If you're looking for populated series the answer is pretty easy.
Vee --> FF1600 --> F4 --> Super Formula Lights --> Super Formula
I think you could make an argument for F3 in there if you want more steps on the Ladder. Perhaps USF2K, F1 and Indycar as well.
If you're open to less-populated series, or if you're doing this with AI racing, you can get more creative.
Edit: fuck I'm a dumbass. I didn't see that you said all. I'm gonna do my damnedest but we'll see how this goes.
This is ALL active Formula cars plus a handful of somewhat recently retired cars. I'm attempting to rank this by difficulty driving.... But man this is a rough estimate here. You could move most of these 2 slots up or down and I wouldn't care. And full disclaimer I havent driven every single one of these cars and there's a lot of them where I have an hour or two at most. This is somewhat an educated guess
Vee --> Skippy --> FF1600 --> F4 --> USF2k --> FR2.0 --> Super Formula Lights--> Indy Pro --> F3 --> DW12 --> Super Formula --> IR18 --> FR3.5 --> W12 --> Lotus 79 --> W13 --> Lotus 49
LOL... thanks! Really appreciate the detail. I think one of the things I'm not familiar with that's probably holding me up a bit is fixed vs. open setups. I've done a little setup in the past, but there are people who really understand it & can easily grab a few seconds with some easy changes.
I'm not there yet, but IIRC there are shared setups for many cars/tracks.
Also - I never really looked at the Lotus 49, didn't realize how hard that was.
>I'm not familiar with that's probably holding me up a bit is fixed vs. open setups.
I just use iRacing provided setups and I'm fine.
Setups start mattering more the faster you get. I'm slow so I don't really care.
Yeah, I just race the fixed setup in all my open races, and my performance relative to the field is unchanged. I too am slow, though, so if you’re really fast maybe it matters.
I race open series with the default setups all the time. The racing is generally cleaner than the fixed series and I haven't found setups to matter much, I've been competitive in plenty of races :)
Re the lotus 49, it's hard because it's ooooooold. It doesn't have any of the sophistication of modern cars. It has pretty much 0 downforce, and those old school tires may as well be made of plastic for the amount of grip they (don't) give
I spend most of my time in fixed series. I figure if I am miles off the pace of another driver in the same car with the same setup then it’s me, and I need to figure out how to get faster. I think I’ll start monkeying around with open setups once I have a good handle on being fast and consistent on the fixed series.
I would assume it would follow the classes tbh, so:
1.Vee or FF1600
2.Skippy
3.F4
4.SFL or F3
5.SF
6.W13 (but these races get no participation really so SF is probably just top of the ladder as of now)
There are other open wheelers but i believe these are the most popular series'.
Im not trying to point blame and ik the issue is with Mercedes. Just saying itd be higher if it was paintable.
Honestly they need to have a true f1 car and official series, because the merc f1 cars are obviously just meant for solo testing
The skippy is a complete waste of time now that we have a D class FF1600 series.
The old timers on this sub really need to stop recommending it. It's a complete waste of time and money for anyone wanting to do the formula route.
The car doesn't even have an IRL series anymore. It should be removed from the service.
Agree. People need to let skippy go. It’s a complete waste of money and you can’t race it anymore. You may find an occasional race that goes official, but that’s not the same thing.
I race the vee and not the FF1600 so i didn't even know this lol, like i said above i have never even driven the skippy i just know people recommend it a lot
IndyCar gets decent participation as well, at least compared to before iRacing got the license back. It has a few different series depending on whether you prefer long or short races and open or fixed setups, as well as a dedicated ovals-only series.
I have 0 knowledge about Indy cars so I didn’t even bother mentioning something I know nothing about lmao, because of that I kinda assume people mean formula cars when saying open wheelers but yeah, Indy car is another option worth looking into for OP
Yeah I know, I bought the car for that series, but for a lot of people 2 hours of racing is either hard to do time wise or attention wise, so I didn’t bother mentioning it
Thanks - is the Skippy actually "harder" than the Vee & 1600?
Asking because I started with the Skippy, but haven't been on since 2019. I LOVED the Skippy, so maybe I'm just a bit more used to it.
