I think Stock Car Brasil specifically has an additional problem that you didn't touch on--it just doesn't have any of its own real-world circuits to run on. There is ONE South American circuit on iracing, period. That's just not enough for the people who could instead go to Automobilista 2 or even 1 and race most of the SCB calendar.

I was all about the Mission R until I watched a few people streaming it and realized that sound was going to absolutely drive me up the wall.

Im a sprint car and silver crown regular, and while it hurts me that the series dont get that much love, we've created such a great and tight knit community that it really doesnt matter that we dont do C-Fixed numbers

I dont think anyone races the Stock Car Brasil in iRacing, because its cheaper and overall better to do it in Automobilista.

I'm not an iracer but what could be cool for iRacing to do would be to have a "variety" series where both the cars and tracks both change throughout the weeks, but you get to drive that series without necessarily owning the content. It would give a lot of attention to some of these less common cars and tracks that could be really fun to race on if you could only get a full grid.

Do give an idea of how quickly the Formula IR Series died off: When I was covering RaceSpotTV's Friday Night Primetime and we covered the first EVER season with those cars, we had 2 full splits on the first week. By week 8 in a 12 week season, we were lucky if we broke double digits.

I was super interested in the Stock Car Brasil series and was planning to buy into it as my primary road series until I realized how dead the series is. Yes, the car's visibility sucks but I really think it's blown out of proportion. As an oval racer, I personally love stock car racing on road courses and it's hard to find good online multiplayer racing for it so that series sounded very appealing. But I really think it's the skill of the car that killed it, combined with low recognition and iRacing failing to expand the tracks to actually include more circuits from the real Brasil tour in the series. I drive the Stock Car Brasil cars offline in an AI championship in AMS2 and it is so much fun. It requires throttle control, constantly paying attention, brake modulating, etc. You can't just go throw it around tracks with minimal practice like a GT4/GT3 car and I think that's where it loses people's interests. It's a "slower" car that requires a lot of skill to constantly maintain and that is just not a big "fun factor" for most people. Toss in low recognition, lack of real world tracks, bad cockpit visibility and it was clearly doomed... I also love Dirt Road (rally and trucks) and really want to see iRacing expand content there to hopefully bring in more people. I'm tired of the constant focus for GT3/GT4 and Formula content. I know it's the popular stuff these days but ugh, it's so overdone and boring to me now. At least we're getting some exciting new oval content this season!

When it comes to real life Short Course Truck racing "SCT". It's hard to judge popularity with the lack of TV coverage. But when it comes to Trophy trucks and desert racing they are very popular on the west coast. It's more of a regional racing series.

Its honestly so surprising to me that silver crowns don't rival indycar

As soon as the Mission R was announced, I guessed on Reddit that it would be dead within a week, namely because it's electric and most car guys aren't super fond of EVs It's a shame the ir-01 isn't more popular, it's so fun and an absolute riot to drive

I’ve said this before, the dead series need to be made into unranked multiclass races. That way people can race different cars with out worrying about having to do hours of practice and ruining your safety or irating.

i have to defend Stock car here, im not in pc, but i can say, iRacing is expensive for most brazilians, and we have Automobilista, that is a BR simulatior mainly for brazilian categories

I don’t play iracing at all, but I really like these videos they are super interesting for some reason. I thought the video about the fastest lap time(sub 10 seconds or something?) was great!

I was so excited to finally be able to move to B rank oval so i could race the silver crown cars, even purchased the car to run laps with in test drive. Really bummed that its practically a dead series, the car is pretty fun to drive.

i figured the rookie dirt legends just got bad participation because when someone goes to check dirt ovals out, street stocks seem more familiar and already has a larger participation, so people are going to go for that for those factors before even knowing how the legends drive

Dirt legends just kinda... doesn't exist in most parts of the US. That and they drive very weirdly to be honest. Street stocks are just the more fun and popular route

Silver crown and sprint cup are awesome to drive.

