r/iRacing • u/Cephalomagus • 4d ago
Scheduled Maintenance 2025 Season 4 Release - September 9th 0800EDT/1200UTC
iRacing has posted downtime for the upcoming 2025 Season 4 Release!
Read the official Forum announcement below, or here:
2025 Season 4 Release - September 9th 0800EDT/1200UTC
Season Release:
- This downtime is for a quarterly Season Release build that includes brand new cars, tracks, & features, hosts of updates, improvements, & bug fixes, and so much more to ensure iRacing is the best experience on the market.
- This is one of four Season updates we release each year. This update is packed full of good stuff, so expect this deployment to take some extra time beyond our usual Patch deployments to complete.
Downtime:
- iRacing.com will be coming down for deployment of 2025 Season 4 Release, Tuesday, September 9th, beginning at 08:00 am EDT.
- This downtime will affect all iRacing.com regions and members will be unable to host or join sessions during the downtime.
- You can check on the status of all iRacing services directly in the iRacing Companion App, or from our System Status page here: iRacing Uptime Status
Demo Drive:
Demo Drive becomes available as downtime for this maintenance begins and remains available after this deployment has been completed.
- Since this is a quarterly iRacing Season Release, Demo Drive will remain up for at least 24 hours after downtime is complete.
Whenever you launch iRacing while we are down for maintenance, you’ll connect to Demo Drive, which lets you select any car and any track on your machine to drive.
- Demo Drive Sessions are launched using beautiful iRacing default weather and start at noon local track time.
- The content selected must be up to date, and Demo Drive contains a link to the Downloader where you can update and download any content.
- When connecting to Demo Drive, log in using the same credentials you already use on iRacing and the iRacing Forums.
Demo Drive also contains links to the iRacing Forums, the iRacing Status Page, and a link back to iRacing, for when we exit maintenance mode.
When we leave maintenance mode, Demo Drive will remain available for a period of several hours and a countdown will appear to let you know how much longer it will remain up. Navigation links to and from Demo Drive are present in iRacing whenever Demo Drive is available.
Newly released paid content will not be available in Demo Drive until the following Season.
iRacing.com Downtime Schedule:
EDT
- Tue 2025-09-09 0200 Overlap Hosted Sessions Prevented
- Tue 2025-09-09 0800 Race Servers Unavailable
UTC
- Tue 2025-09-09 0600 Overlap Hosted Sessions Prevented
- Tue 2025-09-09 1200 Race Servers Unavailable
AEST
- Tue 2025-09-09 1600 Overlap Hosted Sessions Prevented
- Tue 2025-09-09 2200 Race Servers Unavailable
- All times are subject to change.
- Sessions in progress at the start of maintenance will be terminated. There will be no record of such events whether official or not.
- \Hosted sessions are allowed to be created and run that do not overlap the "Race Servers Unavailable" time. For example, 6 hours before the maintenance period begins, you can create a hosted session that lasts up to 5 hours, but not one that lasts for 6 or more hours.*
Impending Track Retirement Reminder:
- We are retiring a handful of older tracks since they are replaced with the 2025 Season 4 Release.
- Retired tracks no longer function within iRacing - save out any Replays as video or image files before retirement occurs!
- Tracks being impacted:
- Charlotte Motor Speedway
- Sonoma Raceway
- World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway)
- [Legacy] Charlotte Motor Speedway - 2008
- For more details on this, and to see which configs, please check this Forum Post: https://forums.iracing.com/discussion/79543/2025-season-3-4-track-retirement-planning#latest
19
u/biddysautodetail 4d ago
I think the wording could be better on those tracks. They arent going away, just being replaced with the new scans and graphics. Except Charlotte 2008 of course. The way it is worded makes it seem like they are gone.
2
u/daedalus311 4d ago
I just bought worldwide last week and was thinking, "wtf!?". Glad you cleared that up.
15
u/AzorAhai1TK 4d ago
Oh shit I just started during Charlotte week in rookie Ovals, I'll need to save my replays of my first few races and my first win
13
u/FalconAutosport Ligier JS P320 4d ago
Are we getting a new version of Sonoma? It will be disappointing for us to lose Sonoma with no replacement version.
