For most of my real career, I didn't build my own setups. My engineer did, with my feedback, and my job was to drive whatever we bolted together that morning. iRacing hands you a choice real drivers rarely get: race a series where the garage is locked for everyone, or one where it's wide open.
Most of the same cars run in both. Pick wrong for where you are as a driver and you'll either waste hours in a garage you don't understand yet, or plateau in a spec field long after you've outgrown it. Here's how I'd choose.
What a fixed series actually is
In a fixed series, iRacing supplies the setup and every driver on the grid runs it. Open the garage and the setup list is greyed out — there is nothing to load, nothing to tweak. And these aren't the generic baselines that come with each car: for fixed series, iRacing provides a setup tuned for that week's track, the same file for the whole field.
That's the whole pitch. Everyone brakes with the same bias, carries the same wing, runs the same pressures. If you get beaten, you got out-driven — and I mean that as good news, because it tells you exactly what to work on. My notes on tyre pressure still matter here, just for reading the car instead of adjusting it.
What an open series actually is
Open means you can run any setup that passes tech — the automatic inspection iRacing runs before you leave the garage, checking ride heights, wing limits, pressures and the rest of the car's rules. Build your own, download one, or start from iRacing's factory setups: every car ships with a baseline plus a few variants, refreshed each season so they always pass tech.
Where do race-winning files come from? Some people tune their own. Most download: free community setups, paid shops — my rundown of the best iRacing setup shops covers who's actually worth money — or archives like my own free setup collection from my setup-shop days, which I'd treat as baselines rather than finished laps in 2026.
One warning from experience: don't run old files. iRacing has been reworking tyres car by car for years, and a setup from a few seasons back can be slower than the baseline or fail tech outright. Check the season it was made for, then compare it against the current baseline before you trust it.
What fixed doesn't take away from you
The garage is locked. The cockpit isn't.
Whatever the real car adjusts from the seat, you still adjust: brake bias, and on the GT3s the traction control and ABS settings. Fuel for the race stays your call too — starting with less fuel is often the only "setup" decision left in a fixed race, and it's not a small one over a 40-minute stint.
Since the Season 3 2026 build, series can also carry their own sporting regulations — different pit-stop rules, and rule sets that disable ABS and TC entirely in cars that normally have them. Check the Rules tab once you're in a session; the tooltip spells out exactly what's active that week. The honest summary: "fixed" fixes the engineering, not the racecraft.
The 2026 map: most big series come in pairs
iRacing treats the fixed and open versions of the same series as two separate championships with their own standings. The pattern repeats across the service:
- Formula C, Dallara F3: fixed and open series side by side. Fixed pulled roughly 28,000 drivers last season against 18,000 in open — bigger grids, while the open front end is noticeably sharper. My full Dallara F3 guide covers the car itself.
- GT3: the Fanatec GT3 Challenge is the fixed home, while GT Sprint and the endurance series run open — that's where my GT3 setup collection earns its keep. If you're new to the class, start with how to get into GT3 racing.
- IMSA: the multiclass IMSA iRacing Series runs both an open and a Fixed version on the same schedule.
And it's been this way from the bottom of the ladder up — the rookie series are fixed on purpose, so new drivers learn the track instead of the garage. That philosophy is baked into getting out of rookies in the first place.
Which one makes you faster
My answer hasn't changed since I wrote it for the F3: start fixed, and stay there longer than your ego wants to.
Fixed racing is the purest practice there is. Equal cars mean every tenth you find came from you, and the bigger, tighter grids teach racecraft that no garage session ever will. I did years of spec karting before anyone let me near a damper adjustment, and I'm convinced that order is why the adjustments made sense when they came.
Move to open when you can name the problem. Not "the car feels off" — that's a driving-more-laps problem. I mean "it understeers mid-corner in the fast stuff but it's fine in the slow" — a sentence an engineer could act on. When your feedback sounds like that, the garage starts returning lap time. Until then, an open series mostly gives you a faster way to be lost, and a downloaded pro setup usually makes it worse: files built for drivers at the very top of the sport are nervous, aggressive things, and they punish everything you haven't learned yet.
The good news: you don't have to choose forever. Same car, separate standings — plenty of drivers run the fixed series as their main event and use the open one as a test bench. That's exactly how I'd use my old files: load one from the archive, feel what it changes, and let the difference teach you what setup actually does. Just put the file in the right folder first.
FAQ
Is fixed setup racing easier than open?
It's simpler, not easier. You lose the engineering workload, but the grids are bigger and tighter, so the racing itself is often harder. What it removes is excuses — which is exactly why it's the faster way to improve.
Can you adjust anything at all in an iRacing fixed series?
Yes: fuel load, plus the in-car controls the real car has — brake bias, and TC/ABS settings where fitted, unless that week's sporting regulations disable the aids entirely. The garage itself stays locked.
Do fixed and open series share iRating?
They're scored as separate series with separate standings, but your iRating and safety rating live at the licence-category level — a Formula-class race feeds your Formula iRating whether it was fixed or open.
Are iRacing's fixed setups any good?
They're sensible and track-specific, and honestly better than most files new drivers download. What they're not is tailored — they're built for a predictable, stable car, not for your driving style. That's the trade.
Which should a beginner pick, fixed or open?
Fixed, without hesitation — it's how the whole rookie ladder works. Come to open when you're consistent, you know the track, and you can describe what the car is doing in words. The setup fine-tunes; the driver wins.
I spent my career being handed cars I didn't tune and being expected to be fast anyway. That's the skill fixed racing builds. Learn it first, and when you finally open the garage, you'll actually know what you're looking for.