Mission Rs biggest problem isnt the sound. Just turn the engine volume down in the settings. It doesnt give you any feedback anyways due to the lack of gears. The worst thing is the driving itself. That you have to basically learn two cars with the quali/race mode and the fact that it drives awfully with its AWD compared to the PCUp which is its direct competition.

I wish people would give the Pro Trucks a better chance. Yes, they are difficult but it only takes time and effort to learn just like any other vehicle. The Pro 2's are insanely fun when driving door to door, lap after lap, and giving a small nudge every now and then. Such a rewarding feeling to get the lap down properly, especially while racing others. Thank you for the video!

The asphalt Sprint Car and the Silver Crown are a good study in how to handle a less populated series. They have organised themselves in to running at the same time slots each week, have setups that are competitive against the main pack of drivers, and have regulars who are willing to help newcomers get to terms with the car. If some of the other series that struggle to get a race up followed their lead they may just find a decent following, even if it's only once or twice a week. Better that than to completely waste what you paid for.

I'm a big dirt road guy but yeah, the Pro 2 opens are a pain. The Pro 2 itself is one of the most fun Dirt Road cars to drive imo when you figure it out, but trying to track down a setup to run the open series just doesn't make sense especially when there's a fixed series. Dirt road in general is incredibly underrated in the service. The supercars in rallycross need some work but the trucks are a hoot and fun to try and master, whether thats Lite, Pro 2 or Pro 4. I think the tracks being pretty bespoke and not able to be used by anything other than the trucks that race there hurt it a lot too. If you buy a road or oval tarmac track you can drive basically anything there, and dirt oval has more disciplines than dirt road. Also road racers might not want to buy stuff like Iowa just for the rallycross layout to run a full season.

I would love to race the Mission R more. I raced it a lot when it was new and got a bit more people. If I knew I could sign up and do an official race in the Mission R any given time slot. i would be there pretty much every week. It is a bit weird that people complain about the sound. It's electric, of course it's going to sound electric.

Great Video, very interesting, thank you!

Nice video maybe it brings some people into trying these series. Tracy

I really loved the Mission R series, just tweak the engine sound a bit. As a electric radio control enthusiast I was really looking forward to seeing what setup could be done with the electronics like drag brake, coast, and recovery modes.

Ppl need to try the silver crown and sprint cars series, really fun but hard to drive.

Great vid!! One questions no love for NASCAR full/half race series? It is C class with a A license material

i dont have iracing, but that dirt road series looked like a blast

The IR-01 always has an official race. Sundays 12gmt. The last time we didn't have one was during the 24h Daytona weekend bcoz most participated in that event. The car was also C Class for the last 12 month. And in a few hour iRacing will finially kill the car by turning it into some weird Indycar replacement. Noone of the regulars wanted that change but iRacing doesn't care when it comes to the IR-01

The GT series with the C6 Corvette is a hard one to get to go official also

It always comforts me and fills me with joy when he’s like, Hey guys Justin here!

I'm a roadie from the word go. With that said I have raced and run oval track racing as well. I really enjoyed the Silver Crown, though when I was a teenager in the 70's they were called USAC Dirt Champ Cars. The car that we have in iRacing was an attempt to have a dirt track car and a special chassis for the asphalt races. Dirt track races are run by teams who basically run on a shoestring budget. That car did not take off and all of the real-world teams continued to run their dirt cars on asphalt. Now if you can get a good setup and PRACTICE, you can have a ton of fun in these cars.

I love asphalt short track racing and really wanted to be able to race pavement sprints when I was subbed but being outside the usa made that impossible. I'd have to be racing at 2am.

I enjoy the Porsche, and the sound is fine. Masks the tinnitus quite well. I know the sound does put some off, but it drives so different maybe that isn't helpful either.

I think mission R could have been good if the series ran limited electric power so you actually had to lift, coast and recharge rather than just run flat out all the time. It made no sense to run a battery powered car with the battery having part to play

As a mostly dirt oval racer. The dirt legends just aren’t fun to drive for me when there’s other options. I’d much rather run the street stocks or 305s

As brazilian, everyone expected our Stock Car to flop. The reasons are various: >The cars are actually overepresented in video-games. You can play it with the full package (tracks, drivers, specific rules, etc) for less money in other places. >iRacing only have one track that really suits the cars (Interlagos). >iRacing can be really expensive for a average brazilian, so we have to be very cautious in what we buy, only paying for things that will be used like all the time to avoid throw money away. (even Interlagos is barely used in other races making it a no buy). >Our very own community don't care that much about the series, they will prefer to play with oval cars or GT3s at any time.