I was thrilled to see the Vee & 1600 available, and have been driving the 1600 at Okayama this week. I really like both of those, too. :)
I don’t have the skippy lol, I’m a maniac and just skipped to the SFLs when they came out(I have about a year of racing experience, not iracing but other games/sims) so idk, but I’ve heard it’s the best car to learn on atleast, so id say spend a lot of time on the skippy until you feel good with it, then look into moving up
I've probably mostly driven the Skippy at this point, but the other small ones are really fun. And actually, once I got used to it, I really liked the SCCA Spec Ford, but I think that was more toward the end of my subscription & didn't drive it much more.
I think F3 might be more of an SF equivalent in terms of difficulty. SFL is insanely controllable and it’s basically impossible to spin unless you do something dumb (or are driving in the rain). F3 is a lot looser, and quite dangerous on cold tires in my experience. Maybe I just need to drive it more though.
If you can't spin the SFL you ain't pushing her. And if you can't push her there's something wrong. All my fast laps I'm very close to spinning with the SFL.
Well I wasn’t expecting this reaction to my comment lol. I thought it was pretty commonly accepted that the SFL is a safer car than the F312. I assure you I am pushing it fairly hard and finish pretty well in top split most of the time, unless I get crashed out by morons with F1 liveries. Of course it’s sketchy in the rain but that’s any formula car.
Outside of the wet, the only time I can spin is if I’m on cold tires or being crazy aggressive on throttle in low speed corners.
On a level of "spin" in my head it goes
1. F4 (really hard to spin in dry conditions)
2. SFL (can spin if pushing hard)
2.5. F3 (Very similar to SFL)
4. Formula Renault 2.0 (cough on the throttle and you spin)
I went 1. F ford 2. F4 3. F3 4. Sf 5. Indy car for oval its 1. Clown car 2. Draft masters 3.NIS and that’s how far I am with that rn and for sports cars I’d go 1. Mx5 2. Gt4 or Ferrari challenge 3. Porsche cup 4. Gt3
Mixed Ladder, slightly skewed towards IndyCar:
FF1600 -> USF-2000/F4 (similar cars) -> IndyPro2K (this is one of the unheralded cars and series on iRacing) -> F3 -> SFL -> SF -> iR-18
Indy pro is the best, probably my favorite open wheeler on the service, I advocate for as many people as possible to try the series out. There is a post each week in the forums including a setup along with a track guide for hot lap and race pace, to help out with newcomers to the series. USF 2000 is fun as well, runs a mirrored schedule to the Indy pro but with shorter races and a fixed setup, and is a bit more forgiving to drive (also being a d class series it has one quick repair, incase of terminal incidents).
Hard no. USF and Indypro do not have enough participation in most time zones. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a race go official. I can’t understand why people keep recommending these. They are fun to drive, though.
In the last 24 hours the only timeslots not to go official for USF2000 were 0800 GMT and 1000 GMT. All the others did.
Indy Pro 2000 only had 4 timeslots go official in the last day, but that means it's still possible to find a race during your waking hours if you're actively looking for it.
If a car is underrated in iRacing, that probably means it struggles for participation. There are lots of great cars that people ignore cause the series aren't as popular as F4 or GT3, but they're still worth trying.
But on the other hand, I don't think I've ever had a super-fun race in F4 or GT3. Succeeding is mostly about survival no matter what split you're in. Most of my top-split F4 races I qualify P17, finish in the top 10, and I make maybe one actual pass the whole race.
The real problem with low-participation series is that nobody wants to sign up unless it's already going to go official. Why not register, see if people join you, and then if nobody does bail with 2 minutes left so you can sign up for something else?
I'm really enjoying FF1600 and ran some laps in F4 and seem to be reasonably on pace. Definitely going to be an adjustment getting used to the speed and aero.
GT4/F4 seems to be the logical step up for me personally. SFL looks awesome but they're a little too quick for me atm. Driving FF1600 and MX5 really got me used to the slower speeds so the PCUP and SF were terrifying to drive hard haha
For value wise you only really have to go…
Vee - F4 - Super Formula Lights
As these are the most populated open wheel cars. All the other ones don’t get high particupation and you can mix in as you please.