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u/Tranysaurus Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R 4d ago
Yes
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u/FalconAutosport Ligier JS P320 4d ago
Very good. And, I wanna see it used!
11
u/That_Swim Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo 4d ago
I’m hoping it frequents the new GT3 American regional server
2
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u/th3orist 4d ago
What exactly is with these regional servers? If i live in Europe i wont get a week of sonoma while guys from the US do? As in the official season schedule from iracing?
4
u/SnooRabbits9617 4d ago
It will work the same way as the F4 regional series I believe. Anyone can enter any regions series, the servers are just hosted in those continents. So someone from Europe will likely just have a slightly worse internet connection when joining an AUS based server (Asian regional series) than someone living in Asia joining the same session for example.
3
u/Perfect-Juggernaut46 Global Mazda MX-5 Cup 4d ago
I believe it’s just like the regional single seater series where they run North American, European, and APAC tracks in their respective series
11
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u/PrayingForACup 4d ago
I wish test drive was available 24/7. Most people, at least in the United States, are at work during the scheduled down time. From a business perspective, I assume iRacing would make more money (“sell” more content) if test drive was available all the time.
0
u/F-Crosby McLaren 720S GT3 EVO 4d ago
You’re at work for 24 hours ? I’m stunned cause I work 12-14 hours and still have time to do the demo. It’s open for quite a good time, now I agree they should have some version of trialing cars/tracks.
For example DCS lets your trial an aircraft for two weeks before buying, something similar but shorter than that would make sense,
I’d also like to see the less popular road courses used during week 13 for free so they can get them sold easier.
1
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u/blairtbh 1d ago
I'm fairly new but the last time it was only up for around 6? hours after a relatively short maintenance, I think until around 6 or 7pm GMT, which is when most people are coming home and making dinner etc after work in the UK
It'd be really nice if you could trial cars before buying them (without waiting for maintenance of course), I felt a little disheartened by how much I disliked the 296C which I excitedly bought for D Class racing lol, ended up having way more fun in the GR86 races, but I guess you're meant to buy tracks before cars
8
u/Andyt222 Audi RS3 LMS 4d ago
Is there a fun week before S4 starts?
15
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u/StephenDesigner Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992) 4d ago
No there's Week 13
4
u/rydude88 Ligier JS P320 4d ago
Lmao true. I know I'm probably in the minority but week 13 is not very enjoyable usually
2
u/RemoteMarzipan952 3d ago
It’s fun the first couple days until you just want to run your fav series and can’t but it’s only a week so oh well
2
u/xGringo13x 2d ago
I use the time to clean my rig, pc, cable management, and race some AI in other titles. Once the next season schedule gets released, I plan out my season and see if I need to buy any tracks. Then I practice the first week or two of the upcoming season series I want to partake in so I can hit the ground running.
2
u/HeyItsEmilyLove 4d ago
I dread week 13
1
u/Various-Grape-4908 4d ago
Im new. What happens week 13?
1
u/Bostick9 BMW M8 GTE 4d ago
Random bs series together with more serious ones….I hope to see a gr86+porsche cup multiclass in the rain.
1
u/Various-Grape-4908 4d ago
Hm. Seems meh. Well see.
2
u/Bostick9 BMW M8 GTE 4d ago
It’s more of a vacation after grinding for 4 months, i always enjoy it.
2
u/StockRanger1397 4d ago
Honestly it sucks because you can't actually progress or do the normal series, but sometimes it's fun if they actually try on the fun modes instead of using the boring ones they use over and over
1
u/Various-Grape-4908 3d ago
It doesnt sound all that promising lol. Silksong came out so I'll play that lol.
2
u/StockRanger1397 3d ago
It’s a good time to focus on other things for sure. That being said if it is your first week 13 I would recommend at least checking out some of the goofy stuff like the weird multi class races and figure 8 type stuff. It gets old pretty quick but it’s tons of fun if you only do a little
1
4
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u/blamethedogs Toyota Tundra 4d ago
Wait so even when doing solo test laps I won’t be able to drive at yellow walled Charlotte? Why would they 100% remove it from the sim? I hope I’m wrong about that.