I am disappointed the Mission R isn't more popular because it's quite fun to drive, and it's a very different experience than an ICE car.

Missing Lotus 49 and Audi GTO in this list. Nice video.

I don't mind driving the Brazilian stock cars, i mostly just time trial them, I think the heat format is off putting as well. Plus i think the tyres are bugged. The first set are very slippery, but once you get some heat into them and reset your car they seem to perform much better.

Great video and I think iRacing staff can take a couple of notes from here. IMHO, to me there's three main reasons a series is popular: - Car(s) is(are) easy to learn, fun to drive and permissive. - Car(s) and tracks encourages car to car battles (it's not usual to see a popular series dwindling in participation when the schedule hits a "boring" or "unfit" track). - Schedule don't clash with another and more popular series. Let's remember the fact that Mercedes-AMG's 2021 F1 car was the most fastest sold car ever in iRacing, yet its series' participation went downards massively since its first season (even I bought this and never raced it :D ).

I really enjoy the silver crowns whenever I can get a race to go official

Shame that the trophy trucks don't get much love, they're a lot of fun to drive.

It's such a shame because the Pro 2 trucks are SO FUN to drive. Big learning curve for me at least, but they're great. I wish more people would drive them. Also people who complain about a series being open setup need to just ask the people that run it if they'd be willing to share a setup with them. When I used to race the C class legends, guys would share setups they're working on, all you had to do was ask.

ok, James Falcon Pratt here, a 10+ yr member Let PLAY this video The Sprint Car is VERY Hard to Drive and has Never done well The Silver Crown is GREAT Fun, just many don't even try it Later

I hope I can see more people get in to dirt road at some point. I love tallycross but I can only get races with the slower rookie and d class beetle.

I was really looking forward to the Brazil Stock Cars. I have seen them on Motorsport TV, and they are a very competitive and exciting brand of racing. I thought the cars handled just fine, though I think a move to fixed setups would have boosted the series. I remember all the whining when fixed setups were introduced to NASCAR series. But some people want to compete on a level playing field and have no interest in learning automotive engineering, they just wanna race.

I would run the last series you talked about with dirt oval, but its open set. WHYYYYYY

mission R was screwed from the goofy qualifying mode they gave it. Making you have to learn 2 breaking points for every turn was not fun. on top of that having to then drive around all the people who only practiced quali mode and not race mode and then they would drive like clowns trying to get by you. this car has so many gimmicks its not a shock it was DOA after week 3. We joined a league for these cars and had a blast in it. but 1 season was more than enough.

I feel weird for like the Mission R motor sound, at least it sounds like a RC car unlike some eletric cars THAT DONT HAVE ANY SOUND AT ALL

in a way, i actually like these very low participation series. Sure, there's not a huge following and you wont see any big names in there or streaming, but you tend to find a group of regulars and race against them a lot, to the point you can learn how they all drive and get some really good fun races and chat with a usually much more relaxed and open community than you'll generally find in the more competitive series. It just often feels like a different vibe of racing which can be a nice break

I cannot believe the Brazilian stock stocks get such low participation. The cars are badass, the schedule is badass, and the racing is badass

remember when rallyX was added? everyone was running it for a while good times now whole thing is dead

even with the outdated tire model, i still recommend the usac pavement cars because they teach you how to make a pass without running people over (patience and racecraft), which is the opposite of what you typically see with fendered cars coming through the ranks (like late models) the numbers were getting pretty good for both awhile ago during the pandemic, but if theyre falling again, im tempted to come back. one of my best experiences in the sim

The mission R is a ton of fun to drive it feels like a go Kart, really wish it had a following

I like the Pro2 trucks. I hop in them once in a while. Been in a few good races where the whole field ran nearly identical qualifying times. The contact penalties are a little more forgiving too. So you can bang fenders a bit and nobody crashes and no safety rating hits.

