Sim Racing Beginner's Guides

iRacing can feel overwhelming at first — the subscription model, the UI, the huge series catalogue, the rating system. This guide walks you through everything from "I just installed it" to "I just finished my first race", so you can focus on the Rookie class and on having fun.

Adapted from a German-language YouTube beginner guide. Credit / link TBD — paste the channel name and video URL here to give the creator proper attribution.

Sign up at iRacing.com, not on Steam. Steam can occasionally be a few cents cheaper if there's a promo running, but long-term iRacing.com gives you better volume discounts on cars and bigger Black Friday renewal deals — savings Steam doesn't pass through.

Subscription model. Unlike most sims, iRacing isn't a one-time purchase — it's a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription. New members often see a 30 % intro discount. As of early 2026, monthly is about $9.10, dropping to $6.42/month on the annual plan (~ $91 / year incl. tax).

Black Friday tip. Annual memberships can drop up to 50 % for new sign-ups, and existing members can renew for up to 25 % off. Many long-timers renew in November for exactly that reason.

Real-name policy. The First and Last Name you enter become your in-sim driver name. iRacing requires real names.

The advertised price is pre-tax. Pay by credit card, PayPal or Venmo (also for future car/track purchases).

After signing up you land on the Member Site. Everything subscription-related lives here: account info, password / e-mail changes, order history, subscription management — and the iRacing client download.

(There is also a legacy web-browser version of iRacing. Almost nobody uses it anymore — download the proper client.)

First time in the iRacing UI, it is a lot. We won't cover every menu — most of it you only need later in your career. But you should know where your races live and where your results appear.

In the left-hand menu, open Official. Every official series — oval, formula, sportscar, dirt, NASCAR — is listed here. There are dozens. To make this manageable, click Tags at the top right and enable Rookie. Now you only see series you can actually enter.

Each row shows: a star to favourite the series, a countdown to the next event, the driver count, the licence required, the series name, the car, the current track, whether it's a team event, whether the setup is fixed or open, and a green check mark if you're eligible.

Tip: instead of registering from this list, click the series name to open the detail page. You'll get more useful information there — race length, weather, upcoming sessions.

The right-side panel on the series page also shows useful details: race duration, minimum / maximum starters needed for the race to count, how many incident points (X) you can rack up before disqualification, whether a Fast Repair is available, and the start type (standing or rolling).

Registration opens 30 minutes before each race. Once you click Register, the button changes to Withdraw — you can pull out any time while the registration window is open.

While the race is filling, Join Practice appears top right. Click it to warm up on the practice server (loading can take a moment). Read the on-screen briefing box — it tells you which off-track areas count against you.

When the race is about to start, you can wait to be ported automatically, or hold Escape and click Race top right.

The session has three parts: a Practice session (~30 min, so drivers can warm up and join in at their own pace), Qualifying (~8 min, two laps), and the Race. To make it onto the grid, click Grid. If you don't, you'll start from the pit lane.

The white flag = last lap. The chequered flag = finish. Do not stop on the line — that hurts your safety rating and risks getting rear-ended. Roll out gently, then park.

After every race you get a pop-up that your results are ready. Click it, or go to Results & Stats in the bottom-left menu.

If you open results via the series page instead, you'll see all the parallel splits — useful for big-field weeks, but you'll have to hunt for the split you were in.

The result page shows your lap times, average lap, completed laps, the strength of the field, and most importantly your Safety Rating change and iRating change. Scroll to your own name for your best lap and incident-point (X) count.

For the upcoming weeks of the same series, click Schedule at the top of the series page. You can pre-register and even Test Drive future tracks (multiplayer practice servers only appear from Tuesday, when the new week officially starts).

With the Rookie filter on, the list looks long but is split across categories: Oval, Formula, Sportscar, Dirt Oval, NASCAR. And no — you don't start with a 700 hp GT3, just like in real life. You start small.

In Sportscar there are two cars to pick from: the BMW M2 and the Mazda MX-5. Both are extremely popular starters. The Mazda has been the classic Rookie starter for years; the BMW is a more recent addition.

Formula also has two car/track combinations. Dirt Oval has a few more options; NASCAR slightly fewer.

Every Rookie car is free with your subscription. The 12 tracks rotated through the season are also included. You don't need to buy a single car or track until after you've graduated from the Rookie licence.

The first weeks can be sobering — getting spun, getting hit, finishing further back than you hoped. Stay with it. The other Rookies are beginners too. Some have come from other sims and are quick already; others have never sim-raced before and are learning everything for the first time. It evens out fast.

Don't rush to GT3. Learn the cars, learn the lines, learn how to defend, learn the weather system. Enjoy the process of becoming a better driver — that's the actual point.

Ready for dashboards & RPM lights? Once iRacing is running, most sim racers quickly add SimHub for proper DDU dashboards, RPM bars, wind sim and bass shakers — keep scrolling or jump to the SimHub Beginner's Guide below.

SimHub is the "go-to" application to manage your sim racing peripherals — from RPM lights, dashboards and DDUs to wind simulators, bass shakers and pedal rumble kits. Over the years it has evolved from a hobby project into the center of sim racing, with a heavily revised, intuitive UI and broad support from every serious manufacturer in the space (with the notable exception of a few "ecosystem-obsessed" brands).

