Once the near exclusive domain of pro-drivers and the hardcorest of hardcore racing game dorks, iRacing has seen thousands of new users sign up for their hyper-realistic racing sim since Covid-19 shut the world down. Driven by televised races featuring real drivers and you know, the desperate need to spend as little time in our own heads as possible, iRacing is more mainstream than ever. I wanna give it a whirl!
So how come I can’t buy an iRacing bundle? How come nobody is dangling a little button with a pricetag on it in front of me, a guy who is desperate to get embarrassed on a virtual race track in front of a bunch of Gizmodo readers? It’s weird!
From what I understand, my options are as follows: Call up one of the pro rigmakers and talk to them on the phone about what I want (I don’t know!) and spend enough to buy several high-quality junk cars—or learn a bunch about gaming PCs, order one, somehow find a wheel, a stand, a seat and some monitors, and get it all set up.
The thing is, my level of interest in building a PC or learning really anything about PC specs is profoundly low. I know it’s lazy and I’ve definitely spent hours researching other, dumber purchases, but I just can’t bring myself to wade into the world of PC parts.
The always helpful Tim Stevens offered to walk me through a PC build, which is so nice! But I’m chasing after kids and trying to figure out Jalopnik.com and wrenching, doing Zoom calls, etc. and I don’t want to reveal the true depths of my stupidity to a guy like Tim.
So far I’ve been trying to buy a Logitech/Fanatec/Thrustmaster wheel on eBay, where they’ve become very dear because they’re sold out everywhere else. I’ve been also been clicking on ads for PCs, and sending them to Bozi and asking “Will this run iRacing?” “No, you need a different GPU/Graphics Card/Power supply” he says. I don’t want to know what that stuff is and I definitely don’t want to screw it all together several times before it works correctly.
What I want, is to fire up Duck Duck Go, enter keyword “iRacing bundle” do some clicking, wince really hard and start waiting for boxes to show up. I to consume iRacing like I consume other consumer-grade garbage in times of high stress. But searching turns up no useful results for iRacing Bundle, or iRacing rig or any other permutations. Seems like by now, some enterprising e-commerce operation would have indulged my shameful urges, but no. You’ll have to wait until I figure this out myself before you get to watch me cause a deadly turn one pileup in a spec Miata. Watch this space!