While not announced externally through the traditional means yet, the price for iRacing’s Nurburgring GP track, as well as the twelve mile Nordschleife (we spelt it right this time), has been revealed internally to members via the iRacing forums and slowly made its way out to the general public:

I just don’t see this being a very good deal based on the current market. Forza Motorsport 5 included a phenomenal version of the Nordschleife for free as a surprise update (along with Long Beach, which has still not been completed by iRacing), Assetto Corsa priced the track at $11 and included ten cars the community requested, and Project CARS includes the track right out of the box.

Broken down to an even more absurd degree, the amount of content you purchased for $11 in Assetto Corsa would cost you $135 in iRacing. When people on message boards complain about the ridiculous cost of iRacing, this is exactly why.

I’m not excited for the Nurburgring to appear in iRacing.

First, the track isn’t practical for how the game’s safety rating works. The amount of off-track incidents, just from inexperienced drivers, could see them regress to a lower license level in a matter of one race. And given that a driver is disqualified from a race after seventeen incidents, small mistakes would add up much quicker than on a traditional road course like Road America which is significantly easier to memorize. With upwards of seventy corners to mess up and races lasting anywhere from thirty minutes to a full hour, a large portion of the grid won’t see the checkered flag. It’s going to be a race people avoid when it inevitably pops up on the schedule.

Second, the track isn’t practical for how the game’s series are designed. Aside from the Lotus 49 and Blancpain GT3 series, there are very few cars featured in iRacing that actually compete on the Nordschleife. Unless iRacing shoe-horns every popular road series into a Nurburgring Week as they’ve done on the oval side with Daytona and Talladega (hell they’ve sent IndyCar to Talladega), the track wouldn’t get used a whole lot, which wouldn’t justify the steep price tag.

Alternatively, they could create a VLN-like series with nothing but twelve weeks of the Nordschleife, but the game lacks several of the slower class cars that make VLN racing unique – it is not full of moderately quick gentleman cars like Assetto Corsa and the roster of 80’s DTM rides, plus the BMW 235i, which was so popular it has its own VLN class.

Lastly, the tire model isn’t anywhere near adequate enough to handle the world’s most dangerous race track. Below is an example of a random GT3 race in iRacing at one of the easiest tracks on the schedule. Take note of how many people self spin or just get lines totally wrong. It’s easy to pass these off as rookie drivers, until you realize the license system in iRacing is specifically designed to bring people up through the ranks and gradually build their skills before progressing to faster cars:

IDK it’s pricey and won’t be the acquisition iRacing is making it out to be.