Since 2008, iRacing has managed to build an impressive catalog of tracks, including many of the most iconic and legendary circuits in the world of motorsports. However, as the catalog has grown, a problem has emerged that affects both users and the platform itself: the release of new circuits that are neither widely known nor popular.
Famous Tracks That Made a Difference
In iRacing’s early years, the platform’s strategy was clear: to include the most recognized and popular circuits in the world. This made perfect sense, as players were seeking a realistic experience on the tracks they knew and admired. Some of the early additions, such as Spa-Francorchamps, Monza, Nürburgring, Daytona, and Sebring, were immediate hits because these tracks are part of the collective imagination of motorsports enthusiasts.
Players didn’t think twice before purchasing these circuits. The familiarity with famous tracks, combined with iRacing’s detailed laser scanning and precise recreation, made these early sales easy.
Purchasing these iconic tracks wasn’t just seen as an investment but as a natural extension of the realistic racing experience.
At that time, the iRacing community was much smaller, but it was united by the excitement of being able to race on legendary tracks—the ones they watched in Formula 1, WEC, IMSA, and other renowned series. iRacing offered the possibility of “traveling” to these circuits from home, something that revolutionized the world of simulators.
The Current Problem: Saturation
Diversification has led to the inclusion of much lesser-known tracks or those with less relevance on the global racing scene. Examples like Sonoma, Misano, Jerez, or Knockhill, while technical and well-designed tracks, do not have the same appeal as globally renowned circuits.
This phenomenon presents a clear challenge: most iRacing players prefer to race on circuits they know well, which directly affects sales and participation in races using these tracks. Even if these circuits offer an excellent driving experience, players tend to overlook them due to a lack of familiarity.
Disadvantages of Lesser-Known Circuits:
- Low Participation: Participation in races that use these circuits is generally low, leading to fewer “splits” and fewer competitors. This can result in less exciting races and, in many cases, empty grids.
- Lack of Recognition: Many users don’t feel motivated to buy or try a track they don’t know, limiting the commercial appeal of these circuits.
- Perceived Value: For many players, the value of a track is directly related to its recognition and use in popular events. While a track like Misano or Knockhill may be technically interesting, it doesn’t have the same appeal as world-famous circuits.
Does the Production Cost Pay Off in the Long Term?
Production costs are just one part of the puzzle. Another key consideration is whether the circuits generate enough revenue in the long term to offset the initial investment. While a famous track like Spa or Monza almost guarantees high sales and a steady flow of users, a lesser-known track faces a much tougher challenge. Even if the production cost is similar for both types of tracks, the difference in popularity can significantly affect the return on investment.
Additionally, less popular tracks tend to be relegated in official series lists, meaning that players who purchase them have fewer opportunities to use them in organized competitions.
This creates a problematic cycle: the less known the track, the fewer players buy it, which in turn reduces the opportunities to compete on it, further diminishing its perceived value within the community.
This dilemma has led many to question iRacing’s strategy regarding new circuits. Is it really worth continuing to release tracks that won’t see significant use within the simulator? Although the work behind each track is impressive, their commercial reality doesn’t always translate into success.
A Potential Solution: Improve Popular Tracks Instead of Adding New Ones
Rescanning iconic circuits and updating them to modern standards would not only be more attractive to users but could also be more profitable for iRacing.
Tracks like Laguna Seca, Monza, Suzuka, and Daytona have been part of the platform for years, and while they remain extremely popular, it’s clear that technological advances in laser scanning and 3D track modeling have evolved since their initial inclusion. These tracks could benefit from a complete rescan to improve details, textures, and accuracy, which would breathe new life into them within the simulator.
For example, Laguna Seca, a track that has been part of iRacing since its early days, shows signs of age compared to newer circuits. A rescan of this track would not only encourage current players to rediscover it but could also attract new users, making it more relevant in official competitions and events. Updated older tracks might generate more interest than completely new and unknown tracks, as users are more familiar with them and they have more history within the platform.
Case Study: Rescanning Virginia International Raceway (VIR)
The example of Virginia International Raceway (VIR) demonstrates the potential success of this strategy. While the track is not the most famous worldwide, its update received praise due to the quality of the technical work done. The improved details, more realistic textures, and the incorporation of new simulation technologies made users who already owned the track rediscover it with enthusiasm.
If this type of update were applied to more popular circuits like Monza or Laguna Seca, the impact would be much greater, as these tracks are much more recognized and have a larger user base.
