Didn't even need to see the thumbnail to know that the Mission R would be on the list. Having the deployment modes locked between quali and race means there are two completely different cars to learn - the braking points are 3 to 5 postcodes away from each other .
Buying guides, videos like this, and the 100s of forum/reddit/discord discussions telling people to only buy the most used tracks has been a self-perpetuating problem for lesser known tracks for years. Unfortunate reality of iRacing's track monetization strategy.
iRacing miss a trick every year with their Black Friday sales. A 50% discount on some of these tracks and cars and they'd be picked up quickly. Especially the tracks
It's time for iRacing to revive some tracks again. Knockhill would be great for slower cars, Sandown is dead, Sonoma should be raced more, Mid Ohio is rarely seen, Misano and Sachsenring are off to a really rough start. They need to adjust prices to control demand better, nobody will buy Sandown for the same price as Spa, it won't happen. So rather make 1000 people pay $5 than 10 pay $15, at least the tracks were not built for nothing then.
With iRacing's monetisation model being the way it is, it just honestly frustrates me how completely arrogant they are to assume they can charge the same for something that is universally beloved and another thing that is very obscure. If they want to get more participation, they should have different prices. Have the world renowned tracks like Bathurst, Spa, Suzuka etc. be at the full $14.95 but put lesser known tracks that perhaps aren't compatible with higher powered cars like Cadwell Park at a much lower price. Honestly, who here would pick up Cadwell over Spa? Even aside from that, there will be people who will want the track but then if nobody else uses it, they just wasted money and so iRacing are just teaching them not to bother wasting money on tracks that will have low participation. So it's not used because it isn't popular and vice versa.
Sandown is an excellent track and i've never really had problems finding sessions to go live there. Obviously as its a relatively unknown track outside of Aus, it doesn't have high participation like RBR for instance, but you WILL find live sessions there. The run down to Dandy Rd is one of the best sequences of corners in Motorsports.
They really are. I also really enjoyed racing F4 there recently. Its a brilliant track for slower cars. It's actually my local, and it puts on some amazing races at club levels
I raced sandown last week, and never had a problem finding a race when it comes round on the calendar. Love Sandown. I suppose it helps if you run on Australian time.
Agree with the list apart from Sonoma. If you just drive road, thats justifiable. But Sonoma is probably the best RX track and is very popular there. Its also used in the nascar series as one of their road course rounds, and that usually gets ok participation and is a great track to drive. For normal road races though it does struggle for participation which is a shame as its a great track.
Mission R is series that runs by community - we have races every Thursday 9PM GMT and Sunday 7PM GMT. Yes, it isn't super popular, but you can treat it like league racing - every time you register in dedicated timeslot, there are people you just know from previous races. In terms of driving this thing - it's different... much different than anything you know. It's a bit counterintuitive as it's 4WD with active aero (not many people know about it but it has moving rear wing under braking) so it's super oversteery in late braking phase and super understeery under any acceleration. And yet another thing in this car has much more power in quali than in race, making it completely different car.
Just a thought that I had: There's probably more value in iRacing releasing cars that may quickly die off because the drivers who race them in real life will use the service for training/offseason and become semi-ambassadors of the service which is always in good interest.
Sonoma at least gets guaranteed use in the Nascar section, just on the normal road side people don't like it, I think it's great for lower powered cars. Sandown is excellent it's a crime people don't drive it! Throw Gen6 Nascars on the list too, they're still full price with no officials. iRacing wanted to hold them presumably to convert them to Arca cars, but that idea seems to be dead meaning they've been sitting there since Gen7 released.
Mission R has a community that races on the same timeslots, twice a week, making it feel more like a tight knit league than a typical series. Good value for money compared to other content? Obviously not. But join the community and you'll find a very fun group of competitive racers who will provide an atmosphere unlike many other series.
I would love to race the Mission R and was super stoked I saw it was in iRacing when I first got it but was bummed to find there's nobody ever in the servers.
