iRacing Licence Classes: Perception vs Reality

When you first join iRacing, there are certain things you believe.

You look at the rookie licence drivers and think, yep, that's where the chaos lives.

Then you see somebody with a D license.

They're obviously a little better.

C class.

Now we're getting serious.

B class.

These people know what they're doing.

And then A class.

Surely these are the grown-ups.

These are the drivers who don't dive bomb.

They don't lose their temper.

They don't make ridiculous moves.

They don't completely misjudge braking zones.

And obviously, they never cause stupid accidents.

Yeah, about that.

Welcome back everyone to the Lone Road iRacing podcast.

This week we're talking about something I've been thinking about for quite a while.

The difference between how we perceive the iRacing licence classes and the reality of actually racing within them.

Because there is a really interesting assumption that I think many of us make when we start iRacing.

That as we climb the licence ladder, the standard of driving automatically climbs with us.

Rookie to D to C to B to A.

It looks like a hierarchy of driving ability.

But is it? Because having raced through those licence classes myself, I've discovered something.

Some drivers can apparently bring their rookie brain all the way to A class.

and occasionally I've probably been one of them.

So this isn't going to be an episode where I sit here pointing fingers at everybody else, because I, me, have made mistakes along the way.

Every racing driver on this planet makes mistakes.

The interesting question is, why do we expect the letter besides somebody's name to change all that? So today we're going to dismantle a few myths about the iRacing license ladder.

We're going to look at what those licenses actually tell us, what they don't tell us, why experienced drivers still make terrible decisions, why road race doesn't magically disappear at A-Class and why some rookie and D-Class drivers might actually be very good racers.

and ultimately why I think we should stop racing the license and start racing the drivers.

Right, let's get into it.