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SIM RACING MANUAL · BLOG

iRacing race times by timezone

iRacing publishes every session time in GMT/UTC — here's how to convert it to your local time and stop missing the green flag.

iRacing · Schedule

Stub — work in progress. This page has the core answer below; the full timezone tables, DST notes, and per-region examples are still being written. TODO: add a GMT→local conversion table, the twice-a-year DST gotcha, and worked examples for US/EU/AU racers.

The short answer

iRacing runs on GMT/UTC. Every session time you see in the schedule — the top of the hour, :15, :30, :45 — is a UTC time, not your local time. A series that lists a race at 00:00 is starting at midnight UTC, which is 7:00 PM the previous day on US Eastern (during DST) and 1:00 AM in Central Europe.

Two things trip people up:

  1. The website shows UTC; the sim shows your local time. The schedule page and most planning tools list sessions in UTC (or your account’s display setting), while the in-sim session list converts to your PC’s clock. Compare the same race in both places and the numbers won’t match unless you do the math.
  2. iRacing’s clock doesn’t shift for daylight saving — yours does. UTC has no DST. So twice a year, when your region springs forward or falls back, a race that was at 7:00 PM your time quietly moves to 6:00 or 8:00. The UTC time never changed; your offset did.

How sessions repeat

Most official series don’t run once a day — they repeat on a fixed cadence (commonly every 30 or 60 minutes) across a window. So “race time” is really a start offset plus a repeat interval: the first session at, say, 00:15 UTC, then every hour after. Find the slot that lands in your evening and that’s your race.

Convert it once

To find your local race time:

  1. Note the session time from the schedule (it’s UTC).
  2. Add or subtract your UTC offset — e.g. UTC−5 for US Eastern in winter, UTC−4 in summer; UTC+1 / +2 for Central Europe.
  3. Re-check after each DST change.

Full conversion tables and worked examples coming soon.

Skip the math

Startlight shows each iRacing series’ next session in your local time, with a live countdown to the green flag — on your Home Screen and Apple Watch, no conversion and no UTC in sight. It tracks the weekly rotation automatically, so you always know what’s on next and when. One-time purchase, no login.

For more on the season structure behind these times, see iRacing seasons and the weekly schedule and the schedule tools roundup.