I agree with all your choices to avoid. It's unfortunate about Sonoma, I still think of it as as Sears Point which I used to love in the old NASCAR 4 - 2003 days (Yes I'm old! 🤣) but I just don't care for it much these days and really don't see it come up in series I'm running, which is mainly sports car and a little Formula). I've tested the Mission R on the test server and I have to say it sounds so bad I literally can't handle the sound! My blender sounds better! 🤣
Nahh. The Mission R SoF races are fun and it's fun to race each other with. So saying it never goes official is just a wrong information at this point. And even if there is no sick engine sound the racing is still the same. And good luck driving the Quali setup of that thing. 😄 How about the W12 tho? Got like instantly replaced and there isn't even a series to drive it now after a year (or so?). Much love though, buddy.
If I was aiming for where Ollie was aiming last minute, I would have though zero percent chance it would launch into traffic like that. You can see why he was thinking in that moment it was a self murder, and a self murder only. 😅
There is so much content that is in this sort of category and another crossover is cars/track that are not popular and under appreciated.I would put sonoma in that category .i pretty much own everything except oval stuff. some real gems that are low participation but still worth getting if you are ok with driving to drive or time trial instead of driving to race in popular series . notably the nissan gtp , lotus 49 mt washington
iirc, Dallara ir-01 was meant to be the highest class car on the road side so it could be used for the revived world championship but the car was pretty awful to drive and the Mercedes F1 cars then got released so that killed it. Shame as the IR-01 now is pretty decent to drive whenever it does go official. Also the Brazilian stock cars are in the Reiza games and are much better to drive in them plus they're always updated every season. Bit of a strange one that iRacing added them
Bet they wanted to do a "supercars" stile release where they focus on a part of the community (the Brazilians). But there aren't any other track from Brazil apart from Interlagos which probably kills the experience for them
Oof, i hope they get to adding AI to the PMR and the IR-01, I love both. The IR was changed a while back to be good on ovals. Basically a bonkers Indycar that's reasonable on ovals because the european formula cars are garbo on ovals. Last season i raced the PMR on sunday, mega fun. Quite tricky to drive but the visual of the car, the display unit, striking. Funnily enough i use the mission display unit in all my cars thanks to simhub.
I bought the Mission R when it was released, the Stock Car Brazil is weird to drive, Sonoma is a fun track indeed, Sandown I bought because TCR's and GT4's were there a few times. Formula 2.0 was fun when I first started on iRacing. I would add the Merc W12 is a waste also.
As a guy who does "everything" possible... I'll add these tracks: 1) LA Coliseum - by far the least used oval track and also a "dead" track IRL going forward. 2) Sachsenring - I think it's too "regional" and will suffer from same issues Sonoma and Sandown are having. 3) Cadwell Park - ditto, I think it's too regional and too small for many cars. 4) Mt. Washington - great track, but people need to know that that track doesn't do races. 5) Chicago Street Course - another NASCAR track that doesn't do well with international crowd (like Sonoma) and likely a dead track after 2025. 6) Misano - had a decent start, but is struggling lately and I don't think it's the best track for most PCs. 7) Mid-Ohio - another "regional" track that doesn't draw international splits.
Little-known fact that's going to blow your mind: 0 mph happens to be the exact same speed as 0 km/h! It's also so close to 0 m/s, that it might as well be the same speed!
Don't agree with Sandown. The track runs frequently in a number of series and has good participation in them. TCRs and GT4s are usually fairly well populated when they are there. As are the V8 supercars. Worth buying if you run those series but if you are a GT3 simp, not worth it.
Hey mate, love your content. Just wondering are you still enjoying iracing this long into it? Worried I'll spend the money on a proper pc for Iracing and gear but will get bored or lose the fun in it. Thanks in advance :)
My worst purchase by far was the BMW GT4. GT4 was already not a popular category, and that car drives like an abandoned cross-channel hovercraft. Most of the NASCAR road courses are also never a bad thing to avoid, as Ollie said with Sonoma. Mosport’s a lot of fun in the Truck series truck, finding official sessions for it is not.
I think Brasilian stocks are non popular because Brasil its not very rich nation, even if, they more willing spend money for AMS2. Also Like you say, there is quite non popular for non Brasil people.
for me, the brazil stock car FOV is complete shit. you can't see anything from the cockpit, dashboard is enormous, and there is a control box hanging from the ceiling that gets in the way too. I wish I never bought it
Mission R is going official on Thursday evening. It's probably the only timeslot in the whole week, but it's going official in most weeks. (9 out of 11 weeks this season). So saying it's never going official is not true.
