https://www.iracing.com/iracing-101-week-13/
Welcome to iRacing 101, where each week we’ll go through some of the many features that make iRacing the World’s Premier Motorsport Simulation. From highlighting our features to some of the top series and forms of racing you’ll encounter when you get behind the wheel.
This week’s topic: What is Week 13?
iRacing follows a quarterly update schedule, with new releases early in the months of December, March, June, and September. This system allows us to break up each year into four competitive seasons for a majority of our series, most of which run for the first 12 weeks of the season. The new content releases are then deployed on the 13th and final week of each season, giving users a week to feel out the new update before getting back to competitive racing.
But Week 13 is much more than a week where new cars, tracks, and features hit the sim. It’s also a time where we add some experimental forms of racing to our public offerings—creating new forms of multi-class racing, putting cars on tracks they’d never run in the real world, and much more. Here’s a look at what you can expect from a typical Week 13:
New Content and Features Series
These series are designed specifically to highlight the top updates in any given build. Whether it’s a new racing machine, freshly built track, or any other sort of update, these Unranked series will give you a chance to feel it out with other players without having to worry about a hit to your iRating or Safety Rating.
Ranked Series
Still looking for the normal iRacing competitive experience? Don’t worry—it doesn’t take a break on Week 13. Many of our most popular series in each license class are available for competitive racing with iRating and Safety Rating on the line. In addition, series that follow real-world calendars like the NASCAR iRacing Series will still run normally regardless of if they have events scheduled on Week 13.
Unranked Series
On a normal week of iRacing, you may be familiar with Unranked series like Carburetor Cup, Pickup Cup, and Dallara Dash, each of which is modeled after a real-world racing series. Week 13 takes this concept to the next level by creating fun fantasy combinations.
While the specific offerings change from one Week 13 to the next, and are posted to our website and forums on the days leading up to them, examples of Week 13-specific series you might see include:
- Battle of the Little Wings: Multi-class open-wheel racing on road courses.
- Figure GR8: Cars and trucks of all disciplines take on the figure 8 courses at Irwindale Speedway (with or without a jump) and Slinger Speedway.
- Tube Frame Twister: Stock cars, often the Street Stock, take on a wild set of road courses from around the world.
Identity Crisis: From MX-5s on short ovals to Pro 4 trucks on road courses, this is where we take a car completely out of its element and see how it handles.
- Deutsche Drifters: Multi-class racing on the Nurburgring Touristfahrten, typically featuring multiple cars from a German manufacturer.
- Ridiculousness: Anything goes in this series. Often comprised of our most popular tracks and frequently populated by a mix of Oval, Sports Car, and Formula Car vehicles.
- Dirt Ridiculousness: The Ridiculousness concept applied to dirt ovals.
- Symkhana: Rallycross featuring a car that typically doesn’t run off-road.
2×4 Off-Road Trucks: Multi-class off-road racing featuring the Pro 4, Pro 2, and Pro 2 Lite off-road trucks.