I was not certain how much I'd enjoy iRacing Arcade, since arcade-style racing games can already be hit-and-miss. Slap the iRacing branding on, a simulator known for its relentless realism, and you are asking for the game to have an identity crisis. The game is colorfully vibrant, and the cars are cute, but there is also some solid racing gameplay as the foundation.

Obviously, iRacing Arcade isn't a game meant for a multi-thousand-dollar sim racing setup and is a much more casual racing experience intended for a controller. iRacing Arcade is meant to be picked up and played by a wider variety of skill levels, and getting into a race is as simple as turning on your controller and jumping right in. Your view is always in third person, your gearbox is automatic, and I'm not actually sure it's possible to oversteer most of the cars. The game starts you off racing in a Fiat 500, but as you progress, you'll get behind the wheel of various cars including Formula 4, Formula Ford, touring cars, and others.

It's all very simplified, and there aren't any setups to tweak or pit strategies to plan out. Your vehicle has a literal health bar, and while some vehicles are more fragile than others, they can take an absolute beating relative to what would be realistic. You also have a fuel gauge and a tire gauge, and while you can completely ignore them in short races, you'll certainly be keeping an eye on them in longer races. Your pit crew will replace all four tires when you pit (refilling the tire gauge), and they will either splash in enough gas to finish the race (plus a couple extra lap's worth) or a full tank if there are that many laps remaining.

While there are penalties that can be given, it requires some awful and almost purposeful driving to get them. There's no concept of incident points; vehicle-to-vehicle contact happens without penalties, and cars will bang doors with considerable frequency. It's meant to be driven and played like an arcade-style game, and this type of looser penalty system underlines it. Vehicle contact can reduce your vehicle's health, so if anything, that is the reason why you'd want to avoid it, and in that way, the system somewhat enforces itself.

Under its hood, iRacing Arcade feels like it has a floaty yet surprisingly decent physics system. While certainly not realistic, the way cars handle and feel has echoes of what you'd expect in iRacing or real life. As tires wear, they seem to give slightly less grip, hitting curbs upsets your handling a small amount, and the racing line is just as important as it would be in any other motorsport game. Driving behind another car gives you a slipstream bonus, making you faster for as long as you remain there, and there's also a subtle visual indicator of air rapidly moving from the front of your vehicle. It may be arcade style, but the handling and racing doesn't feel dumbed down, and that's a distinction that arcade racers often struggle with.

Depending on your difficulty level and how well you place in a race, you earn a varying number of coins, which you can spend on cosmetic liveries for your cars and driver as well as to construct and upgrade buildings on your team's campus. Each building offers its own benefits, from increasing how many cars you can own to how many boosts you can equip in a race and the quality of them. Rather than worry about tweaking your car's setup — or any setup at all — these boosts are what you can use to tweak your race day experience. However, which ones you get are randomized.

Some boosts last the whole race, such as giving your car a small amount of extra horsepower or grip. Other boosts are situational, such as giving you a bunch of power for three seconds any time you are overtaken, or 5% extra fuel at the start of the final lap. Some boosts give you powerful first-lap bonuses to help you pick through the pack early. Finally, some are just for fun, such as turning on big head mode for the race, which looks even more silly when driving an open-wheel racecar.

The career mode is centered on increasing your team level, which you accomplish by completing various challenges as you otherwise race normally. These challenges can include winning certain championships, winning a set number of races, making a number of overtakes, etc. As you gain team level, you gain the ability to participate in new racing series, and you can generally drive faster cars. You take the coins you earn while continually upgrade your campus buildings, or buy and customize the look of your cars. It's a simple gameplay loop, but it comes with a surprisingly high level of, "OK, just one more race."

There are two groups I see iRacing Arcade appealing to the most: people who are new to racing games in general and people who want something racing-themed for some unserious fun. It's a bit brilliant that iRacing Arcade sets up the former with a pipeline to get into the more serious iRacing platform. Despite having my own iRacing account and a significant sim racing setup of my own, I had a lot of fun with iRacing Arcade. It is a simpler game, not in a way that makes it feel inferior, but in a way that makes it stand out as an option to just get in some quick, casual racing fun.

Score: 9.0/10

Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB RAM, NVidia RTX 4070 Ti, Xbox One Controller