Le Mans Ultimate vs iRacing: Which is The One For You?

When getting involved in sim racing, it can be difficult to work out which sim titles deserve your time. This is especially important for those with busy personal lives outside of the sim rig. As such, racers don’t have endless time or money to throw at every sim on the market.

This brings us to this guide, because at the moment, two of the most prolific titles are iRacing and Le Mans Ultimate. 

Coach Dave Academy decided to compile a guide on how each compares to the other, to help those on the fence find a good direction to head in. Both titles offer an excellent virtual racing arena, but some racers will likely find one or the other better suited to their situation and racing interests. 

If you want to get started on either title, Coach Dave Academy has a beginner’s guide on both iRacing and Le Mans Ultimate for you to refer to. 

The Content On Offer

Arguably, one of the most important elements of a sim racing title is the kind of content it provides.

For drivers who enjoy driving a range of machinery, iRacing is the clear leader here. Aside from contemporary sports car racers built to LMDh, Hypercar and GT3 regulations, it also offers Formula cars, single-seaters, Touring cars, and single-make GT categories. In addition, iRacing also features a variety of oval racing content and dirt racing content, meaning the level of racing combos vastly outweighs that of Le Mans Ultimate. You’ll also be able to get fast iRacing setups for the most popular car and track combinations as a part of your Delta subscription.

The same goes for the track list, with over 140 different tracks currently available within the service. By comparison, LMU currently boasts just 13 different tracks and 20 different layouts, which reduces the potential variety considerably.

Plus, currently, Le Mans Ultimate only features the cars and tracks from the World Endurance Championship and European Le Mans Series. These consist of Hypercar, LMP2, LMP3, LMGT3, and GTE racing categories. Not that this is a bad thing, it is the official title partner of WEC and ELMS, and they do a fantastic job of bringing this discipline to life.

But as a result, those not interested in sports cars and endurance racing will likely get bored with LMU pretty quickly. On the other side of the coin, those who love it may find the more focused experience slightly more appealing than iRacing’s jack-of-all-trades approach. 

To sum up:

• Both offer a variety of content via base game, DLC and add-on content
• iRacing comes with 30 cars and 27 tracks with a basic subscription, whilst you have to pay for everything else individually, usually $11.95 for cars, and $14.95 for tracks
• LMU comes with 15 cars and 7 tracks with the base title, with most 2024/2025 WEC content and ELMS add-ons being available as paid DLC

Hypercar And GT3 Roster

Both iRacing and LMU boast an impressive range of contemporary sports car racing content across the Hypercar and GT3 classes. The main differences between the two sims are that while LMU focuses on the WEC and ELMS, iRacing’s roster is based on the IMSA Sports Car Championship. 

This means that the GT3 cars in iRacing are faster than the LMGT3 machines featured in LMU, even if they look the same. The reason for this is that both series use different performance balancing measures. When it comes to class numbers, LMU easily has the advantage when it comes to its Hypercar list. 

• It boasts 13 different LMH and LMDh vehicles, while iRacing only has five
• iRacing only has the Acura ARX-06 GTP as exclusive Hypercar content, LMU features seven machines that iRacing do not have
• These include the Peugeot 9×8 LMH, the Alpine A424 LMDh, and the Lamborghini SC63 LMDh
• iRacing fights back when it comes to GT3s, as it has 11 modern machines, while LMU has a total of ten.
• The main difference is that while LMU has the Lexus RC F GT3 exclusively between the two, iRacing has the Acura NSX GT3 EVO 22 and Audi R8 LMS Evo II.

LMU also uses Virtual Energy calculations to work out fuel economy, whereas iRacing uses a more conventional fuelling method for its races. VE is used to try and balance the fuel mileage of the different vehicle and engine types, and essentially forces every car to cover the same distance on each tank of fuel. iRacing uses its own system to keep each car well-balanced in this regard. 

Coach Dave Academy has plenty of guides covering the vehicles of both sims, such as the LMGT3 and Hypercar entries as well as your Delta subscription, giving you all the necessary setups for LMU. 

