2026 Season 2 Initial Release Notes [2026.03.09.03]
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The iRacing 2026 Season 2 Release Build is revving its engine and waiting for the green to drop! This is one of four major annual releases for iRacing, and adds new content, features, upgrades, and more fixes than would fit in an iRacing Arcade campus grid. iRacing 2026 Season 2 officially starts on March 17th at 0000 UTC!
iRacing adds two new garage bays to the world’s best racing simulator, featuring the Audi RS3 LMS Gen2 TCR and the NASCAR Truck RAM. The legendary street course, St. Petersburg Grand Prix is now also fully available for racing. Barber Motorsports Park has been fully rebuilt from scratch, utilizing new scan data, and sweeping art updates have been completed at Lanier National Speedway, Langley Speedway, and USA International Speedway.
The iRacing in-Sim interface (HUD) continues to bloom with new features and updates, including: HUD Layout Profiles, The Visual Spotter, a Throttle & Brake Timeline, and two new standalone Widgets. HUD Layout Profiles will let you customize, save, and even share HUD layouts specific to individual cars or classes. The Visual Spotter acts as a different way to be informed about the vehicles around you, serving up the same data provided by the traditional spotter. You may now also visualize your throttle and brake inputs as a timeline, and use a few new Widgets: Session Info, and Session Rules.
In our unstoppable commitment to vehicle excellence, several full Series of vehicles have received massive updates, including the IMSA Vintage Series, GTE Cars, TCR Cars, NASCAR O’Reilly Series Cars, and the Lotus 49. These updates push the realism and performance of these vehicles to the next level. Asphalt Oval Refresh projects continue with improved rubber pick-up and distribution. Formula Cars at short tracks have also received some focused improvements.
Our graphics engineers have found a way to squeeze some additional performance gains from mirror rendering. Rain tires are ready for racing with the new Audi RS3 LMS Gen2 TCR, as well as the IMSA Vintage vehicles (Nissan GTP ZX Turbo and Audi 90 GTO) and the Lotus 49. Our AI Team has been hard at work in the dirt, with big plans for next Season - but for this Season we’ve added the ability for AI Drivers to complete Qualifying and finish race events without any humans present. All new content also comes AI-enabled right out of the box.
Season highlights include:
Audi RS3 LMS Gen2 TCR
NASCAR Truck RAM
St. Petersburg Grand Prix
Barber Motorsports Park (Updated Laserscan & Fully Rebuilt)
Lanier National Speedway (Major Art Update)
Langley Speedway (Major Art Update)
USA International Speedway (Major Art Update)
New HUD Feature: HUD Layout Profiles
New HUD Feature: Visual Spotter
New HUD Feature: Throttle/Brake Timeline
New HUD Feature: Standalone Widgets (Session Info & Session Rules)
IMSA Vintage Car Class Refresh
GTE Car Class Refresh
TCR Car Class Refresh
Lotus 49 Performance Overhaul
Formula Cars at Short Ovals Performance Updates
Oval Refresh Update: Rubber pick-up and distribution improvements
NASCAR O’Reilly Series Class Cars Drafting Updates
AI Racing Feature: Simulated AI Opponent Qualify and Final Results
Rendering Improvements for Mirrors
Rain racing for FOUR more vehicles! (Audi RS3 LMS Gen2 TCR, Audi 90 GTO, Lotus 49, and Nissan GTP ZXT)
AI Racing comes pre-installed with the new vehicles: Audi RS3 LMS Gen2 TCR, and NASCAR Truck RAM
AI Racing is available at both new tracks: St. Petersburg Grand Prix and Barber Motorsports Park
Hundreds of the freshest vehicle setups our trained drivers can cook up
Visit our 2026 Season 2 features page here:
https://www.iracing.com/seasons/2026-s2/
Full 2026 Season 2 Release Notes can be found on the iRacing Forums here:
https://forums.iracing.com/discussion/93268/2026-season-2-initial-release-notes-2026-03-09-03/