Manual › Chapter 07

Events and crews

Creating a race, the schedule before the green flag, sign-ups, availability and how crews are formed.

The path, in short#

From the idea of racing to the green flag there are five moments, and each hands over to the next.

1. The event — somebody creates the race.
2. Sign-ups — drivers say whether they are in, in which car and in which time windows.
3. The crews — the system proposes them, the admin refines and validates them.
4. The crew chief — each crew appoints one.
5. The stints — they get computed, and from then on the stint plan is in charge.

Creating an event#

In the Events tab, + New event. There are three kinds.

From the official iRacing catalogue#

🏁 iRacing events opens the season's special events and team series, from a catalogue that refreshes itself every week.

Join creates the event in your team already filled in: track, duration, classes. If iRacing has published the times, you pick the slot from the official calendar; if it has not, you set the date and time by hand (times are announced on the iRacing forum).

By hand#

Title, start, duration in hours, track, eligible classes and minimum and maximum drivers per crew.

The minimum and maximum are not a detail: proposals fill cars towards the maximum, so that number decides how many cars you will field.

The schedule before the green flag#

An endurance race does not start when the slot opens: it starts at the green flag. In between there is practice, qualifying, gridding and possibly a lap behind the pace car.

If you do not fill it in, the duration shown is the race alone and everyone will do their sums wrong.

Schedule → Fill in asks for the length of each phase and, if the regulations declare one, the qualifying time. When a declared time exists, it rules: practice ends there and the rest follows.

The panel then tells you two useful things: when the green flag falls, when the chequered flag does, and what the total commitment is — so much racing plus so much before the green.

Rain risk#

If iRacing declares a chance of rain for that week, the event shows it: prepare wet setups and strategy, and budget for an extra stop.

When the official figure is missing but the description mentions rain, the app says so explicitly — it is a hint, not the data — and when there is neither, it writes "Weather not declared" instead of pretending to know.

Notifying the team#

Notify the team sends an in-app notification to everyone and a Telegram message to whoever has connected it.

Sign-ups#

A driver opens the event and presses Sign up for the event. Two things must be declared.

Preferred class#

Among those the event allows.

Availability windows#

The time slots when you are actually there. This is not a poll: the stint engine uses them to give you only stints you can make.

• A normal window means yes.
• A "maybe" window is used only if the drivers who said yes are not enough.
• No windows at all means available for the whole race. That is how the engine reads it, so do not leave them empty out of laziness.

There are then three boxes:

• 🏎 I race as a crew of one — you get an individual crew instead of being mixed with others. Useful in short races.
• I volunteer as a reserve — you stay out of the rotation and come in only if somebody is missing.
• Pit wall — you do not drive but you are on the wall: you see the whole plan, and stay out of the driving-share calculation.

Stint preferences#

They do not force the plan, but all else being equal the system picks the more suitable driver.

Closing sign-ups#

The admin can Close sign-ups when the roster is complete, and reopen them if needed. While they are open, crew proposals refresh themselves at every new entry — but already validated crews are never touched.

Forming the crews#

🧮 Propose crews does the heavy lifting.

How it builds them#

1. Groups by class — GT3 applicants with GT3 applicants.
2. Balances iRating in a snake draft — the strongest to the first crew, the second to the second, and so on back and forth. It is the simplest way to avoid one very quick car and one that struggles.
3. Picks the car by counting preferences — first choice 3 points, second 2, third 1. The one with most points wins: the car that disappoints the fewest people.

Refining#

The admin can move drivers between crews, pull from the unassigned entrants and the manual drivers, rename a crew, merge two (drivers arrive carrying the availability they declared), or delete one.

You can also change the crew's race car: only the car changes, stints, times and availability stay as they are.

The crew chief#

Before validating you must appoint a crew chief (⭐). From that moment only they and the admins can change that crew's stint plan.

It exists because during a race somebody has to decide, and it must be clear who.

Validating#

Validate crew freezes it: it stops being rebuilt by the automatic proposals. If you need to go back, Reopen the crew returns it to proposed.

The iRacing team#

Every crew must be assigned an iRacing team from those configured in Teams → Management. Without one, the simulator's results cannot be reconciled with the plan.

A different slot#

If the event has several times published by iRacing, a single crew can race in a different slot from the others. Duration and pre-race schedule stay the event's: only the session opening time changes.

Computing the stints#

⚡ Compute stints builds the plan using each driver's personal pace for that car and track, the fuel figures and the declared availability.

From then on you work in the Race tab: The stint plan covers what is inside it and how to change it.

Reading the availability#

Before computing it is worth looking at the Declared availability panel: it lines up every driver with their windows and shows the thinnest moment of the race — the one where you risk being three people at four in the morning.

In the bar: solid means they said yes, faint means maybe. The strip at the bottom is the assigned stints, and it turns red when a stint falls outside what that driver declared.

Pit wall shifts#

Whoever does not drive but stays connected can have their own shift. The times are free, and it is worth staggering them: a spotter change mid-stint disturbs less than one during the pit stop.

The panel says whether the wall is covered for the whole race and where the gaps are.

Closing the event#

Close event archives it. Delete event removes the event, its sign-ups and its crews, with an explicit confirmation.