The Mission R car is SO much fun. I wish people would race in that series.

I am ( or used to be?) a regular in the lotus 49 series. I say used to be because they have the broadcast race at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday. For anybody that is not Australian or European, it's a pretty bad time to have an important race that you might want to get other people to watch. 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday might as well be the moon in terms of time slots that people are watching stuff. It's also absolutely miserable to wake up early on Saturday morning , every week into infinity just to participate in the strength of field race. After a certain point, I have to ask myself if I really want a sacrifice every other leisurely aspect of my Saturday morning for one race. One race that I might not even make it through one lap of, because I'm too slow to get past the idiots in the midpack. The old excuse that I always get is that it's because most of the participants are European and Australian. I wonder why that is? It surely couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the North American drivers, the broadcast race is at 7:30 a.m. on a freaking Saturday ? Youd think that even for one season they could change it up out of courtesy for the people that have been getting the shaft by this awkward time slot, but apparently that is just too much to ask. I've asked many times over the years and they always say no.

I race dirt in real life so i am of course more drawn to the dirt stuff. Not racing a downforce car irl (like a winged sprint), I love the wingless sprint cars and I feel like they're more fun than the winged cars. If anyone wants help with setups I can help and teach some of yall. Hit me up please I want those series to have racers again

I really wish the iR-01 didn't get fucked like it did, I want more fictional cars and/or tracks in iRacing and both the iR-01 and Coca-Cola/iRacing Superspeedway failing really takes that potential away unless FIRST decides to make a track editor which I don't see them doing in a long time if at all.

One aspect that you didn't mention that I think hurts a lot of series, is the cost associated with getting into a new series. It's a lot of financial risk to test out a series you're interested in but might not turn out to be your jam. So people go to what they know and what's popular instead of experimenting

I was all hyped to do my first B-class road series and chose the FR3.5 just because they'd dropped the FR2.0. The series didn't go official enough to complete 8 races (even although a couple of times I stayed up really late to try the European guys.) Demanding car, though. I like it.

I guess I'm the only one who actually likes the sound of the Mission R :( It reminds me of the hybrid system on the R18 and I always loved listening to that.

As iRacing customers we're in a curious position where we are not just the customer, but a part of the product too. Series participation will influence a car purchase as much as any other factor for many people. It means unpopular series get caught in a catch 22 where no-one will try the series because nobody is already there racing it. I was curious to try the Mission R when it came out but was sure the series wasn't going to have participation for long so didn't make the purchase. When enough people behave like this, we cause the flop we're wary of. Another thing that stops me buying cars is simply because I don't have enough time to race them all. Series bloat can be a real issue that divides up the community when it's high participation that provides close splits.

The ir01 and pavement sprint are probably the 2 most fun cars

The dirt sprint car is nice to drive in my opinion, the rookie lobbies don't get enough people

The legends cars in general are a stop gap in both dirt and asphalt. They’re much more satisfying than the street stock series… sometimes because of the cars, sometimes because of the quality of competitors…. But the second you get to race a 305/modified/arca/sk modified you can write of the series to the few dedicated participants.

I know the Stock Car brazil doesn't have the best line of site but it's still easy to tell that it's Interlagos unless you just don't know Interlagos whatsoever. Yes, I am trying to make an excuse to stick up for Stock Car Brazil lol

Used silver crowns once on iracing and thought they were the funnest cars just being able to go around Phoenix at 180 was fun af

Another silly thing that makes a series less playable by the people is the bad schedules that some series have. F.ex. the Gen 4 Cup and the Nascar Cup Series use the same race time schedule with one race every 2 hours, instead of putting f.ex. the A class Nascar at One hour and the Gen 4 cup the next hour.

Hey man I’m new to iRacing and I’d like a video like this but highlighting the most played series.

The Mission R killed my braking foot. With no transmission to help slow down you have to be so hard on the brake. And it's All Wheel Drive so it's got a ton of understeer. It became my least favorite car to drive.

