KB Home \| Advanced Search \| News \| Glossary \| Ask Question
iRacing.com FAQs & Knowledge Base

Understanding how car numbers are assigned

Article Number: 141 | Rating: 5/5 from 2 votes | Last Updated: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:03 PM

Understanding iRatings and car numbers: In an official or unofficial race, if a driver has a higher iRating, his (or her) car number will be lower. The person in the field who has the number "1" on their car has the highest iRating (and, hence, is the highest-ranked driver in the field), and in a field of 18 cars, the car with the number "18" has the lowest iRating, which means he (or she) is the lowest-ranked driver in the field. Everyone in-between is assigned a number by iRating -- higher iRatings will have lower numbers, and lower iRatings will have higher numbers. This is good intel to have, because it instantly gives you some level of awareness of who's around you at any given point in time, even if you don't know your fellow competitors by name. So, since you know up-front that a driver with a high double-digit number has a lower iRating, that is an indication that you might not be able to trust them to reliably make it through the tough, technical parts unscathed every time around.

A good way to apply this knowledge is to be aware that drivers with lower numbers than you have higher iRatings, so they might be drivers you can trust a bit more in traffic and such, while drivers with lower numbers than you have lower iRatings, so they may not be as reliable and trustworthy in a pinch. This is why understanding the relationship between car numbers and iRating gives you a little extra "intel" that will help you to gauge what kind of potential behaviors you might expect on the track from your fellow iRacers. Note that this does not apply to hosted sessions, where car numbers are simply assigned based on the order in which each driver joins the hosted session.