Discover the most popular series in iRacing. I'll show you the most popular series, cars and tracks in iRacing throughout 2024.
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The statistics say that iRacing is arguably one of the most popular sim racing titles. You won’t find it at the top of the list on the Steam charts, though, as most iRacing players use the iRacing member site to race. However, the iRacing UI tells me that at the time of writing, there are over 12,000 sim racers connected to iRacing.
The most popular racing titles on Steam currently are BeamNG.drive, with a 24-hour peak of 20,000, and Forza Horizon 5, with a 24-hour peak of 15,500. You then have the first simulation racing title, Assetto Corsa, with just over 10,000 players.
With so many sim racers choosing iRacing as their platform of choice for sim racing, it’s also interesting to know what everyone is racing. Knowing the most popular iRacing series can be helpful as it can also help guide you through your licenses by choosing series that thousands of sim racers are actively competing in.
In this guide, I’ll examine the best ways to find the most popular series in iRacing.
While the Steam charts don’t work too well with iRacing, there are other platforms that can help us know which series and content is most popular in iRacing. These tools use the participation statistics for how many sim racers sign up to and participate in races within each series.
The first tool I use to find the latest iRacing stats and series popularity is iRacingData.com. This platform can be used to track race results and provide all sorts of information about iRacing and how it is played.
Navigating through iRacingData.com, you’ll find information on the most popular series, which car within each series is used most, statistics about individual series, the average iRating of players, the average safety rating per series and much more. (Interestingly, the IndyCar series is the safest series to race in by a long margin!)
Trawling through this website is incredibly intriguing, simply learning about how players race within iRacing.
Another tool that provides a huge amount of information and iRacing statistics is iRacingReports.com. This website provides information in a pretty different way and delves deeper into individual series.
You can find a range of statistics about each series, including the series popularity, average race starts, individual player ratings, and more.
One of the great elements of iRacingReports is that you can search for any series and access stats from the current season as well as historical seasons spanning right back to season 15.
The data collected for each series is incredibly detailed. You can access results from each round throughout the season, seeing who topped the standings and with how many points. You can find out the average participation, skill level and more.
To find the most popular iRacing series, we can use a combination of the two platforms I mentioned above, iRacingResults.com and iRacingData.com.
Looking at the stats on iRacingResults, we can see that the most popular series last season was the Global Mazda MX-5 Cup, followed by the Formula 1600 fixed series. A total of 54944 unique drivers participated in the Mazda MX-5 Cup throughout the entire season.
On iRacingData, we can gauge how many entrants there are per series, which is a different way of analysing the data. This will let us know which series has the most participated in races, but not the most popular series as a whole.
This is because some series, such as the IMSA Challenge series, don’t have as many races each day as more popular series, such as the Global Mazda MX-5 Cup.
Using this race data, we can see that the GT Endurance Simucube Series has the highest average race entrants at 217, closely followed by the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge and the Global Mazda MX5 Cup. Remember, this isn’t a perfect indication of the most popular series, as race schedules differ from series to series.
The differences between the two websites and the results on the most popular series come down to how the two websites record their data.
iRacingResults.com looks at the bigger picture, tracking the player counts for each series across the entire season. This is a more comprehensive look at which series in iRacing is the most popular.
iRacingData.com looks at participation and the most participated-in races. This shows that the Global Mazda MX-5 Cup still has some of the highest participants per race but is beaten by the IMSA Challenge and GT Endurance Challenge series.
To find the most popular tracks in iRacing, we can’t look at player statistics, and this is because iRacing themselves set the schedule for each series. They are in control over which tracks get used throughout a season, rather than individual players choosing their favourite tracks.
Instead, we can use a tool called irbg.net (iRacing Buyers Guide). This tracks the iRacing content that appears most frequently in different series.
This tool is commonly used when players are deciding which tracks and cars to buy. iRacing can be expensive so optimising which content you buy and how often you’ll use it in the series you’re planning on racing in is a great way to save money in iRacing.
Using this platform, we can see the tracks that appear most often across all iRacing series.
The most popular tracks are Lanier National Speedway and Limaland Motorsport Park, both of which are free tracks included with the iRacing membership. Both of these tracks are ovals.
Looking at the next most popular iRacing tracks, Road America, Spa-Francorchamps, Algarve International, and Mugello are the four most popular premium iRacing tracks. All of these are road tracks. Road America, for example, is used across 29 different iRacing series during this season, making it one of the best tracks to buy if you prioritise reusing content.
This means that the five most popular iRacing tracks are;
To find the most popular cars in iRacing, we can go back to the platforms I mentioned earlier. iRacingData.com shows the most popular car within each series, and even shows the fastest cars on average. This can be really helpful if you are trying to decide which car within a series to buy.
Looking at the popular IMSA series, we can see that the most commonly used car is the Dallara P217, followed by the Acura ARX-06 GTP and then the Porsche 911 GT3 R.
Another really popular series is the GT3 Fanatec Challenge series. Looking at the most commonly used cars for this series shows that, once again, the Porsche 911 GT3 R is the most popular car (also the most popular GT3 car for the IMSA series above).
The fairly new Ferrari 296 GT3 is the second most popular car in the GT3 Challenge, followed by the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R and the new Ford Mustang GT3.
Using iRacingData’s graphs, we can check which cars are most commonly used in most iRacing series. Head over to the website to see these charts and find the most popular iRacing car for the series you’re looking to race in.
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Rich is the co-founder, and one of the main F1 setup creators and content writers for SimRacingSetups. With over a decade of experience as a graphic designer, marketing director, competitive sim racer and avid motorsport fan, Rich founded SimRacingSetup.com to share his passion and knowledge of sim racing and Formula 1 with other sim racers.
View all articles written by Rich
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