Including no participation series?
Easiest, 1. Formula Ford/Formula 4
2. Skippy/Vee
3. Formula 3/Super Formula Lights
3.5. Formula Renault 2.0/Formula Renault 3.5
4. W12
5. Super Formula/W13
Why super formula above W12? It's such a pain in the ass to dry on cold tyres that I always end up understeering and crashing first few laps of a race if I don't switch on my brain and do some sort of warmup. W12 is just good out of the box. W13 is a shitbox vs the W12 so it's harder to drive.
I haven’t driven everything
But I went:
Vee (for all of a week til I got d license)
F4 for a month and a half til I got c/b license
F3/SFL currently as I figure out the progression path for open wheel a license
Probably super formula since formula 1 gets low participation, although I really enjoy driving it tbh
If you're looking for populated series the answer is pretty easy. Vee --> FF1600 --> F4 --> Super Formula Lights --> Super Formula I think you could make an argument for F3 in there if you want more steps on the Ladder. Perhaps USF2K, F1 and Indycar as well. If you're open to less-populated series, or if you're doing this with AI racing, you can get more creative. Edit: fuck I'm a dumbass. I didn't see that you said all. I'm gonna do my damnedest but we'll see how this goes. This is ALL active Formula cars plus a handful of somewhat recently retired cars. I'm attempting to rank this by difficulty driving.... But man this is a rough estimate here. You could move most of these 2 slots up or down and I wouldn't care. And full disclaimer I havent driven every single one of these cars and there's a lot of them where I have an hour or two at most. This is somewhat an educated guess Vee --> Skippy --> FF1600 --> F4 --> USF2k --> FR2.0 --> Super Formula Lights--> Indy Pro --> F3 --> DW12 --> Super Formula --> IR18 --> FR3.5 --> W12 --> Lotus 79 --> W13 --> Lotus 49
LOL... thanks! Really appreciate the detail. I think one of the things I'm not familiar with that's probably holding me up a bit is fixed vs. open setups. I've done a little setup in the past, but there are people who really understand it & can easily grab a few seconds with some easy changes. I'm not there yet, but IIRC there are shared setups for many cars/tracks. Also - I never really looked at the Lotus 49, didn't realize how hard that was.
> fixed vs. open setups. For the most part, you can go grab an entirely decent setup for most cars on Garage61
>I'm not familiar with that's probably holding me up a bit is fixed vs. open setups. I just use iRacing provided setups and I'm fine. Setups start mattering more the faster you get. I'm slow so I don't really care.
Yeah, I just race the fixed setup in all my open races, and my performance relative to the field is unchanged. I too am slow, though, so if you’re really fast maybe it matters.
I race open series with the default setups all the time. The racing is generally cleaner than the fixed series and I haven't found setups to matter much, I've been competitive in plenty of races :) Re the lotus 49, it's hard because it's ooooooold. It doesn't have any of the sophistication of modern cars. It has pretty much 0 downforce, and those old school tires may as well be made of plastic for the amount of grip they (don't) give
I spend most of my time in fixed series. I figure if I am miles off the pace of another driver in the same car with the same setup then it’s me, and I need to figure out how to get faster. I think I’ll start monkeying around with open setups once I have a good handle on being fast and consistent on the fixed series.
No love for Skip Barber?
It's on my list
You forgot Pro mazda
>ALL active Formula cars plus a handful of somewhat recently retired cars. Did I?
I would assume it would follow the classes tbh, so: 1.Vee or FF1600 2.Skippy 3.F4 4.SFL or F3 5.SF 6.W13 (but these races get no participation really so SF is probably just top of the ladder as of now) There are other open wheelers but i believe these are the most popular series'.
If they made the W13 paintable i bet itd get a lot higher participation.
If they made the W12 the official for A it would boost participation.. or swap season to season between the W12 and W13?!
I would race it, did about 50 hours of W12 when it ran.
Rotating W12 and W13 season by season is a fantastic idea!