When a device has SimHub support, the developer ships a device profile containing all of the important settings, so the device is pre-configured out of the box. That means you plug it in, load the profile, and just go racing. You can get deep into the settings if you want — or stay on the surface and still have a great experience.

This guide walks through what a typical first install looks like — dashboard, car settings, devices, LED profiles, Arduino, wind sim and shakers. By the end you'll have a fully set-up SimHub install running your DDU, LED flag, pedal rumble kit, wind sim and steering wheel.

The main screen in SimHub gives you a high-level overview of your rig and lets you control the "feedback" devices — bass shakers, pedal rumble motors, wind sim. It's also where you activate the game you're about to play.

Car Settings is split into two parts: Default Car Settings (for the current game) and Controls. For 95% of sim racers, the most important option is the toggle at the bottom: "Synchronize car redline when game gives it" — with this on, SimHub pulls the redline straight from the sim and you don't have to touch anything.

If you do want to dig in:

• Redline & shift lights — three stages (Shift 1 at 90%, Shift 2 at 95%, Redline at 96% of max RPM by default). Fine-tune the trigger percentages for each stage.
• Low fuel alert — set the remaining-laps trigger and the RPM at which the alert plays.
• Per-gear redline — advanced: define a different redline for each gear when the car model is recognised. Useful if you understand peak torque behaviour, overkill otherwise.
• Button assignments — increment / decrement the redline on the fly from a rotary or button.

Honestly? Turn on auto-sync and go racing. That's the beauty of SimHub — it rewards tinkering, but doesn't demand it.

Click a device (e.g. a DDU or an RPM bar) in "My Devices" to open its dedicated settings page. The layout is consistent across SimHub-supported devices and breaks into four areas:

One of SimHub's superpowers: dashboards are a single file that you just double-click to install. The community scene is huge. A few starting points:

• Lovely Dashboard — widely regarded as the go-to general-purpose dashboard, with multiple editions (including a "TK Edition") and strong ongoing support. Clean, highly readable, "just works".
• Race Sim Studio's Ultimate SimHub Dashboard — if you own RSS cars, this covers virtually every model from their range up to Formula H.
• Manufacturer downloads — most DDU / wheel makers (Grid, Ascher, Cube Controls, Simagic, etc.) post official dashboards on their own websites.

Installation: download the dashboard file, install any required fonts (Lovely Dashboard needs the Roboto Font Family), then double-click the downloaded .simhubdash file with SimHub running. It imports automatically. SimHub may ask to restart, but often it doesn't even need to. Fire up your sim and the new dash appears.

Assign it per-car (see Device Settings above) and you're done.

Most SimHub-supported LED devices (RPM bars, brows, iFlags) ship with a good default profile from the manufacturer. If you want something more custom — or a community-tuned profile with better flag handling — installing one is easy:

1. Open your device in SimHub and click the LEDs tab.
2. Download a profile (e.g. the free LED profiles from Daniel Newman Racing) and unzip.
3. You need the .LEDSPROFILE file. Save it somewhere memorable.
4. Click Import Profile in SimHub and select the file. SimHub confirms installation.

From there you can either use the profile as-is, modify it, or build your own from scratch. Manufacturer defaults are usually the easiest to modify; community profiles like Daniel Newman's are richer but have more going on under the hood.

The Arduino section is where SimHub talks to custom hardware — most commonly an LED matrix running as a gear indicator or an iFlag flag-alert device (the ReaperWare iFlag is a popular one). The page splits into effects, and each effect has a big set of customisation knobs.

For the GEAR effect specifically, you'll find:

• Show current gear — on/off toggle.
• Position — matrix start, start X, start Y to place the digit exactly where you want it.
• Gear dropdown — pick a specific gear to customise.
• Font & Colour — pick both, including a separate redline colour for the shift-blink.
• Redline Blink — enable, and set the blink delay.

Use the + Add effect and + Add group buttons to stack flags, shift warnings, gear and more on the same matrix. This is where SimHub gets genuinely deep — ideal for a weekend 3D-printing + Arduino DIY build.

You now have the mental map: SimHub is the hub that ties your dashboard, LEDs, rumble, wind and shakers together. Install it once, load a dashboard, import your device profile, and you're 90% of the way to a fantastic rig. The remaining 10% is the fun part — tweaking colours, playlists, effect mixes and adding your own DIY Arduino projects over time.

A few next steps:

• Read our Software & Tools page for a wider view of the sim racing software ecosystem beyond SimHub.
• Check the Hardware page for wheelbases, pedals and rigs that integrate cleanly with SimHub.
• If you're still building your rig, the Buying Guide helps you figure out where your money actually matters.
• And if you're a maker: our DIY page has Arduino and 3D-printing project ideas that pair perfectly with SimHub.

This guide is a community-oriented walkthrough. For the deepest how-to reference on individual features, the official SimHub documentation at github.com/SHWotever/SimHub and the official SimHub site are the authoritative sources. First-timer walkthrough style inspired by Richard Baxter's excellent "SimHub Setup: A First Timer's Guide to Getting Started" on Boosted Media.