The Concept of "Seasons" in iRacing and VRS?

[newbert]

OK - I can sometimes be dense (only sometimes? ), but can someone explain iRacing's concept of "Seasons" to me? Especially as it pertains to VRS?

The reason I ask is that I couldn't find a "data pack" for a particular car/track combo to try out Virtual Race School and the reason I was given is that it's (the car's series) "season" hasn't started yet. I just want to try out VRS with a car/track combo I already own before committing money to it. So what does "season" have to do with it? If there's no recent data pack, why isn't an older one available?<confused>

Besides -If you just want to jump into a race occasionally, in different cars and on different tracks, what difference does it make what "season" it is?

Thanks.

 

[Kurupt CDN]

Only a few cars are available with a free membership.
You can also only dl one car tune/data pack a week on a free membership.
Paid memberships are unlimited.

As with most games physics updates and new tire models come along making old tunes obsolete.
As for new cars not having any tunes available for the new season is that some just got updated to the new tire model just 2 days ago. It takes time to adjust and test new tunes out.

 

[newbert]

Only a few cars are available with a free membership.
You can also only dl one car tune/data pack a week on a free membership.
Paid memberships are unlimited.

As with most games physics updates and new tire models come along making old tunes obsolete.
As for new cars not having any tunes available for the new season is that some just got updated to the new tire model just 2 days ago. It takes time to adjust and test new tunes out.

So, I guess that my recent interest in VRS is just plain bad timing right now..... Story of my life!

So here's one last (hopefully) basic question: I've been deciding on a car/track combo and then looking for a data pack to try out. I guess that I've been going about this backwards? I should first find which data packs are currently available, and only then choose the matching car/track combo in order to run some laps of myself to compare to it (and hopefully learn something)?

Thanks again!