.
First you get your first thrill like you probably are right now. 'I just had my first no incident race! Look at that SR boost!' But then that thrill fades away, you soon become so consistent that 0x races are normal to you. Then it happens, you get your first victory in the rookies. You receive that high you had once before, everyone is congratulating you on your victory either through voice or text chat and you even save the replay so you can watch your race over and over again to see how good you were.
As your winding down from that latest ride you go back to the members page to check out the next race and a window pops up. 'What's this?' you say. 'You were just promoted to a D Road License!'. YES!!! Out of the crash series, now I can finally race with some quality drivers just like me! But now there's a problem. There's some content that you don't own for the new series you want to run. 'Aw man, the Spec Racer Ford is ok, but what I really want to drive is the Skip Barber Formula car'. So you check your account for the $12 Download the content and hop into your first session with your new car.
It's a whole new world compared to that MX-5 you were just running. The grip, the open cockpit, the thrill knowing that any contact will ruin your race. You're feeling fast so you hop into your first race but what's this? For the first time since you've started iRacing, everyone on the grid has actually set a Qualifying, well except you of course and their times are much quicker than what you were setting in practice by yourself. You think to yourself what you're actually in for as the lights go green. Amazed, you watch at the tail end of the T1 train as EVERYONE makes it through the first turn in one piece for the first time in your career, on top of that the cars are already pulling away from you as you try your hardest to keep up. After 15 laps it's finally over, you finished dead last about 1 minute behind the leader and you realize you're not the top tog anymore coming from rookies.
After that race you wanted to forget, you decide from then on that you'll put in more practice time and actually Qualify for a change so that you finish higher up the grid. So you put off some time with friends just to get that extra hour of practice in every now and then. It works! You start to start further up the grid, you're raking in points like never before and your SR is already set to upgrade to class C like it was not big deal.
Now you're starting to have problems again. You have to buy that shiny new Star Mazda as well as 8 or so different tracks just so you can complete the season, this puts you down about $132 but whoops your 3 month subscription has to be renewed so now you're out $162 dollars altogether. You go through the same hoops as the Skip Barber, qualifying almost every hour just to get that extra tenth or practicing for an hour to find that new setup tweak that will beat that one quick guy. Friends start to wonder where you're spending your time as you see them less and less.
You didn't even see the award screen when you got your B license, all you know now is that you're done with the Star Mazda and want to drive something faster, say like the Indycar. You pony out another $12 dollars to buy the Dallara and just hop in and try to go faster right away. As you try to sign up for races though, you realize that nobody races this car all week. All the drivers race at 2:00pm in the afternoon on Fridays and Saturdays so now you cancel all your weekend plans just get in a race for some good points. You don't care that you're sometimes not the fastest overall you just need to get into a race every week to get your fix while you wait for your SR to bump up to that A class blue you've always wanted to drive that shiny FW-31.
Iracing License Demotion
Oh. It finally happens, you actually notice when that congratulatory message comes up. 'Congratulations, you were just promoted to an A Road License!'. You look back at all those series you drove just to get into the F1 car and think to yourself how you'll never need to drive those cars ever again because now it's just you and that F1 car from here on out. So now you've finally FINALLY gotten this far, you look for when the SOF races are. 2:00 and 4:00, no biggie, I'm used to that in the Indycar. It's not like I hang out with my friends anymore, iRacing fills that need now. You toss another $12 dollars to iRacing for the F1 car as well as another $60 or so to buy all the tracks the series runs; even VIR since you'll know you'll want to drive the car so much.
So you hop into your first race in the F1 series. You think how it will be great, you'll start the race, everyone will make it past T1 just like in the D, C, and B series. You'll need to push again to get back on top but that's no problem, it was like that every series before that. But for the first time running a new series EVER, you notice that you're starting towards the front and some people didn't even qualify. Although you find it a little weird that you would be starting at the front in a new series you think 'maybe I'm just that fast'. But as the lights go green for the start of the race, you find out the true story. Although you get a good start and make it through T1 ok, you hear nothing but chatter from drivers playing the blame game of who just crashed out the field at T1. You go on and run your race while it seems like there is that one person chatting about his weekend in the background. The race was uneventful for you but you won. How come it felt hollow though? For the first time in your iRacing career you notice the little red box that says 'Splits'.
You had never taken your iRating into account when you drove before. It never seemed to matter in the old series you drove. There was just never enough participation for actually try to increase your driver rating before! Now you're sitting in the bottom split of a race that split 3 times! So you take away all the free time that you have and set it aside for iRacing just to get that iRating up. You hit 2000 iRating, 3000 iRating, 4000 iRating, each previous number looking smaller and less impressive. It took another 3 months to get your iRating up high enough to get into the high splits but it was worth it, even the $30 to subscribe again.
But something is missing even though your starting in the top split now. Your PC performance isn't just good enough for some tracks with some bad fps drops causing you to miss braking points so you spend $1000 to get a good PC built instead of that DELL crapbox you've been using since college. It's another month down the line and you're just plain tired of using the look left/right buttons on this tiny 19' screen you've had forever so you opt to get a bigger monitor, 27' seems good right? Another $150 down the drain. Another month goes by and now you just don't like the small FOV you get even on the larger screen. So you spend another $300 to get matching 27' to place on your wobbly desk and use with your roller chair. Another month goes by. You pay the $30 again for your 3 month subscription but now you select the yearly option as well as turning auto renew on as it's much more convenient and cheaper than reminding yourself to buy the subscription at the end of each season. You also realize this month that this rolling chair/crappy desk isn't working out. So you throw another $900 away buying an Obutto R3volution as your main PC desk now. The time has come, you're going to get that black Pro license now, even though it's S3 and prime summer vacation time, you're going to race every event that goes official and splits. You turn down trips to the lake, spending time with your wife, you even miss that 4th of July party. Each and every race is the most important event of your life. The season is coming to a close now. You missed out on so much this summer but now you're sitting in the top 10 of the iRacing Grand Prix series and you're guaranteed that Pro license. You're on cloud 9 again, this is the greatest feeling ever. Meanwhile you're logging into the members site checking everyday whilst you're on you anniversary get away with your wife. Then it happens
Iracing License Progression
At that point, it's the happiest moment of your iRacing career. You tossed all of your life away getting a silly black card but it's yours now and now it's time to get to work for the first round of the Pro series. There's only 1 race a week and you only get one chance to qualify but what could go wrong? You're good enough to get to Pro so you're obviously good enough to drive with the big boys right? Oh, how you would be so wrong. Not only are you racing with the A to Pro guys, you're racing with the WCS/Pro dropouts and they're better than anyone you've ever raced with. So Q comes around for the 1st round and you totally mess up your laps out of nervousness and you don't get to start the race. Same thing happens for the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Other drivers in the series start dropping out but not you. You Q each and every week just to get the glory of starting an iRPS round and it finally happens on the 4th round at Road America. It was an uneventful race but you finished on the lead lap. The rest of the season goes like this and you start to realize that maybe you wasted a lot of time on iRacing as the series goes on as you start to see that you're not going to make the top 25 and get your WCS/Pro license. You finish in the top 15 in the final round which at Suzuka which was your goal to finish in there at least once so you finish on a high note. Two weeks go by after the end of the season and you get your sickly Blue A class license back and you think, never will I spend this much time on this again. But then you look over at your oval stats and notice how even sicklier that red license looks for your oval license....
Iracing Pro License
TL;DR: Save yourself before it's too late.