iRacing: 5 Ideas For New Yearlong Series

This upcoming week on iRacing sees the debut of a brand new series, the Vintage Grand Prix Tour in which from April to November, fans of the Lotus 79 can compete in full-length races. These races are of course longer than the ones in the regularly scheduled Classic Lotus Grand Prix series, and the VGPT will roughly be following the schedule of the 1978 F1 season.

There are a whole bunch of other yearlong series that have schedules replicating ones used by real life racing championships. Listing them off, they are the Grand Prix Tour (following the F1 schedule), CREVENTIC Endurance Series (24h Series), Nürburgring Endurance Championship (Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie) and the IndyCar iRacing Series.

For iRacing players, the IndyCar schedule is replicated as closely as possible with all available circuits. Image: iRacing Forums

I am always extra keen on doing a lot of these longer-haul races on iRacing, and I picked up the Lotus 79 ahead of 2025 Season 2 because of the Vintage Grand Prix Tour. These longer races are often very high in sign-up rates and also in strength of field, due to the limited timeslots to race them.

As a result, I have plenty of ideas for more yearlong series to add to iRacing, so here are my selections.

Supercars​

Cars: Supercars Gen 3
Real Life Basis: Supercars Championship

In the 2025 Season 1 build, the Gen 3 Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro supercars were added and as far as long haul races go, the only one that these type of cars get to do on iRacing is the Bathurst 1000 Special Event. These cars are so challenging and fulfilling to drive, it feels like they do not get raced to the extent that they should. But with iRacing planning on adding more tracks in the Oceania region, what better way than to create a yearlong series with them?

Tracks that are on the real life Aussie Supercars schedule currently in iRacing include Mount Panorama and Sandown, but there are plenty of additional tracks that have hosted the series in the past like Winton, Phillip Island, Oran Park and even Circuit of the Americas. As for ones getting added in the future, both The Bend and Adelaide are making their way to iRacing, as apparently also is Pukekohe.

In real life, the Supercars series often runs multiple races in a single meeting but for the sake of the races being longer in this ‘Supercars iRacing Series’, the majority of these races will be set at either 200km or 250km depending on the longest race at the equivalent real life round. The only exceptions would be the two ‘enduro’ rounds at The Bend and Mount Panorama, which would both be 500km. Maybe also Sandown can be 500km just like how the real-life event used to be.

Even with the extensive collection of former Supercars venues, there will still be some gaps on the schedule. Townsville for example would have to be replaced by either Detroit Belle Isle or Chicago as they are both street circuits, Long Beach is also but that is more ideal to take the place of Surfers Paradise since both IndyCar and Aussie Supers raced there.

NASCAR Road Series​

Cars: NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen / NASCAR “Garage 56”
Real Life Basis: Various NASCAR series road course events

The NASCAR iRacing Series is a mainstay on the sim, with it following the real life NASCAR Cup Series schedule religiously including all Special Events like the Daytona 500, Coke 600, Brickyard 400 and the Bristol Night Race. But also on the series schedule are all the many road course races that NASCAR has, and I do wish that in spite of not racing ovals at all, I could do just the NASCAR road races.

I for one would love to be able to race NASCAR in official road course races, unfortunately they will not have someone without the high enough oval licence to do so. It would make so much sense to just allow those with a high enough equivalent Sports Car licence to race in the road course races. But even if that did happen, I would still love to see a dedicated NASCAR Road Series on iRacing.

In order to prevent it from clashing with the NiS, the races could be offset from the real life road course events by a week or so. Plus, perhaps it would be a good reason to introduce a certain NASCAR to the service.

Whilst it may have only raced once in the 2023 Le Mans 24 Hours, the Garage 56 NASCAR really made an impact as for popularity among fans, and whilst I would love for it to race in the same Special Events as the three IMSA classes, I would settle for it being in its own dedicated yearlong series. As for what tracks it would race, there would be no shortage of choice.

Just on the Cup Series schedule, there is the Circuit of the Americas, Chicago Street Course, Sonoma, Watkins Glen, Charlotte Roval and Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez at some point in the future, plus some former venues like Road America and the road courses at Daytona and Indianapolis. Then including events in both Xfinity and Trucks both past and present, that also adds Portland, Mid-Ohio, Lime Rock Park, Mosport, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and Road Atlanta.

All races would match their real life race lengths and roughly match the real life dates. Since the car raced at Le Mans, maybe they could justify adding that to the schedule, however that might not work due to certain potential licencing restrictions. Which is topical for the next entry on this list.

SportsCar Endurance​

Cars: GTP, P2, GT3
Real Life Basis: World Endurance Championship

Many of you may recall an article I wrote back in July last year talking about iRacing‘s problematic workaround to get a race of 24 hours in length at Circuit de la Sarthe without getting into licencing problems. What they do is take the Global Endurance Tour series – which hosts six hour races every other week during a season – and up all of the races to 24 hours during Season 3.

Subsequently, the participation for every other race plummets for the most part since understandably, nobody wants to run a 24 hour race every two weeks. Even when you do not take into consideration how in 2024 Season 3, the Sunday races had sometimes less than six signups and how one of the rounds fell on the same week as the Spa 24 hours.

