# iRacing Setups

> Upload your garage export, remix it with your Race Engineer, and apply the resulting garage recipe in-sim. How and why the iRacing flow works.

iRacing setups work differently from LMU — and it's worth understanding why. iRacing's native setup format (`.sto`) is **encrypted by the sim**, so no external tool can generate one. Braking Lab doesn't pretend otherwise: you upload the **garage export** (`.htm`), and remixes come back as a **garage recipe** — the exact changes to apply in-sim. You hit **Save As**, and iRacing writes the `.sto` itself.

> Setups is in **Public Beta** and requires a personal **Plus or Ultra** plan. A Team seat alone does not grant access.

{/* Maintenance: step 1 mirrors the app's own export instructions
(apps/app/src/i18n/locales/en/aiSetups.json, iracingExport.step1–step4). Keep
the two in sync after any garage UI change. */}

## 1. Export Your Setup from the Garage

The export is the **human-readable setup summary** — the `.htm` file iRacing
writes itself, with every garage setting and its display value.

1. Load the setup you want in the garage. That screen has three buttons: **Export**, **Save** and **Delete**.
2. Click **Export**. The "Export Car Setup" window opens, with the file type **Car Setup Exports (\*.htm)**.
3. It saves to `Documents\iRacing\setups\<your car>\`, named after the setup you had loaded.

The Setup Interview is Le Mans Ultimate only. On iRacing, the flow always starts
from your own export and produces garage recipes rather than generated files.

## 2. Upload It to Your Vault

In [Setups](https://app.brakinglab.com/ai-setups), click **New setup** and drop the `.htm` (or `.html`). Braking Lab parses it into a full parameter tree and stores it as **version 1**, the baseline.

The file can be up to 1 MB and contain up to 512 parameters. You can upload up
to 120 setups per hour, with at most 10 in a quick burst.

You can also choose its intended session type and personal tags while uploading.
They organize the setup and all its versions without changing the export — see
[Types and personal tags](/en/docs/ai-setups/types-and-tags).

The encrypted `.sto` is not an accepted Setups upload. Keep it in iRacing's
**My Setups** folder; upload the matching readable garage `.htm` export when you
want Braking Lab to parse or remix the setup.

**A new export is a new setup.** Every upload creates a new setup, and an
iRacing export cannot be appended to an existing one as a version. To keep one
lineage, let your engineer remix the setup and apply the recipe in the garage.

## 3. Remix It

With your AI client connected (see [Remixing setups](/en/docs/ai-setups/remix)), describe what the car is doing:

> "I'm loose on corner exit at Spa — calm the rear without killing my straightline speed."

Your engineer changes only adjustable values and saves the result as a new version. A remix changes at most 8 parameters; one or two per hypothesis is the recommendation.

## 4. Apply the Recipe in the Garage

A remixed iRacing version is a **recipe**, not a file. In your vault, the version shows an ordered list of changes:

```
LEFT REAR → Spring rate: 1100 lbs/in → 1050 lbs/in
REAR → Wing angle: 6 → 7
```

1. Load your **base setup** in the iRacing garage (the version the remix started from).
2. Copy the recipe with the **Copy** button — it produces a plain-text checklist.
3. Apply each change in the garage, section by section.
4. **Save As** with a new name — iRacing writes the `.sto`.

## Units

A recipe uses the **units of the export you uploaded**. iRacing writes its
export in your metric or imperial preference, so a setup exported in kPa gets
recipes in kPa. Braking Lab never converts between units, for example psi and
kPa. If you change your unit preference in iRacing later, the recipe keeps the
units of the original export.