There's good turn out for the SOF slot on sunday evenings, usually better than thursdays (the thursday slot went through a rough patch in the spring with the switch to daylight savings time but hopefully it's doing better again now).
Hard to argue with this list. However, I do enjoy racing at Sandown. Every time I've raced there the racing has been excellent. Shame about the participation.
Damn… way to make me feel like an idiot lol when I first started with iracing, I bought all that shit thinking it’d be useful. Oh well, we can’t all be winners.
Didn't even need to see the thumbnail to know that the Mission R would be on the list. Having the deployment modes locked between quali and race means there are two completely different cars to learn - the braking points are 3 to 5 postcodes away from each other .
Buying guides, videos like this, and the 100s of forum/reddit/discord discussions telling people to only buy the most used tracks has been a self-perpetuating problem for lesser known tracks for years. Unfortunate reality of iRacing's track monetization strategy.
iRacing miss a trick every year with their Black Friday sales. A 50% discount on some of these tracks and cars and they'd be picked up quickly. Especially the tracks
It's time for iRacing to revive some tracks again. Knockhill would be great for slower cars, Sandown is dead, Sonoma should be raced more, Mid Ohio is rarely seen, Misano and Sachsenring are off to a really rough start. They need to adjust prices to control demand better, nobody will buy Sandown for the same price as Spa, it won't happen. So rather make 1000 people pay $5 than 10 pay $15, at least the tracks were not built for nothing then.
Sonoma is a fantastic track. My favorite to race IRL. The hills catch people out though because it unweights the car in weird spots.
absolutely. happy to hear iRacing has re-scanned it to update it to modern spec
With iRacing's monetisation model being the way it is, it just honestly frustrates me how completely arrogant they are to assume they can charge the same for something that is universally beloved and another thing that is very obscure.
If they want to get more participation, they should have different prices. Have the world renowned tracks like Bathurst, Spa, Suzuka etc. be at the full $14.95 but put lesser known tracks that perhaps aren't compatible with higher powered cars like Cadwell Park at a much lower price.
Honestly, who here would pick up Cadwell over Spa? Even aside from that, there will be people who will want the track but then if nobody else uses it, they just wasted money and so iRacing are just teaching them not to bother wasting money on tracks that will have low participation. So it's not used because it isn't popular and vice versa.
Sandown is an excellent track and i've never really had problems finding sessions to go live there. Obviously as its a relatively unknown track outside of Aus, it doesn't have high participation like RBR for instance, but you WILL find live sessions there.
The run down to Dandy Rd is one of the best sequences of corners in Motorsports.
Mazda and GR86 a super fun at this track. Ive had some Great PCC races here. Im glad i spent the $12 on it
They really are. I also really enjoyed racing F4 there recently. Its a brilliant track for slower cars. It's actually my local, and it puts on some amazing races at club levels
Sandown is fantastic imo! Decent to drive but 🔥 to race on.
I raced sandown last week, and never had a problem finding a race when it comes round on the calendar. Love Sandown. I suppose it helps if you run on Australian time.
I bought sonoma raceway and enjoy it so much.. Shame it doesn't come up often
Another problem with brasil stock cars is they’re impossible to see out of
Agree with the list apart from Sonoma. If you just drive road, thats justifiable. But Sonoma is probably the best RX track and is very popular there. Its also used in the nascar series as one of their road course rounds, and that usually gets ok participation and is a great track to drive.
For normal road races though it does struggle for participation which is a shame as its a great track.
Mission R is series that runs by community - we have races every Thursday 9PM GMT and Sunday 7PM GMT.
Yes, it isn't super popular, but you can treat it like league racing - every time you register in dedicated timeslot, there are people you just know from previous races.
In terms of driving this thing - it's different... much different than anything you know. It's a bit counterintuitive as it's 4WD with active aero (not many people know about it but it has moving rear wing under braking) so it's super oversteery in late braking phase and super understeery under any acceleration.
And yet another thing in this car has much more power in quali than in race, making it completely different car.