How Far Can iRacing Go?
On one hand, iRacing needs to continue offering new content to keep the platform fresh and competitive. On the other hand, the commercial reality of launching lesser-known circuits raises questions about their long-term viability. The key to iRacing’s future lies in finding a balance between releasing new tracks that offer something unique and significant and improving the already popular tracks that continue to attract the majority of users.
As we’ve discussed, the saturation of lesser-known tracks, along with high production costs and low participation, suggests that iRacing should consider a more thoughtful strategy regarding the tracks it introduces. Rescanning and improving popular circuits seems to be a more logical solution, as these tracks have lasting appeal and can generate greater benefits in the long term.
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Let us know your thoughts and what you believe would be the best strategy for iRacing and its players.
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I agree with the article. On top of that, new and lesser known tracks require to invest time to learn and practice. If you’re tight with time, racing on known tracks is straightforward and more fun.
Thank you for your comment!
What about regional significance? It’s getting to the point now where you can run regional championships, such as F4, which I think is a good thing. Adds another layer of immersion. I understand the value proposition, I just think a bit of imagination in layering of competition might make some of these tracks more appealing and hence more popular. Press on iracing! get them all on the service.
I can see your points, but I don’t agree. They’ve been doing this for years and are doing just fine. I think what they should do is start finding ways to get people onto these tracks. Maybe do more rotation of tracks in different series, and/or big sales on lesser known tracks. I love the diversity personally and drive and race on as many tracks as I can.
We all enjoy new tracks. The problem is too many new tracks are not suited to enough different types of race cars to make them logical and the participation suffers and then the people willing to spend the money on these new tracks kinda get ripped off. Also paying for rescans that you already bought is seriously wrong but they’ve possibly stopped doing that.
What a strange take imo. Basically you’re saying you want to spend the rest of your sim racing days driving the same boring tracks over and over and over until death. Guessing in a GT3 as well. These lesser known tracks are usually exponentially more fun to race on, and break up the boredom of the same old same old. The solution is actually much simpler, force the Rookie and D series into the newer tracks as much as possible. Plus being slower cars they should be racing on these great smaller tracks anyway. Now people need to learn them and will appreciate the variation and fun nature of most of these tracks vs suffering through every level cars at Spa…. Again. Ugh
A lot of the tracks are designed for a certain lap time or type of car. iRacing puts gt3 and above cars on tracks they don’t belong and participation suffers greatly sooner or later. I’m close to 100% ownership of all road content. I regret or have barely used at least a quarter of that content between cars and tracks.
Anybody that thinks Sonoma, Misano, Jerez, and Knockhill are “lesser known tracks” is a casual who won’t be playing iracing to begin with. If the article had said Nasheville Fairgrounds, Riverside, CTMP, even a classic like Zolder I would understand, but whoever wrote this article just got paid to write something and made up an issue to write about.
Great point about rookies.
I agree with this article, however there’s still a LOT of high quality and well known circuits yet to feature in iRacing. Sepang, Istanbul Park and Albert Park to name just a few.
Agreed sepang and Istanbul park I’m looking forward to, hopefully in the pipeline
Problem as author sees it: iRacing can’t sell tracks beyond a handful of traditional faves, because they’re empty, because they’re not already faves. Author solution: make people purchase the tracks they already bought, again.
That strikes me as a risky move, if iRacing’s goal is to grow overall profit from the platform. You will negatively shift the value prop which is already a huge reason people who aren’t bought in continue to stay away, and it may lose you more existing subscribers than you gain by updating content that is arguably already over-serviced. After all, once there are enough splits that everyone can find a full grid when needed it at their pace/skill, revenue growth can only come from finding more subscribers, and acquisition is the costliest revenue of all.
There are other options here, like making new tracks free for a month to pull existing subscribers out of Monza and Spa (where they are over-serviced as above) to learn the tracks. If the tracks become sticky through that time, then you actually attract new subscribers who are interested in that content. Being smart about it by targeting tracks in countries with low subscription rates but high disposable incomes would probably help.
I’m all for more new tracks. I’ve petitioned for The Bend Motorsports Park and The Adelaide Street circuit and nearly fell off my chair when I read that both of these are going to happen . I’m now petitioning for Sydney Motorsports Park because of the lights they installed and how good racing looks at night. It’s a travesty that it’s not on iRacing already.
