iRacing’s season 1 of 2022 has just started, and as usual, a new quarter brings new features. The highlights for this season are all road-related:
- The biggest release is the Mercedes W12 E, the F1 car of the 2021 season. This modern F1 car has been developed together with the Mercedes F1 team and is used for all F1 series from now on. I haven’t given it a try yet, but the feedback from other drivers is that it is very approachable, but takes skill to be really fast in – as it should be.
- The cries of the TCR crowd have finally been heard: the Honda Civic Type R and the Hyundai Elantra N TC join the Audi RS3 LMS, with the latter getting some adjustments. You can drive them in the Touring Car Challenge, or in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, where the TCR class has has a huge boost in popularity and currently sees more entries than the GT4 class.
- Knockhill in Scotland has been added as new road track. It’s a relatively short and narrow track that is well suited to touring cars, but might be a challenge for larger fields of faster cars.
- The Porsche Experience Center inside the Hockenheim race track is track another addition, given free of charge to owners of Hockenheim. I’m not sure what the purpose of this track is, as it is a “tech track” for driver education and not really suited to racing. I guess you could use it for time trials.
- Finally, Watkins Glen has been completely rescanned and remodelled. It replaces the old version that has been retired, and anyone who owned the old version gets the new one for free. This is a nice upgrade of a very popular race track, and I’ve already had some good races here.
To sum it up, a nice release for road racers, especially if you’re into F1 or touring cars. No word yet on when we’ll get rain, the other big thing that is known to be in development.