Ranking Systems

Both titles feature in-depth ranking systems that are used to reward faster and cleaner drivers, as well as to sort racers into events where they can enjoy close races with similarly-skilled pilots.

• iRacing uses iRating and Safety Rating to decide which split each driver is put into, with those with the highest iRating being placed in the highest splits, and those with less being put in lower ones 
• iRating is results-based, with the best results getting the highest number of iRating, and worse ones affording you less, and even leading to you being deducted points
• Safety Rating is calculated based on how many incidents you’re involved in, whether it be from contacting another car, or from losing control and exceeding track limits. SR is crucial for moving up licence levels, which will allow you to race in a larger variety of racing series

LMU uses a similar system, with four different ranking levels determining the level of daily races you can compete in. 

• Beginner races can be entered with the base Bronze ranking, Intermediate requires Silver, and Advanced requires Gold
• Your results in each race go towards how much driver rating you’ll gain or lose, and will depend on how many higher-rated and lower-rated drivers you beat in a given race
• LMU’s Safety Rating works similarly to iRacing’s too, with car contacts, mistakes and corner cuts all affecting the amount of SR you’ll gain per race

Both titles’ ranking systems work very similarly, and ultimately, you’ll need to drive in a similar way across both to increase your driver and safety ratings. Conversely, making the same mistakes will likewise cost you in both sims. 

• When it comes to netcode, LMU generally has a superior system when compared to iRacing, with car contacts much more precise in the former
• Ghost contacts, where one person hasn’t actually made contact with the other, are more common on iRacing, which can lead to a frustrating experience when battling wheel-to-wheel due to causing a greater amount of accidents, or getting unjust incident points for contact

Online Racing

As a result of its more diverse content roster, iRacing has plenty more online series to race in than LMU. While the latter offers singular or mixed class fixtures based on its sports car content, iRacing comes with a wide range of different kinds of competition that run to vastly differing rulesets. From F1-style grand prix encounters, to long endurance races, as well as short sprint races and even traditional oval races and rallycross heats, iRacing has it all. 

LMU does offer ranked championships, which can be entered as long as you have an active RaceControl subscription. 

• This allows you to drive whatever car you want, with each race being contested in a range of weekly splits to decide the champion over a set number of weeks. 
• Alongside this, you have your usual varied line-up of daily and weekly events, which change up their content combos on a weekly basis. 

iRacing follows a similar structure, with each online series running to a 12-week calendar that changes tracks every week until the end of the season. 

• At the end of it, a champion from each competition division, which is based on the amount of iRating you have, is based on the average points you score across the season. 
• Your best eight weeks are counted, allowing you to miss up to four if you wish. 

If you fancy a closer insight into the sort of series that iRacing offers, then Coach Dave Academy’s guide into them is the perfect place for you!

Handling and Force Feedback

It’s all well and good having a good online racing and ranking system, but who cares if the cars are no fun to drive.

Both iRacing and LMU are marketed as full-on simulation titles, and the respective teams have pushed hard to make their virtual racers as authentic to their real counterparts as possible. iRacing does a good job of making its wide range of machinery handle consistently well, with no issues with poor quality affecting some cars and not others.

LMU has a slight advantage in that it can focus purely on gearing its physics engine and force feedback purely for the Hypercar and GT classes, whereas iRacing has to try and make a wide range of different vehicle and tyre types work on its physics engine. 

As a result, LMU’s Hypercars, prototypes and GT3s drive with a little more depth than those in iRacing for the most part, and can be pushed harder over the limit. iRacing’s recent tyre model improvements, however, have helped increase the enjoyment of driving the GT3 machines in particular, with the cars offering slightly more force feedback detail at lower speeds than LMUs do.

iRacing’s tyre model still needs some work though, as the physics get somewhat stuck if you go over the limit, making saving slides very difficult. LMU’s vehicles can also quickly snap out of control, though the balance at the limit is easier to read. 

Braking is similar across both sims, with trailbraking and modulation are important on corner entry to prevent locking. 

