So here is how things will go if you decide to join. Let's say you are interested in the oval racing portion of the service.
You join for 3 months and get just the minimum content.
You will start by utilizing the classic Ford midget. The first thing you do, is setup the service. Get the graphics configured, get you wheel and pedals configured, sound, mic, etc.
Next you will enter a practice session. From there you can go to the garage or enter the track. In the garage, you can adjust things like tire pressures and camber. (It gets much more complicated when you get to the higher level cars.) In the garage, since you have no idea what you are doing, iracing has provided a baseline setup. You load the baseline setup and decide to hit the track. This week's track is Lanier. (The track changes each week in the official series) It is a small .25 mile oval. Your car starts out in the pits. You pull away from your pit making sure not to speed on pit road. If you speed, you will have to do a stop and go, or pull over and restart. You make it out of the pits, and do a few laps and feel like you are ready to race.
The race stars in 5 mins so get ready because there are no bathroom brakes! (Sometimes after a few beers and in a 60 min race you wish you could pause.)
Anyway, you enter the race session and it is the same thing as practice. You can go to the garage or put yourself on the starting grid. The race starts with or without you so don't miss the starting grid. Let's say you are happy with your setup and go right to the grid. You are placed on the grid by qualifying time (you will figure out how to qualify on your own) or irating (some people choose not to qualify). Now everyone has joined, there are a total of 8 guys in this race session but there were 3 race sessions and everyone was put into different "splits". So there were a total of 24 racers that signed up to race, but since you are a rookie, the races max out at 8 guys per race. Higher licenses allow for larger fields, i.e. Multiclass can have up to 60 cars in the same race. Anyway, the 24 rookie drivers are automatically sorted by irating first highest to lowest. The 8 guys that have the highest irating were put into the first split, next 8 went into 2nd split, and last 8 went into the 3rd split. If there were 25 guys that signed up, then the races would have been split up into groups of 6 with the top split having a 7th.
So back to racing, you start out on the grid behind the pacecar. The pacecar does one lap under caution, and then it is green flag. In the rookie series, I don't think there are any caution flags. The race is only 10 or 15 laps long. The whole goal in the rookie series is to get your SR license up to a D level. The only way to do that is by not running into anything. This sounds easy, but when you are racing against other guys that have no idea what they are doing, or kids that just want to have fun, it becomes really difficult. So when you are in your rookie cars, don't focus on racing anyone, just focus on not hitting anyone. It doesn't matter if you are 5 laps down, just don't hit anything. Then your SR will go up and you can graduate to the D level. Once in the D level you can pick a new car that is more sophisticated, and the racing is much better. If you screw up in the D level though and wreck a bunch of times you get demoted back to the Rookie level. SR is basically a calculation of how many corners you have made it safely through, i.e. corners per incident. Shorter races mean the stakes are higher. Rookie races are the shortest so safe driving is the most important thing. At the A level, races are much longer, so racing is more important than safety. Once you get the hang of it, it is very easy to progress to an A license.
As you move up in license the cars and tracks are no longer part of the base subsription. So if you continue down the oval path, once you get to the D level, you will probably need to purchase a few tracks in order to compete in the whole 12 week series. Again you only need 8 weeks to get your bonus so you don't need to buy tracks you don't like. Once you get to the C level you will need to purchase a new car, most likely the NASCAR truck series car. The truck series in iracing tries to follow the truck series in NASCAR. So if you don't have any of the NASCAR tracks, you will need to purchase them. But, once you go to the B series, you will only need to purchase the B car because the trucks and B car race on the same tracks that you have already purchased. Same thing goes for the A series. It uses the Cup car and the Cup tracks.
The service also has a road side that follows the same structure but with different cars and tracks. Some tracks are applicable to both road and oval, i.e. watkins glen is a very popular track and is used on almost every series road or oval. Daytona has a very good road course and is also used on almost every series.
There is so much content you could drive oval one hour and road the next. You could be in California one minute and Germany the next. The possibilities are endless.
More to come...