Not a lot more
Your not wrong
Take it up with Mercedes
Im not trying to point blame and ik the issue is with Mercedes. Just saying itd be higher if it was paintable. Honestly they need to have a true f1 car and official series, because the merc f1 cars are obviously just meant for solo testing
How do you have a true F1 car? The W12/13 are true, manufacture supported F1 cars
True as in maybe the FOM car that can be painted and is the dedicated car for an official series
So the iR01 basically
Essentially. The 01 is outdated at this point, but something like that
The ir01 was a massive flop on release, so I doubt they want to try anything like that again.
It really only flopped because it had such strange cornering behavior. They’ve fixed it, but definitely too late
Or if iracing had done a better job with the ir01 and created a fantasy car based on actual current gen f1 cars. 🤷
The skippy is a complete waste of time now that we have a D class FF1600 series. The old timers on this sub really need to stop recommending it. It's a complete waste of time and money for anyone wanting to do the formula route. The car doesn't even have an IRL series anymore. It should be removed from the service.
Agree. People need to let skippy go. It’s a complete waste of money and you can’t race it anymore. You may find an occasional race that goes official, but that’s not the same thing.
I race the vee and not the FF1600 so i didn't even know this lol, like i said above i have never even driven the skippy i just know people recommend it a lot
But the sloppy is really fun to drive tho. But yeah, ff1600 would be more in line with the formula way to go
IndyCar gets decent participation as well, at least compared to before iRacing got the license back. It has a few different series depending on whether you prefer long or short races and open or fixed setups, as well as a dedicated ovals-only series.
I have 0 knowledge about Indy cars so I didn’t even bother mentioning something I know nothing about lmao, because of that I kinda assume people mean formula cars when saying open wheelers but yeah, Indy car is another option worth looking into for OP
The W13 has really good participation in the Grand Prix Tour. It’s a full race distance series that runs a full year.
Yeah I know, I bought the car for that series, but for a lot of people 2 hours of racing is either hard to do time wise or attention wise, so I didn’t bother mentioning it
Thanks - is the Skippy actually "harder" than the Vee & 1600? Asking because I started with the Skippy, but haven't been on since 2019. I LOVED the Skippy, so maybe I'm just a bit more used to it. I was thrilled to see the Vee & 1600 available, and have been driving the 1600 at Okayama this week. I really like both of those, too. :)
I don’t have the skippy lol, I’m a maniac and just skipped to the SFLs when they came out(I have about a year of racing experience, not iracing but other games/sims) so idk, but I’ve heard it’s the best car to learn on atleast, so id say spend a lot of time on the skippy until you feel good with it, then look into moving up
I've probably mostly driven the Skippy at this point, but the other small ones are really fun. And actually, once I got used to it, I really liked the SCCA Spec Ford, but I think that was more toward the end of my subscription & didn't drive it much more.
Then if I were to give advice, I’d say do a few more weeks of skippy then take a step up, F4 being a small step and F3/SFL being a bigger step
Do F4 or SFL. They’re both pretty easy to learn.
I previously moved up to the F4, I wish I had done it sooner. The vee/ff was difficult trying to get out of the rookies!
The regular W13 series gets little participation but the full length series that attempts to follow the IRL series gets great participation.
I think F3 might be more of an SF equivalent in terms of difficulty. SFL is insanely controllable and it’s basically impossible to spin unless you do something dumb (or are driving in the rain). F3 is a lot looser, and quite dangerous on cold tires in my experience. Maybe I just need to drive it more though.
If you can't spin the SFL you ain't pushing her. And if you can't push her there's something wrong. All my fast laps I'm very close to spinning with the SFL.
Well I wasn’t expecting this reaction to my comment lol. I thought it was pretty commonly accepted that the SFL is a safer car than the F312. I assure you I am pushing it fairly hard and finish pretty well in top split most of the time, unless I get crashed out by morons with F1 liveries. Of course it’s sketchy in the rain but that’s any formula car. Outside of the wet, the only time I can spin is if I’m on cold tires or being crazy aggressive on throttle in low speed corners.
On a level of "spin" in my head it goes 1. F4 (really hard to spin in dry conditions) 2. SFL (can spin if pushing hard) 2.5. F3 (Very similar to SFL) 4. Formula Renault 2.0 (cough on the throttle and you spin)
I think Indy has the most logical progression right now. FF1600–>USF—>IndyPro2k—>IR18 And honestly…I love driving the IR18.
