iRacing Season 3 Patch 3 landed on July 14 with release notes that go well beyond the downtime announcement. Three things define this patch: iTested, the NASCAR Cup pit stop overhaul, and two new spotter packs.
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➡️ iRacing Season 3 Patch 3 Lands July 14 with Scheduled Downtime
🏁 2026 Season 3 Patch 3 Official Release Notes
The headline feature is iTested, an official limited-time iRacing series. It road-tests a multi-class, multi-pace car race start format under real racing conditions. Participants earn the exclusive “iTested” account Award badge. Their sessions generate the data iRacing needs to plan a broader multi-pace car start rollout.
Multi-pace car starts remain one of the persistent limitations in multi-class racing on iRacing. The current setup uses a single pace car across all classes. That creates awkward timing when faster and slower classes try to roll together at the start. Running the test in an official series, rather than internally, gives iRacing real data from real drivers. If multi-class racing is part of your rotation, watch the official schedule for iTested sessions.
Also in Season 3 Patch 3, iRacing overhauled NASCAR Cup Series Gen 7 pit stop timing. The update brings stop times in line with real-world 9 to 10 second four-tire stops. For iRacers who run NASCAR oval events, this changes how you plan pit strategy. Stops that felt off compared to a real Sunday afternoon should now land in the right range. It sounds minor, but you’ll feel it once you’re deep in a green-flag pit cycle.
Two new spotter packs arrive with this patch. Hironori Kobayashi created the Japanese-COEIROINK_Aoba pack, while Roman Bobik contributed the new Romanian language pack. Additionally, iRacing updated Italian and Spanish spotter calls and refreshed the Ukraine-Vitaliy_Chizhuk pack. The international spotter library has grown steadily over the past several seasons. That growth makes the sim more accessible to communities that don’t race in English.
Beyond the headliners, Season 3 Patch 3 ships a focused set of car fixes. GT3 cars across the board got a correction for TC (Traction Control) SDK reporting values. Those values showed inconsistent numbers between the in-car view and the black box. iRacing updated all GT3 setups to reflect those TC changes. TC states now store and restore correctly when switching tire compounds. This matters for any GT3 driver who spent time tuning traction control. If the dash numbers never matched the behavior, this patch explains it. For broader context, the Season 3 GT3 BoP breakdown is worth a read.
iRacing also renamed the BMW M Hybrid V8 to BMW M Hybrid V8 (EVO), correctly reflecting its current status. The Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO got a fix for an ABS dash display offset. iRacing also corrected an incorrect brake master cylinder size reference in that car. The BMW M4 GT3 now gets a larger gearbox intercooler, which drops TGEAR dash temperatures with no performance change. On the race server side, iRacing fixed a crash that occurred when transitioning from Open Practice to Race sessions. Timing ghost drivers that went fully invisible in some sessions now appear correctly again.
On the track side, Daytona International Speedway now penalizes pit exit cone cuts more accurately. The Oval’s rolling pit lane start got a specific fix: previously, the game missed cone cuts there entirely. Meanwhile, Mid-Ohio’s Start/Finish booth and bridge, missing at low visual detail settings, are back in place.
The iTested series is the standout feature in Season 3 Patch 3 to track beyond patch day. Multi-class race starts are genuinely complex, and iRacing collecting live data before a broader rollout is a practical approach. The full list of changes is on the iRacing support page. If you participate in iTested, you’re contributing to something that could reshape how multi-class racing works across the service.