I think it really sucks with the sprint cars because they are the most fun car to drive when you actually get some practice in and have a good group to race with

The moment I got in the Stock Car Brazil vehicle, I was like "I can't see a dang thing, so much for this car", which is a shame. Mission R, agree with the sound, though I can tone it out a bit.

As a (mostly) road racer i can tell Mission R would be a good car, but it has a major flaw (except sound of course) - it's 4-wheel drive and you can't switch off front motor to make it RWD. Even on quali setup, where drive bias is -5 (most to rear) this car is understeery as hell making it super annoying for most people... and yea - it's EV, and noone cares about EVs. Basically i bought it just to check how crappy it is, and to be able to say "I drove this, so i can b**ch about it as much as I want" About Dallara IR01 - this car was great... for the first 2 days after release - then they made it undrivable, and then they messed it up even more. I hope 23S2 update will make this more drivable.

Coming from someone who is pretty trigger happy when it comes to iracing purchases (I own the 2 Mercedes f1 cars even though I can’t race them), even I saw right through the Mission R. Kinda cool concept but either A) the novelty would wear off, B) that races would be shit shows like formula e, or C) the noise would be horrendous. But from what I’ve heard it’s not that bad so maybe one day I’ll give it a try.

I’ve tried racing in the dirt midgets lately and had at least 2 sessions not go official

didnt knew that dirt legends was a thing

I was lucky enough to complete the one season of the Porsche Mission R on release to make it worthwhile. Sound wasn't a really big factor for me though, more to do with how it drives.

I'd add the Classic Lotus Grand Prix as a dead series. I don't recall ever joining a race that went official.

Dirt Road has alot more participation through leagues, leagues have pretty much formed their own "Pro series" and a "rookie series" It dont help we only have 5 tracks to rotate over a 12 week coure.

Stock Car Brasil suffers from not having NDM. NDM has a better collision model, so you can lean on other cars a little bit more without getting sucked into each other/causing weird FFB effects. These cars are more like TCR in how people race em. And unlike TCR, no NDM. Silver Crown just died after an update to it made it too easy, and then it was made hard again (I think? It's been a bit) and it remains dead. Mission R suffers from "Everyone who Likes the Mission R thinks no one likes the Mission R" syndrome. (TLDR If they setup a time for a SOF race it'd actually be fairly popular) Dirt Trucks in general suffer from lack of NDM (again, weird impacts, sudden yeets if you hit a sideways car), and from Dirt itself not "digging in", This is just most dirt road content. And most dirt content in general. Dirt just feels like you're driving "on" dirt, not in it.

Indiana has a huge asphalt sprint car following, but its still not enough to go official

About the mission R: Because the series doesn't exist in real life.

Notably missing is the Aussie supercar series, that's also pretty dead nowdays.

Stockcar Brasil is dead because of the lack of regional prices for cars/tracks, it cost a TON of money to race that in south america.

i race dirt sprints cars from time to time

It's a shame about pro 2 trucks because off-road trucks are really fun and the pro 2 is super rewarding to learn

i would love to race silver crowns.

I think the biggest issue with the Pro Trucks is track selection. I'm not buying the truck AND every track they run just to try it. The rookie series does the rallycross tracks, but once you get out of rookies, it's all the dedicated, dirt road tracks. Why not return to some of the rallycross tracks the Beetle runs? Daytona? Charlotte? Knockhill?? The trucks are much more fun than rallyrcoss (to me anyways), but no way I'm spending $100+ for the truck and a couple tracks.

I race in the Brazilian Stock cars. Got 2 wins last season just so difficult to get any participation. Seems it only sees officials Mayne once a day around 245pm or 445pm other than that nothing.

