iRacing Just Gave Sim Racers a Tool That Formula 1 Teams Use

Sim racing is serious business, particularly for the people who do it competitively or those who do it to stay sharp and practice outside the car. Sometimes, these people are one and the same. It stands to reason that their tools should be too, which is why today’s announcement that iRacing has entered into a technical partnership with Cosworth got my attention. Long story short, it’ll give iRacers free access to plug their telemetry data into Cosworth’s Pi Toolbox software, which professional racing teams already use to visualize and better understand their performance on track.

An upcoming version of Pi Toolbox will be capable of reading “.IBT” data files that the simulator generates, according to an iRacing press release. The two companies advertise “seamless integration” of Cosworth’s telemetry tools within iRacing’s ecosystem; custom, pre-built workbooks within Pi Toolbox geared for iRacing and first-time users; and live remote telemetry, meaning that spotters and teammates will be able to follow your data mid-session and offer feedback over comms in real-time. Until you shut them up, anyway.

Now, third-party software to deliver some of these services already exists, but a deep, native integration with iRacing should make Pi Toolbox more capable. Drivers could conceivably compare their analytics from the sim against corresponding figures from an actual race car equipped with Cosworth’s tech, all in the same app. And it should be said that Pi is used at the highest levels of motorsport—yes, even F1.

Many developers in this space like to talk about how they’ve built their simulations through technical partnerships with teams and suppliers, but this tie-up between iRacing and Cosworth approaches that from the other side of the equation, in a much more functional way. Naturally, the rest of this initiative will bear out in plenty of Cosworth sponsorship across all iRacing Studios games. But, all the same, it’d seem to be a testament to iRacing’s authenticity that it can be plugged into the same software that actual motorsport folks use.

According to iRacing, members should be able to start getting their hands dirty with Pi Toolbox on September 16.

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