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iRacing » How To Setup Your Tyres in iRacing: Tyre Pressure Setup Guide
Discover how to correctly setup your tyre pressures in iRacing. Learn the optimum tyre pressures and tyre temperatures for all cars and how to achieve these using your car setup.
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Your tyre setup has a pretty large impact on how your car behaves on track in iRacing. It can drastically change the amount of raw grip you have if you aren’t in the working window for your tyres or if they’re too hot or cold. And the stiffness of the tyre sidewall will also impact how your car behaves over kerbs and bumps.
In this guide, I’ll run through exactly how to care a tyre setup in iRacing that improves tyre wear, and can help you car handle better and lap faster.
With all these factors in play, it is important to fully understand how to set up your tyres in iRacing. If you don’t alter any other part of your car setup, knowing how to adjust your tyre setup to ensure you have the best levels of grip is a good skill.
Many parts of your car setup will have an impact on your tyre setup, and for this reason, I would always recommend leaving your final tyre setup to last, after you have set up the rest of your car. However, I would also recommend making initial tyre setup adjustments as the first thing you do.
My recommended setup process for iRacing would be to do the following;
Your tyre pressures will change how your car handles bumps and the temperature your tyres reach during a race. The later is the more important part of the perfect tyre setup in iRacing, as this will have a big impact on how much grip your tyres give you.
With so many cars in iRacing, it is difficult to recommend exact tyre pressures and tyre temperatures for each car. However, we can share our recommendations for GT3 cars, as that is where we spend most of our time in iRacing.
For GT3 cars you should have cold tyre pressures set to the minimum value you can. During racing, your tyres will heat up which in turn will increase the tyre’s pressure. You should aim for hot tyre pressures of around 22-24 psi depending on the car you’re racing with.
These recommendations would vary massively with other cars. Lighter cars such as the Mazda MX-5 can run lower tyre pressures, while heavier cars will require much higher tyre pressures.
As mentioned, tyre pressures have a direct impact on your tyre temperature in iRacing, and that in turn will have a large effect on just how much grip your tyres give you, and how fast they wear. So what is the ideal tyre temperature in iRacing?
The optimal tyre temperature for iRacing ranges between 85-105°C. This ideal working window will change depending on which car you’re driving, and which tyre compound you are currently using.
With most compounds, you won’t want to exceed 100°C, especially if you are trying to make your tyres last for a longer stint during a race. During a qualifying run, peak grip can be achieved at around 100°C.
You can view just how hot you’re tyres are running using the HUD or the setup screen. You’ll see that your tyre temperature is broken down into three areas, inside, middle and outer tyre.
The ideal tyre temperature will be an average across these three areas. But a good general rule of thumb is that the inside of your tyre should be the hottest region, but there shouldn’t ever be more than about a 7°C difference between the inner and outer regions.
The second choice you get when creating a tyre setup in iRacing is your tyre compound. This choice won’t always be available as it is only used for certain cars and series.
Your tyre compound will change both the grip levels and lifespan of your tyres. Different compounds will often require different tyre pressure setups as well to manage heat generation.
Below are overviews of each compound of tyre;
Tyres produce wear for a number of reasons. Over time they will wear naturally during use, but this wear can be sped up if you drive aggressively, cause a lot of tyre slip, spin your tyres or overheat your tyres. Doing a combination of all these things will almost certainly lead to faster wearing tyres and more pit stops.
To avoid this, and help reduce tyre wear in iRacing, you can implement a number of tips;
You can find iRacing setups that have already been through the process above and have the perfect tyre setup in our iRacing setup library. These car setups are created by professional setup shops, ensuring they’re of the highest quality.
All of our iRacing car setups are created with optimised tyre pressures, meaning you don’t need to worry about performing any tyre setup changes before a race. Check out all of our expert iRacing car setup bundles below, including setups for the FIA F4 and the Dallara F3.
When it comes to GT3 racing in iRacing the ideal tyre pressures should be the minimum cold pressures available. Then when your tyres are hot, the tyre pressures should be between 22-24psi.
For GT3 cars, the optimal tyre temperature for iRacing should be between 80 and 90°C. Any colder and your tyres won’t produce enough grip, any hotter and you’ll encounter excess tyre wear.
Tyres will wear during all sessions in iRacing, and during races this will cause you to have to pit if they wear too fast.
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Rich is the founder, F1 car setup creator and content writer 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. Regularly writes for sim racing website SimRaceReviews.com
View all articles written by RichFind the latest sim racing car setups to always have the advantage on track, with the best ACC car setups, iRacing setups and F1 24 setups.
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