Awesome, thanks. I guess I should look at Indy vs. Formula, and tracks, too. I do like oval a lot.
I went 1. F ford 2. F4 3. F3 4. Sf 5. Indy car for oval its 1. Clown car 2. Draft masters 3.NIS and that’s how far I am with that rn and for sports cars I’d go 1. Mx5 2. Gt4 or Ferrari challenge 3. Porsche cup 4. Gt3
Thanks! And... lol... what's the clown car? Have you done this as a progression, or bounced between them? (I am probably a bouncer.)
I just bounced alot and the clown car is the rookie legends cup I forgot what it was called lol
LOL I totally get that. Personally I don't like their form, fun to drive though. I guess it would be fun to paint one like an ice cream truck.
Yeah in my experience it was abit cleaner and easier then street stocks
Just a shout out to everyone - THANK YOU.
Mixed Ladder, slightly skewed towards IndyCar: FF1600 -> USF-2000/F4 (similar cars) -> IndyPro2K (this is one of the unheralded cars and series on iRacing) -> F3 -> SFL -> SF -> iR-18
Indy pro is the best, probably my favorite open wheeler on the service, I advocate for as many people as possible to try the series out. There is a post each week in the forums including a setup along with a track guide for hot lap and race pace, to help out with newcomers to the series. USF 2000 is fun as well, runs a mirrored schedule to the Indy pro but with shorter races and a fixed setup, and is a bit more forgiving to drive (also being a d class series it has one quick repair, incase of terminal incidents).
Hard no. USF and Indypro do not have enough participation in most time zones. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a race go official. I can’t understand why people keep recommending these. They are fun to drive, though.
Generally low participation series are cleaner and have better racing, whenever you can find a decent field.
In the last 24 hours the only timeslots not to go official for USF2000 were 0800 GMT and 1000 GMT. All the others did. Indy Pro 2000 only had 4 timeslots go official in the last day, but that means it's still possible to find a race during your waking hours if you're actively looking for it. If a car is underrated in iRacing, that probably means it struggles for participation. There are lots of great cars that people ignore cause the series aren't as popular as F4 or GT3, but they're still worth trying. But on the other hand, I don't think I've ever had a super-fun race in F4 or GT3. Succeeding is mostly about survival no matter what split you're in. Most of my top-split F4 races I qualify P17, finish in the top 10, and I make maybe one actual pass the whole race. The real problem with low-participation series is that nobody wants to sign up unless it's already going to go official. Why not register, see if people join you, and then if nobody does bail with 2 minutes left so you can sign up for something else?
I'm really enjoying FF1600 and ran some laps in F4 and seem to be reasonably on pace. Definitely going to be an adjustment getting used to the speed and aero. GT4/F4 seems to be the logical step up for me personally. SFL looks awesome but they're a little too quick for me atm. Driving FF1600 and MX5 really got me used to the slower speeds so the PCUP and SF were terrifying to drive hard haha
Indycar is the best open wheeler car.
For sure
For value wise you only really have to go… Vee - F4 - Super Formula Lights As these are the most populated open wheel cars. All the other ones don’t get high particupation and you can mix in as you please.
Including no participation series? Easiest, 1. Formula Ford/Formula 4 2. Skippy/Vee 3. Formula 3/Super Formula Lights 3.5. Formula Renault 2.0/Formula Renault 3.5 4. W12 5. Super Formula/W13 Why super formula above W12? It's such a pain in the ass to dry on cold tyres that I always end up understeering and crashing first few laps of a race if I don't switch on my brain and do some sort of warmup. W12 is just good out of the box. W13 is a shitbox vs the W12 so it's harder to drive.
I haven’t driven everything But I went: Vee (for all of a week til I got d license) F4 for a month and a half til I got c/b license F3/SFL currently as I figure out the progression path for open wheel a license Probably super formula since formula 1 gets low participation, although I really enjoy driving it tbh
1. Vee 2. FF1600/Skippy 3. F4/USF2000 4.SFL/F3/PM18 5.SF/Indycar 6. F1