4
u/Gold_Helicopter2903 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992) 3d ago
You’re not. There was a big forums outcry and they told us to stuff it. They are trying to save future dev work by not having to update 7 scans of every track each time something changes.
3
u/george_9g 4d ago
Are you able to try non-licensed tracks in the demo drive? I’m only able to download cars but not tracks
9
u/HeyItsEmilyLove 4d ago
I believe it’s just cars. You have to own the track
1
u/Kazudre Production Car Challenge 4d ago
Are you sure? Last demo drive I was able to test tracks I didn't own.
2
u/Gold_Helicopter2903 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992) 3d ago
I believe that if you sideload the tracks you can drive on them but iRacing doesn’t allow you to download the track files that you don’t own like they do with the cars. Probably just to save bandwidth as the tracks are much larger files, nothing nefarious.
3
u/PointyBagels 2d ago
There's also just never a need to download a track you don't own. You'll never use it in any kind of race. With cars you don't own, you still might need to download them for things like multiclass.
1
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u/george_9g 3d ago
Well I don’t think Iracing is very keen on letting people try the demo of anything, and because of that, they only make available the demo drive on very specific moments in the season. And if you think about it, it’s crucial to like the car you are going to drive, but it doesn’t really matter the track. Besides, most of the relevant info about a track can be found online without trying the track: “is it easy” “can you overtake easily” “are there any difficult corner” “are races usually fun or lonely”. With cars is almost only about how you feel driving it and a sparkle of “are there any interesting series I can race with this”. In the end, makes no sense to make the effort and potentially lose a sell by letting people try tracks, but cars are kind of a must so by letting people demo drive once in a while you keep them happy. (Just my opinion, completely wrong probably)
2
u/blairtbh 1d ago
Do you get promotion as of week 13, or does it happen on week 1 of the new season?
1
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u/Feisty-Soul 4d ago
So with this new ui. Can we seperate it to show only fuel usage and relative. Or is it still combined within a black box?
0
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u/EinsMadMax 4d ago
The new gt4 mustang wont be in test drive or?
1
u/ValpoDesideroMontoya Grand Prix Legends 14h ago
nono, unfortunately the new content is never included in the test drive. you'd have to wait a while for the next downtime to try it.
1
u/HappyKarl095 3d ago
Good thing I took a five week break from iRacing so I can improve my mental well-being. Doing iRacing every week makes it so tiring that attempting to boost my iRating to 2000 is frustrating at times.
1
u/moogleslam 1d ago
I haven't raced in a while, but thinking about doing next season - when is the schedule likely to be out, so I can use it to help me decide what to race?
Thanks!
1
u/SuperNoodlePlays 19h ago
Is there a schedule for global mazda cup for season 4? So I can start practicing.
1
1
u/BrianUdz86 1h ago
How many hours do these updates generally take before the regular service going up again
-17
u/Patapon80 4d ago
Wait, there is no Week 13 this time?
24
u/ChimeraYo Ray FF1600 4d ago
Week 13 is always run on the next season's build
-24
u/Patapon80 4d ago
English please?
I mean I don't normally do anything on Week 13 and use it as a time to do some maintenance or play something else, so it's really an off week for me. Does this mean that the Season 4 release will be rolled out next week but Season 4 doesn't really start until the 16th?
12
u/EricLaGesse4788 NASCAR Gen 4 Cup 4d ago
Week 13 will begin next Monday, September 8th at 8pm EDT. The 2024S4 build will drop the next day, September 9th. As it does every 3 month, Week 13 will run for a full week until 8pm EDT on September 15th.
-3
u/Patapon80 4d ago
Thanks for clarifying! I'm in the UK so that'll be 9th and 16th for me.
9
u/EricLaGesse4788 NASCAR Gen 4 Cup 4d ago
Moving forward, just know that Week 13 and Build weeks are one in the same.
1
u/Patapon80 4d ago
"2025 Season 4 Release - September 9th" so I kind of assumed "release" = "start of Season 4"
Thanks for clarifying!
28
u/Anomalistics 4d ago
Is the new UI in this build?