• iRacing’s FFB currently gives a better feeling for tyre load and behaviour than LMU, making it easier to drive the vehicle up to the limit.
• iRacing falls down due to its tyre model behaviour beyond the limit, which makes reaching it risky and frustrating.
• This also means you have to drive with more finesse than you do in LMU, which allows you to play with the car and use its weight to affect its movement in the latter.
• LMU’s excellent ABS FFB effects are also very useful for feeling LMGT3 vehicles under hard braking.

All in all, both titles offer engaging and fun handling across the vehicles they portray. Choosing one over the other will ultimately come down to personal preference, though drivers who prefer more detailed FFB and feeling from the tyre will likely get on slightly better with iRacing. 

LMU’s machines are excellent in their own right, and capture the overall behaviour of Hypercars in particular better than iRacing currently does. It’s also easier to drive the cars harder without losing control, as the physics react faster than iRacing’s and provide more grip in those circumstances. You’ll just have to get used to the vaguer FFB to get the most from it. 

Weather Systems

Both iRacing and LMU feature full 24-hour day/night cycles and dynamic weather, which can come and go over a race distance. They also feature full dynamic track systems, which see the track surface develop over a race session as rubber is laid down from cars driving across the road. 

Ultimately, iRacing’s is far more advanced than the one that LMU offers, especially from a weather standpoint. While LMU’s weather is rather rudimentary in that driving in the wet is essentially like a less grippy version of the dry surface, iRacing’s is more dynamic. Puddles and standing water develop around different contours and areas of the track, and are affected by vehicles driving through them. But LMU are constantly developing this area for later releases.

• Like in real life, the dry line in iRacing becomes less grippy than driving offline when the rain hits, meaning you need to drive around it and find different ways of finding laptime as the conditions change. 
• In LMU, you can keep driving on the usual dry line with no penalty of grip or for laptime. 
• As a result, mixed condition races in iRacing are more varied, and allow drivers to make more of a difference through technique than LMUs can.

If you want to find out more about how iRacing’s Tempest weather system work, take a look at Coach Dave Academy’s guide covering it. 

The Costs

When it comes to cost, LMU comes out as the clear winner.

The base game costs $39.99 at full price, which will afford you access to all cars and tracks from the 2023 WEC season, as well as a trio of free LMGT3 vehicles so that you can take part in offline and online races in the category.

You can also spend $64 on the Full Access Bundle, which gives you the extra cars and tracks added to the game from the 2024 & 2025 WEC seasons. Add another $28.99 for the full ELMS season pass, and you’ll have all the content LMU has to offer for around $93. 

You can also purchase a Race Control Pro or Pro+ subscription for $7.99/$9.99 a month instead of buying any DLC and this gives you access to all of the content available in the game, plus it unlocks new online championships.

Unlike LMU, iRacing works on a subscription model entirely, meaning you’ll have to pay out monthly or yearly to use the service. This includes all the content within the game, meaning you can’t use it unless you have an active subscription. 

• A regular monthly subscription costs $13.00, with three months costing $33.00, and a year costing $110.00.
• On top of this, you’ll have to purchase every car and track outside of the base content for $11.95 or $14.95.
• This means you can easily spend upwards of $1,000 just to have all of iRacing’s content, which can’t be used unless you have an active subscription.
• LMU is therefore vastly cheaper, given that just a basic subscription for iRacing costs more per year than the entirety of LMU’s base cost and DLC. 

iRacing may be worth the cost should you want to play with specific series content, but the bang for buck that LMU offers is impressive relative to its rival. 

Wrapping Up

All in all, both iRacing and LMU are fine simulators to live out your virtual racing dreams. iRacing offers a ton more variety when it comes to content and racing disciplines, as well as more advanced weather and dynamic track systems, but you’ll have to pay for it. LMU may not have as much content, but the vehicles it does have are more approachable, and it’s much cheaper. 

It also has superior netcode, and its ranking system is every bit as good as iRacing’s. Those looking for variety and don’t have a tighter budget will get a lot of mileage from iRacing, though sports car fans will adore the accuracy and authenticity of LMU’s meticulously built vehicles and rules, and for a much lower sum of cash.