Just a thought that I had: There's probably more value in iRacing releasing cars that may quickly die off because the drivers who race them in real life will use the service for training/offseason and become semi-ambassadors of the service which is always in good interest.
Sonoma at least gets guaranteed use in the Nascar section, just on the normal road side people don't like it, I think it's great for lower powered cars.
Sandown is excellent it's a crime people don't drive it!
Throw Gen6 Nascars on the list too, they're still full price with no officials. iRacing wanted to hold them presumably to convert them to Arca cars, but that idea seems to be dead meaning they've been sitting there since Gen7 released.
Did Sonoma in pcup a few seasons back, I really enjoyed the track
Mission R has a community that races on the same timeslots, twice a week, making it feel more like a tight knit league than a typical series. Good value for money compared to other content? Obviously not. But join the community and you'll find a very fun group of competitive racers who will provide an atmosphere unlike many other series.
I would love to race the Mission R and was super stoked I saw it was in iRacing when I first got it but was bummed to find there's nobody ever in the servers.
I agree with all your choices to avoid. It's unfortunate about Sonoma, I still think of it as as Sears Point which I used to love in the old NASCAR 4 - 2003 days (Yes I'm old! 🤣) but I just don't care for it much these days and really don't see it come up in series I'm running, which is mainly sports car and a little Formula). I've tested the Mission R on the test server and I have to say it sounds so bad I literally can't handle the sound! My blender sounds better! 🤣
Nahh. The Mission R SoF races are fun and it's fun to race each other with. So saying it never goes official is just a wrong information at this point. And even if there is no sick engine sound the racing is still the same. And good luck driving the Quali setup of that thing. 😄
How about the W12 tho? Got like instantly replaced and there isn't even a series to drive it now after a year (or so?).
Much love though, buddy.
Gotta commend you Ollie for owning the Road America incident and not only owning the mistake but also having a sense of humour with it.
Worked my arse off for 4 years to get where I am, do you think I’m going to let some trolls on Reddit stop me? No chance!
Thanks for sticking with 🫡
If I was aiming for where Ollie was aiming last minute, I would have though zero percent chance it would launch into traffic like that. You can see why he was thinking in that moment it was a self murder, and a self murder only. 😅
There is so much content that is in this sort of category and another crossover is cars/track that are not popular and under appreciated.I would put sonoma in that category .i pretty much own everything except oval stuff. some real gems that are low participation but still worth getting if you are ok with driving to drive or time trial instead of driving to race in popular series . notably the nissan gtp , lotus 49 mt washington
Sonoma RX is good fun. Not the best RX track but not the worst!
Surprised there was no Road America on this list 😆
Love Road America.
😂
iirc, Dallara ir-01 was meant to be the highest class car on the road side so it could be used for the revived world championship but the car was pretty awful to drive and the Mercedes F1 cars then got released so that killed it. Shame as the IR-01 now is pretty decent to drive whenever it does go official.
Also the Brazilian stock cars are in the Reiza games and are much better to drive in them plus they're always updated every season. Bit of a strange one that iRacing added them
The IR01 give more Cart series vibes to me. Just something to keep in mind while everyone criticizes a really fun and incredibly underrated car
Bet they wanted to do a "supercars" stile release where they focus on a part of the community (the Brazilians). But there aren't any other track from Brazil apart from Interlagos which probably kills the experience for them
I disagree with putting unpopular tracks on here because it doesn't exactly help participation.
Oof, i hope they get to adding AI to the PMR and the IR-01, I love both. The IR was changed a while back to be good on ovals. Basically a bonkers Indycar that's reasonable on ovals because the european formula cars are garbo on ovals. Last season i raced the PMR on sunday, mega fun. Quite tricky to drive but the visual of the car, the display unit, striking. Funnily enough i use the mission display unit in all my cars thanks to simhub.
I bought the Mission R when it was released, the Stock Car Brazil is weird to drive, Sonoma is a fun track indeed, Sandown I bought because TCR's and GT4's were there a few times. Formula 2.0 was fun when I first started on iRacing. I would add the Merc W12 is a waste also.
As a guy who does "everything" possible... I'll add these tracks:
1) LA Coliseum - by far the least used oval track and also a "dead" track IRL going forward.
