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The sand surface is a safety measure but also a challenging surface to recover from that is used in iRacing and in the real world. This surface type is known affectionately as the "Trap of No Return" due to the way how the sand slows the car down a whole lot losing a lot of speed in the process. In that regard, it acts like a trap for racers if not paying attention while battling or hot lapping as the sand makes any racecar diminish its fast speed down to a slow crawl. The surface while having very little grip and speed benefits has very favorable tire wear, mercifulness, and even longevity in general as the slow speeds generate hardly any wear and helps the car point where it needs to go in order to re-join the track ahead. The surface is mainly found on road courses and street circuits around the world and is used as an effective measure of slowing cars down before impacting the outside or inner walls of a circuit. Some road courses and street circuits have more sand than others though depends on many factors like uphill vs downhill, sharpness or smoothness, banked vs non-banked, and so on. Sand is found at turns and straights and is usually found in front of the inside and outside walls.

Pros: Slows the car down considerably to avoid a potential crash (or makes the crash less severe), not very hard on tire wear and longevity, forgiving surface at slow speeds

Cons: Kills all momentum that the car had forcing to rebuild that momentum all over again, speed and grip are diminished heavily

These are the 5 categories for rating a surface type in iRacing:

Grip (how much grip that surface type has, 0-4 is low grip, 5 is neutral, 6-10 is high grip)

Longevity (how far a driver can go between pit stops, 0-4 is short, 5 is neutral, 6-10 is long)

Merciful (how forgiving it is, numbers from 0-4 are unforgiving, 5 is neutral, and 6-10 is forgiving)

Speed (how much speed can be carried on the surface type, 0-4 is slow, 5 is neutral, 6-10 is speedy)

Tire Wear: (how much it wears down the tires on the car, 0-4 is quick, 5 is neutral, and 6-10 is slow).

Rating of Sand Surface:

Grip: 2/10

Longevity: 10/10

Merciful: 8/10

Speed: 2/10

Tire Wear: 10/10

Overall: 32/50 (64%)

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