IFRL The private lobby is where league racing actually happens, and its settings decide whether your night is close racing or sixteen people arguing about penalties. Here's how to build one, and the exact settings we use so you can copy them.
Getting to the lobby
From the GT7 main menu, go to Multiplayer, then Lobby, then Create Room. That drops you into the settings, which look overwhelming and mostly aren't. Here are the ones that matter.
Room basics
- Room visibility: Private, with a password, so only your drivers get in. A GT7 lobby holds a maximum of sixteen, so a full grid leaves no room for a spectator; plan your recording around a driver's replay, not a seventeenth person.
- Max players: set to your field size.
- Voice chat: most leagues use Discord instead, which is more reliable and works across the whole night.
The settings that keep it fair
These are the ones drivers actually feel. Here's what we run and why.
- Shortcut Penalty: Strong. Cutting the track is the one cheat that clearly pays off, and it's fully objective. Turn it on hard.
- Pit Lane Line Cutting: Off. It pings for a tiny swerve you often didn't notice and has no bearing on the race. We turned it off.
- Flag Rules: On. Blue and yellow flags. Realistic, and it matters when faster cars are lapping a mixed field.
- Wall Collision Penalty: Off. Hitting a wall already costs you time; a penalty on top punishes the same mistake twice, and it lands hardest on newer drivers.
- Car Collision Penalty: Off. This is the big one. GT7's contact penalty judges by outcome, not fault, and regularly penalizes the driver who got hit. Leaving it off and letting damage do the policing prevents the most common league argument.
- Mechanical Damage: Light. Visible Damage: On. This is what actually discourages contact. Punt someone and your own car is bent for the rest of the race. Self-enforcing, no referee needed.
- Ghosting During Race: Weak. Spun or stopped cars ghost so the pack doesn't pile into a stationary car. Protects a mixed field at turn one.
- Slipstream Strength: Real. Boost: None. Real drafting, no artificial rubber-band catch-up.
- Correct Course After Wall Collision: Off. Keep the driving honest.
Tires, fuel, and grid
For a short race, leave tire wear and fuel consumption off so it's a flat-out sprint. For a longer main event, turn them up so strategy matters. We run our thirty-minute main at tire wear 5x, fuel 6x, refueling at 10 litres per second, with Mandatory Tire Types set to 2, which forces every driver to run two different compounds and therefore pit at least once. That single setting turns a main event into a strategy race.
Grid order is set in the room too: you can run fastest-first, or a reverse grid that puts slower drivers at the front for a more exciting opener.
Save your settings
Once you've built a lobby you like, write the settings down or have a second person memorize them, because if the host's connection drops, someone else needs to rebuild the room fast. A backup host with the settings saved is the cheapest insurance in league racing.
The IFRL runs three races a night in a private GT7 lobby. Our full lobby settings and rulebook are on this site, and the 2026/27 season hub lists them next to every night. Related: racecraft: surviving lap one.