2) Sachsenring - I think it's too "regional" and will suffer from same issues Sonoma and Sandown are having.
3) Cadwell Park - ditto, I think it's too regional and too small for many cars.
4) Mt. Washington - great track, but people need to know that that track doesn't do races.
5) Chicago Street Course - another NASCAR track that doesn't do well with international crowd (like Sonoma) and likely a dead track after 2025.
6) Misano - had a decent start, but is struggling lately and I don't think it's the best track for most PCs.
7) Mid-Ohio - another "regional" track that doesn't draw international splits.
Can't remember which sim it was but there's one with tons of Brazilian tracks and stock cars, costing fraction without subscription :D
AMS2
Little-known fact that's going to blow your mind: 0 mph happens to be the exact same speed as 0 km/h! It's also so close to 0 m/s, that it might as well be the same speed!
you could take this further and say that there's no such thing as 0mph, or 0kph, or 0m/s.
Funny, you mentioned Sonoma which is regularly used in dirt road, but not Chicago Street Course
It's insane to me that Iracing won't do 90s DTM but will do Brasil stock car 😂
Aren’t they suppose to upgrade Sonoma in a near future? Have I imagined that?
Don't agree with Sandown. The track runs frequently in a number of series and has good participation in them. TCRs and GT4s are usually fairly well populated when they are there. As are the V8 supercars. Worth buying if you run those series but if you are a GT3 simp, not worth it.
If only a video like this existed 5 years ago🤣
Hey mate, love your content. Just wondering are you still enjoying iracing this long into it? Worried I'll spend the money on a proper pc for Iracing and gear but will get bored or lose the fun in it. Thanks in advance :)
@@Akash-mq6ov nah I still love it, always will
I'd lay off Cadwell Park - it's going to be free before long.
Super fun track, and great for every rookie car
My worst purchase by far was the BMW GT4. GT4 was already not a popular category, and that car drives like an abandoned cross-channel hovercraft.
Most of the NASCAR road courses are also never a bad thing to avoid, as Ollie said with Sonoma. Mosport’s a lot of fun in the Truck series truck, finding official sessions for it is not.
Omg I bought that bmw cuz it was new and I thought that meant it couldn’t be bad, boy was I wrong
You sure that GT4 is not popular?
@@Noshi64 yes I think it is really popular, especially at sebring this week it’s been really good participation
GT4 class is super popular
Gt4 and the series with the gt4s and lmp3s are hugely popular
Sonoma is too technical for most people, even in real life
you forgot to add, all of the new tracks that get released in the future. Its been very clear that new tracks are just a waste after 1 season
I think Brasilian stocks are non popular because Brasil its not very rich nation, even if, they more willing spend money for AMS2.
Also Like you say, there is quite non popular for non Brasil people.
for me, the brazil stock car FOV is complete shit. you can't see anything from the cockpit, dashboard is enormous, and there is a control box hanging from the ceiling that gets in the way too. I wish I never bought it
Porsche mission R has the most annoying noise,....
Mission R is going official on Thursday evening. It's probably the only timeslot in the whole week, but it's going official in most weeks. (9 out of 11 weeks this season). So saying it's never going official is not true.
There's good turn out for the SOF slot on sunday evenings, usually better than thursdays (the thursday slot went through a rough patch in the spring with the switch to daylight savings time but hopefully it's doing better again now).
The Sunday SOF slot pretty much always goes official too
Iracing content is like Pokémon, gotta to catch em all 😂
Hard to argue with this list. However, I do enjoy racing at Sandown. Every time I've raced there the racing has been excellent. Shame about the participation.
Agree, Sandown in the FF1600 is some of the best fun you can have with your pants on.
@mc483 I actually didn't have any pants on 🤷♂️
Damn… way to make me feel like an idiot lol when I first started with iracing, I bought all that shit thinking it’d be useful. Oh well, we can’t all be winners.
The Ford GT is the dumbest car I've bought.
Rem Simraceway ? the guy that pulled that scam if i rem bought that track or sponsored it , feck him and that track !!!
Trophy Trucks are dead
Time to see olli cancelled again
The touring cars are so trash. The ffb feels awful
Sonoma is a shame. It’s a fantastic track. Wish it would be used more often and people would get hyped on it