People do complain about not updating the tracks they have, but they have redone Spa, Watkins Glen and Virginia that I can think of, but others could use a refresh. I think iRacing are balancing this well enough.
I feel sorry for new users and the amount of content that is available. On one hand, what you get for a basic membership is so much more than what was offered 10 years ago, but the cost for a new user of buying all the content I have purchased over that time would be massive compared to buying a few things every 13 weeks.
I’d would rather have as many tracks as possible, as once it’s on the service, it seems to stay there.
I do think that you make a good point about some of iRacings track selections. The new Cadwell Park is not really worthy. It is too narrow in my opinion. It’s a good case in point as to why you wrote your article.
Thank you very much for your comment!
My grips is track usage. Over the past seasons I’ve bought three fa. Pus tracks: Mugello, Misano and Portimao. Not one of them is being used in any of season 4’s major series.
The problem is not new tracks, it’s how the schedule Is chosen. A tiny niche bunch of forum nerds pick the tracks with the vast majority of users not even aware that a vote takes place. Iracing needs to do all scheduling themselves.
With some of the series, you get asked to vote for the next seasons tracks provided you raced 8/12 of the races. Example: GEN4.
Other series are set to reflect real world calender, so no vote I.e Nascar top 3 series, although when the Trucks or Xfinity don’t race, they put another track in instead of having a week off to fill the 12 weeks out.
Good article; I never thought about some of these issues. I’m not sure though about your proposed solution. I do agree that they should update older tracks, but if they do this instead of adding new tracks, how will they make revenue on them? As you did describe, the “unknown” tracks are a problem for both drivers and for the company, but getting no revenue from an improved track, is an issue for the company.
I think what needs to be resolved is how can they monetize the update of older tracks without angering existing purchasers. Perhaps they could have 2 different prices: and upgrade price for current owners and the full price for new ones. Question is, what do you do with people who refuse to upgrade? Will they no longer be able to drive on the track? Will they have to run both the old and the new? Maybe they could render the track at a lower quality for those that don’t upgrade.
Personally, I’d be happy to pay for an upgraded track, but there needs to be some kind of solution for those that are unwilling.
I completely agree!
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective!
I think this article is leaving out those who use iRacing to practice driving on real tracks before we get there. I race a few times a year in the ChampCar racing league and cannot get hours on track before the race due to time, cost distance, etc. Instead, I run iRacing to get practice laps. I could do this in Asseto Corsa or Forza Motorsports, but they focus on the bigger, more well known tracks and don’t have the middle tier tracks on their roster (Barber comes to mind). This is the reason I purchased iRacing. If they just focus on the same content everyone else has, I could just use those. I came to iRacing because it offers something the other racing games don’t offer, track variety.
Iracing needs to implement a way to test drive the tracks before purchase. It would give us as customers a better idea if we like the track or not. And saves us the (buyers remorse).
How exactly is that a solution? Unless I erasing plans to make people buy the newly scanned version of a track, which would piss a lot of people off, it’s nothing but Financial loss for iRacing to do reskins of popular tracks that already exist on the service. Take spa for example. They just rescanned it, which probably cost them quite a bit of money. I already own spa, so I didn’t have to pay for the new scan. The vast majority of people already own spa, so that rescan is basically a total loss. At least with unknown tracks they’re going to have some people make purchases, because nobody already owns it. Telling them to go do rescans on all the most popular tracks is in utterly bad idea for iracing. In fact, the losses would be so great that it may impact the service to the point where they go out of business.
This is a non issue.
Another issue is they have many oval tracks dirt and asphalt, that big name series run on that seem to have been ignored. One major one is toledo speedway. It’s the home track of arca and still hasn’t been scanned. You would think while primarily being a local track but with a high level series calling it home, that it would be a priority. They are doing this on both sides of the oval disciplines. I’ve seen many people asking for toledo and other tracks every time iracing asks on Facebook what tracks we would like to see. It seems they are only focused on the road side of things.
I’m fairly new as I’ve only been playing a few months. But to me more tracks isn’t the issue. It’s the amount of different series. There’s so many that I see that never get populated. Or maybe one race a week on a Wednesday evening. Wide as the ocean but deep as a puddle. Luckily I’ve had some guidance from friends on what series to be wary of and so far haven’t gotten a car I can’t race… yet.
Here on the website, we have several articles recommending series and content!
Thank you for your comment!