iRacing Hotfix Patch (Deployed Yesterday) Attempts to Fix ‘Tire Dipping’

I didn’t post about this or tweet about this issue because although it’s been a known issue for a long time it wasn’t a particular problem until it became this blatant:

Basically it was found that dipping tires onto the grass cooled tires which will have reduced wear and allowed drivers to push harder. Lots of people knew about it, and for a long time, but good sportmanship led to most users choosing not to make use of the exploit.

It seems that once one team started using this exploit to gain 0.5s per lap at Spa almost everyone else decided they had to as well. At the time I figured “well, hey, it’s an exploit… It may have cast a bit of a shadow over this race but iRacing will fix it and it’ll go away.” But then I saw tweets from people banned after apparently only running wide onto the grass at Silverstone. What’s that about?

While some might argue why this person might consider grass to be a part of the racing surface, even racing line, consider that iRacing’s own YouTube channel has many example laps that include contact with the grass. I only had to look at one video to see it because I absolutely knew that any fast lap of Lime Rock would clip the grass somewhere – and it did. Because running up to half a car off the racing surface has always been racing according to iRacing themselves.

Clipping grass is racing, running over it where it juts out across the racing line is racing – that’s why kerbing initially existed as an effort to stop it. The clipping of grass at Silverstone shown in the tweet linked above isn’t the same as using the exploit, and if that’s all this driver did then it’s gross to see it given a similar punishment.

Anyway, I guess iRacing fixed it now. So you don’t have to worry about a 1x and a ban, just a 1x. I hope?

Here are the build notes:

SIMULATION:

————————————————————–

Tires

Tire conditioning properties have been updated.

Here is what iRacing President and CFO had to say about the exploit (before it was fixed) in the forum. Obviously it’s good to see they followed through with a quick fix, but that Silverstone issue didn’t look good either.

Forum post:

Good day,

We just wanted to send a quick message about the 2022 iRacing Spa 24 hour race this weekend.

We obviously know about the tire dipping exploit (putting two tires in the cooler grass to cool tires) that was used by some drivers to purposely manipulate tire temperatures to increase lap times. This is not something that is typically done in the real world for a number of reasons and nor should you be able to do it on iRacing, no excuses.

We have a number of good ideas to take this exploit completely out of the simulation so it no longer is of concern. We have made it a top priority. We should be able to come up with a fix fairly quickly.

I want to apologize to the drivers and teams who put a lot of time in and raced according to the rules of good sportsmanship. We are reviewing the race footage and will be contacting the drivers who did not.

That said, the responsibility is with us to make sure exploits like this are not possible, our apologies. Again, it is a top priority to fix this as soon as possible.

We hope that many of you still enjoyed the race. We also know that we have to keep earning your business and precious time. Thanks for allowing us to continue doing what we love.

Good racing,

Tony Gardner