I think if the visibility out of the brazilian stock cars were better and had abs tc and no push to pass it might have replaced the caddy and got quite good participation as a D class series. I remember the F3.5 although it still hade somewhat participation, I stopped driving it due to others not driving it so much anymore. It just got below a threashold where the participation was too low where the intrest falls. It is also not helped by most of the low participation beeing paid cars. SR8 was not popular if I remember right and then they made it free and it had allways 1-2 splits for most times of day. Kamel GT and williams f1 (is it still popular with the mercs f1? Don't know anymore) is not popular but it got a decicated folowing on certain timeslots, and their leagues. I believe also the spread of series is a problem too, f vee, formula 1600, skip barber, formula renault 2.0, f3, formula 3.5, indy 2000 and pro 2000, ir04. They eat each other and pulling all of them down. Had they focused, replaced the old and not tried to run 6 series in paralell where many of them eat each others popularity we would see more healty participation and not be so hesitant when there is ANOTHER new series which we already know is going to have low participation before it is even released. The new 1600 may not have low participation, but it will streach the skippy/vee participation out to another car as a result all of them having more mediocer participation. Like, why did we have the ruf when we had p cup (911 (wherever that went) AND 992). Why did we have kia when TCRs came, why did we have jetta when TCRs came. Finally we replaced the jetta...but initially I thought they might not and just add the clio beside it.

I think one of the biggest reasons nobody runs the Brazilian stock cars is because iracing falsely says the races are 4 hours when in reality the races are only 15 minutes long.

I got into to Iracing for Pro truck racing.

I respect you but comments about the Brasil Stock anger me. You are absolutely right in saying that the view is very limited. However , much like our MONKE brain can adapt and race with a single monitor at 1080p with the shittiest of racing equipment , the same can be said about our MONKE brain adapting to the FOV. The racing itself as long as it lasted was great , so it's the people who don't want to drive anything other than GT3 who killed it. The only valid complaint about the Brasil Stocks is their difficulty. Very tail happy and with not quite enough grip on their rubbers to handle all that torque. That I understand. The rest I don't.

Dirt legends is where your safety rating goes to die and that is the same with several of the other series listed here. It is not fun to drive with a bunch of smooth brains that crash on the parade lap. In ALL road races I start from the pit so I can avoid going through turn 1 with anyone other than myself, and for those considering iRacing as your sim, yes it is really that bad. The license system in this GAME needs an overhaul big time. It is nothing close to simulating real licensing systems and feels like the developers just said well, that is good enough screw it. An example: Perform a clean pass to take the win. P2 is upset they did not take P1 so they never lift even once the race is done. I pull off to leave the race and P2 proceeds to torpedo me AFTER THE RACE IS OVER and I am off track in a runoff lane (limerock t1 to be exact). The hit is so hard that I leave with 9x because of that one incident. I know what you're thinking iRacing people...PROTEST. Well I did that and you know what iRacing did for me considering I took a 9x and lost .23 safety rating for this? Logic would assume that since in real racing my license would not have been penalized and P2 would have been most likely banned for life if not arrested but no, they did nothing. I lost the safety rating on my license as if I shared in the blame. Again for those considering iRacing, your sfatey rating can demote your license level making content you PAID FOR inaccessible to you.

There's actually a pretty stout community/following for Pavement Sprint cars and silver crown. The crowd goes where they go, *even across the entire country*. Look up the Little 500, 500Tour, Must See Extreme Sprints, Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series, TBARA, and many others They run asphalt sprints just about everywhere and had about 119 collective races across USA, Canada, UK, and even South Africa. Biggest issue is that, unlike dirt sprints, they're all scattered and disorganized. There is no one series, just a huge collective. Source; Am driver.

I think the better question is why does iracing not do anything about this? I understand iracing does not make all the series themselves. And many of the active series are promoted by somebody big like moza/f3. Fanatec/multiclass road cars. Or even craftsman truck series or the cup series. Just some examples of series being primarily ran by said sponsors or endorsers. But if a series cant maintain atleast 3 splits at all times at the BARE minimum then it doesnt need to be a series. Make it a limited time series or event.

It's a shame that people hate the noise of the Mission R enough to not drive it. It doesn't bother me that much and I think the car is fun to drive.

Im the most disappointed in the Brazil stock cars. I bought it when it came out and literally not once did it go official in EST time zones. Sad because the push to pass on that car is SO FUN