With the iRacing 24 Hours at Daytona this weekend, iRacing has released a new build for the online racing service. This new build adds some very welcome features, including an update to damage repair that will really enhance the endurance racing experience.

Previously, the way damage repair took place in iRacing was that if a part of the car was too damaged, you would be forced to retire from the race. Now, if a part is damaged beyond repair, you are able to replace the part with a new one. However that will take an extended period of time (up to a half hour to replace an engine).

I think this is a major plus for endurance racing, due to the fact that damage is an element that has to be “battled” in an extended race. Cars will rarely make it through an endurance race without facing some sort of issue, so that is something that should be recreated in the virtual world.

Note that only a few of these cars have this addition as of now, as iRacing wanted to give priority to the cars that were running in the Daytona endurance race. More cars will be given the advanced damage repair in upcoming updates.

For the full list of updates in this latest iRacing build, check out the changelog below. Are you going to be running in the 24 Hours at Daytona? Let us know in the comments below!

[accordion_item title=”iRacing 24H at Daytona Changelog”]We are deploying a small simulation update today to support the Daytona 24 hour race this weekend.

General Simulation

– Improved the synchronization between the session time maintained on the server and the equivalent time maintained on the client. This is likely to greatly reduce the occurrence of missing split times.

– Fixed a bug in practice and testing sessions where your first timed lap after leaving the pits after resetting the car would not be scored when it should have been.

– Removed a blocking point between the game’s simulation component and its drawing component. This might have a minor impact on either the overall frame rate, or the consistency of the frame rate.

Team Endurance Races

– Fixed a bug that was causing the graphical driver models that appear in cars that are on track to (mostly) disappear after about 23:18 into a session.

– Fixed a bug that caused incorrect determination of which drivers on a team met the requirements under the “drive fair share” rule if the race session had only a time limit, and not also a lap limit.

– Fixed a bug that could cause a team to be limited to having only 5 members concurrently connected to a session, instead of the proper limit of 6 members.*

– Made a couple of changes to the race server code that will improve the performance of the server when large numbers of people are in the session, and might reduce the big time-skew/wink-out/clock-smash that occurs once the final competitor finishes the race.

Towing

– During a race if you call for a tow while in your pit lane and near to your stall (such as if you get out of your car without quite having parked correctly in your pit stall), we now allow the pit crew to “push your car” into the pit stall if you’re not too far away, more quickly than a regular tow. It will still appear to be a tow, you don’t actually see the pitcrew doing anything, but the tow timing is much quicker.

BMW Z4 GT3

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

– Fixed bugs that could cause the pit stop to continue indefinitely. One pitstop stall would occur by turning the tire change requests off while the fuel guy was adding fuel but before the tire guys began to replace the tires. The other pitstop stall would occur if you had a fuel leak.

Chevrolet Corvette C6.R GT1

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

Ford GT

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

Ford GT GT3

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

– Fixed bugs that could cause the pit stop to continue indefinitely. One pitstop stall would occur by turning the tire change requests off while the fuel guy was adding fuel but before the tire guys began to replace the tires. The other pitstop stall would occur if you had a fuel leak.

HPD ARX-01c

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

– Added an additional three final drive ratios to choose from.

McLaren MP4-12C GT3

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

– Fixed bugs that could cause the pit stop to continue indefinitely. One pitstop stall would occur by turning the tire change requests off while the fuel guy was adding fuel but before the tire guys began to replace the tires. The other pitstop stall would occur if you had a fuel leak.

– Added an additional taller final drive ratio.

Riley MkXX Daytona Prototype

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

Ruf RT 12R C-Spec

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

Ruf RT 12R Track

– The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.

– Updated fuel use to better equalize green flag ranges amongst the four GT3 cars. This car has increased fuel consumption by 1.3%.

– Fixed bugs that could cause the pit stop to continue indefinitely. One pitstop stall would occur by turning the tire change requests off while the fuel guy was adding fuel but before the tire guys began to replace the tires. The other pitstop stall would occur if you had a fuel leak.

*Note that an issue somewhat related to this still remains.

If your team is not at its connection limit when you click on the [Join] button in the Race panel on the web site, the simulator is launched and it connects to the session. If your team is at the limit, clicking on [Join] instead brings up a message box telling you this is the case, and a message is sent to your teammates that are connected to the session telling them that you’d like to get in.

If within a short period of time after that you again click on the [Join] button, the simulation is launched without first performing this check against your team’s limit. The race server knows whether or not your team is really at its connection limit (it is the authoritative source for this information), so it will either allow you into the session, or reject your connection.

Unfortunately, the web site is currently using the number of your team members that are registered for the session, instead of the number of your team members that are actually connected to the session’s race server in determining whether or not your team is at its connection limit. So it might mistakenly tell you that your team is at its connection limit, when really it is not. Fortunately, the window of time after being given the “your team is at its limit” message where this check is not performed allows you to get around the bug by simply hitting the [Join] button again.

We did not identify this issue in time to get it fixed and tested prior to today’s update, but the bug will be fixed in a future update.

[/accordion_item]