I for one feel like there has to be a much better workaround, instead having it in the form of a yearlong series. After all, if they cannot use the official names, what would prevent them from going down the same workaround as with the Grand Prix Tour?

Image: iRacing.com

Since iRacing cannot use the F1 licence, they have called their designated Formula One series something without using F1 in the title so in theory they could quite easily do the same with the WEC. Therefore, having a series that follows the WEC schedule with a 24-hour race at the Le Mans track could feasibly work. Plus, the majority of other tracks on the WEC schedule are also on iRacing.

The only exceptions are Lusail and Sakhir, which have been swapped out on the Grand Prix Tour schedule in the past years by Magny-Cours and Nürburgring GP. Considering WEC raced at the Nürburgring from 2015-17, that would be the perfect stand-in venue for Sakhir, whilst a better Lusail stand-in for the three classes would be either Algarve or Silverstone.

Either the Global Endurance Tour could transition from a seasonal to an annual series, or it could become a solo-capable series with races capped at four hours. In any case, even if by having every race in this yearlong series being 24 hours, it would be a hell of a lot better spaced out for the playerbase than one every two weeks.

Porsche Endurance Challenge​

Cars: Porsche 992 GT3 Cup
Real Life Basis: Porsche Supercup, Porsche Endurance Challenge and more

The Porsche Cup car on iRacing is an immensely popular car and since it does compete in enduros in real life, it does have a presence in a couple of endurance series on the sim, both the NEC and CREVENTIC series. But one only races one track and the other only does races of at least 12 hours, so what we need is a series that provides long but digestible races.

During my research, I found out about the Porsche Endurance Challenge North America. With only one exception, the races were around the 1.5-2 hour mark in length, making this series the perfect basis for a longer haul Porsche Cup series. But for tracks, that would be a mix between some other series, primarily one that supports the F1 Grand Prix schedule.

Image: iRacing.com

Whilst it is a sprint series, the Porsche Supercup is the series with the highest profile and visits the most prominent circuits. But there are also plenty of national-based Carrera Cup championships that we can also pull from, like the French series which has a round on Circuit de la Sarthe, and the German series that runs a round in support of the 24 hours of Nürburgring on the combined track.

This iRacing Porsche Endurance Challenge can be an amalgamation of all Porsche spec series from across the world. It would truly be an immensely popular series with this firm favourite car on iRacing.

IMSA Vintage​

Like the Australian Supercars, there is only one long-haul event that can be done with the Nissan GTP ZX-T and Audi 90 GTO, the Road America 500. With the Vintage Grand Prix Tour debuting this year, it provides a great opportunity to see how the iRacing playerbase takes to a full year of longhaul races in classic cars, which historically have never proven that popular.

As the VGPT schedule is roughly based on the 1978 F1 season, a full length IMSA Vintage series would be based on the 1989 IMSA GTO season that both the Nissan and Audi raced in. Having a look at the schedule for that season, there are plenty of tracks on that schedule that are in iRacing, and many that can be swapped out for fitting alternatives.

Even though the Audi did not race at either of them, Daytona and Sebring are a must. Then there are the likes of Road Atlanta, Summit Point, Lime Rock, Mid-Ohio, Mosport, Watkins Glen, Road America, Portland, Laguna Seca and Sonoma (or as it was called back then, Sears Point). Plus with the Miami F1 track set to be added, that would serve as a stand-in for the Miami Street Circuit.

As far as race length goes, it of course will not be 500 miles like the Road America 500 event, instead all rounds would follow what the IMSA GT Championship ran back then as standard, either 300 or 500 kilometres allowing them to be done with a co-driver or solo. Although if iRacing were to instead add a Porsche 917/30, I would personally pick a 1972 Can-Am season-based series over this.

Bonus Idea: Super Formula​

On iRacing, the majority of Formula Car races are not that long and the ones that are longer and have limited timeslots are not weekly, instead part of a yearlong series (Grand Prix Tour, Vintage GPT, IndyCar) and I personally wish there was one that existed at the end of every week. Pretty much the Formula Car equivalent of the GT Endurance Series.

The perfect candidate for that is the Super Formula car, which are the only other single seaters that go for long distance races. Currently the furthest a Super Formula car races in real life is 185km whilst the regularly scheduled open setup Super Formula official races on iRacing go for about 130km. The real life series used to run races of 250km but refuelling was banned and subsequently the races shortened.

In either case, a suitable race length for a weekly longhaul Formula Car series.

Image: iRacing.com

It could be all well and good having a yearlong series made up of the tracks that Super Formula visit in the real world, but only Suzuka, Fuji and Motegi are on both the real life schedule and in iRacing. Plus with only seven actual meetings, I believe it would make sense to instead have Super Formula fill this void we have in the iRacing ecosystem.

The lack of a long haul weekly scheduled series for the Formula Car licence ever since the Road licence split is ever so apparent. Before that, you could lose a whole lot of Safety Rating by competing in an F4 race but gain it all back again doing an endurance race at the end of the week. So a series with full length races at the end of every week in the Super Formula? Sounds like a great way to make up some losses to SR, in theory at least.

Which real life championships would make for a great fit as a yearlong series on iRacing? Let us know in the comments below, and join the discussion in our iRacing forum!