Privacy Policy
Last updated: 28 October 2026
The short version. PaceGuru processes your driving and telemetry data on your own machine. Your recordings and your settings never leave your PC. The one exception is yours to decide: laps you explicitly upload to a team are stored on our server so that the members of that team can load them as a reference. Only an excerpt of the driving data is uploaded — no setup, no iRacing name, no iRacing ID (section 15). Everything else we store serves your licence, your account and running the website, and is listed individually below. If you choose to connect your Garage61 account, our server fetches laps from Garage61 on your behalf and passes them to the app without storing them (section 15a).
This English version has the same content as the German version. If the two differ, the German version describes what applies.
1. Controller
Dominik Binder – PaceGuru
Amelungenstraße 62
96129 Strullendorf
Germany
Email: info@paceguru.net
A data protection officer is not legally required and has not been appointed.
2. Where the site runs
The website and all related services run on a server operated by Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany. The server is located in Germany. Backups are stored, encrypted, with the same provider (Falkenstein, Germany). A data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is in place.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR — legitimate interest in secure, reliable operation.
3. Server log files
Every request is automatically logged with the data your browser transmits:
- IP address
- date and time of the request
- the address requested and the amount of data transferred
- HTTP status code
- browser type and version, operating system
- the previously visited page (referrer), if transmitted
This data is technically necessary to deliver the site and serves to detect and fend off attacks. It is not combined with other data sources and is deleted automatically after 14 days at the latest. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.
4. Content delivery network: Cloudflare
Access to paceguru.net is routed through the network of Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St., San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. Cloudflare acts as an intermediary, distributes delivery and mitigates attacks. In doing so, Cloudflare processes your IP address. Transfer to the USA may occur; Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses are additionally in place, which continue to apply should the framework fall away. A data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is in place with Cloudflare.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR — legitimate interest in availability and attack mitigation. See the Cloudflare privacy policy.
5. Cookies
We use no advertising, tracking or analytics cookies. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to. Simply opening a page sets no cookie. Only the following cookies are used, each of them only once you trigger the function it belongs to:
| Name | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
lang_banner_dismissed |
Remembers that you closed the language notice. Only set when you close it. | 30 days |
pm_at, pm_rt |
Keep you signed in after login. Only set if you have an account and sign in. Not readable by JavaScript. | 15 minutes / 30 days |
__Host-pm_g61b |
Ties connecting Garage61 to the browser in which you started it (protection against planted connections, section 15a). Only set when you choose “Connect Garage61”. Not readable by JavaScript. | 10 minutes |
Legal basis: § 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG in conjunction with Art. 6 (1) (b) or (f) GDPR — these cookies are strictly necessary for the function you requested.
Whether we show you the notice about the other language version depends on the
language your browser is set to. The page evaluates this in your browser only;
nothing is stored and nothing is transmitted to us. The cf_ipcountry
cookie (country code) that was set for this purpose until 6 October 2026 no
longer exists.
6. Fonts
All fonts are served from our own server. No connection is made to Google Fonts or any other external provider, and no IP address is transmitted to third parties for this purpose.
7. Creating an account and access codes
An account is created with the sign-up form on the home page or on the sign-up page. We process your email address in order to confirm it and to write to you about your account.
If you redeem an access code, we record which code was redeemed by your account and when. This prevents the same code being used more than once, and for that same reason it survives the deletion of your account — without any link to a person who still exists.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (contract and pre-contractual measures at your request), and Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR for the block against multiple redemption.
8. User account
If you create an account, we process:
| Data | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Email address | Sign-in, account correspondence, delivery of the licence key |
| Sign-in data (password, session tokens, licence key) | Signing in and linking your access. All three are stored in a form that cannot be reversed: what we hold cannot be turned back into the original. Your password itself cannot be viewed by us. |
| Operational and security data (timestamps, failed attempts, IP address) | Running the account and protecting it against automated password guessing. The IP address is stored as a digest only, never in plaintext. |
| Two-factor sign-in, if you switch it on | Second step when signing in. The secret of your authenticator app is stored encrypted — unlike your password it has to be recoverable, otherwise we could not check your codes. |
| Subscription data (Stripe customer number, status, period end) | Linking your account to your subscription and how long your access runs. Only exists once you have subscribed. |
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of contract) and, for the security measures, Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.
Retention: Account data is stored for as long as the account exists. If you delete your account, the account, its licence link and all sign-in data are deleted immediately — as are your display name, your memberships, the laps you shared and any team you created (section 15). Security log entries no longer contain personal data afterwards and are removed after 12 months at the latest.
9. Checking passwords against known breaches
When you choose a password, we check whether it has appeared in known data breaches, using Have I Been Pwned with k-anonymity: only the first five characters of a digest of your password are transmitted. Neither the password, nor your email address, nor any other personal data leaves our server, and the provider cannot determine which password the query refers to.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR — legitimate interest in protecting user accounts.
10. Email delivery
For confirmation, licence, security and notice emails we use the delivery service Brevo (Brevo GmbH, Köpenicker Str. 126, 10179 Berlin, Germany). The recipient address and the message content are processed through Brevo's systems. A data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is in place with Brevo. Brevo uses sub-processors; processing outside the European Economic Area may occur and is safeguarded by EU standard contractual clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR.
10a. Contact form and email
If you write to us through the contact form, we process your name (optional), your email address and your message in order to answer your request. The form stores nothing in our database: our server passes the message on to our mailbox as an email, through the same delivery service as in section 10. Your IP address is used only transiently, to limit the number of messages per connection (protection against abuse); it is not attached to the message. The same applies if you email us directly.
We delete the message once your request has been dealt with, at the latest twelve months after the last contact. If it concerns a contract (for example a cancellation or a withdrawal), we keep it as evidence until the regular limitation period ends (three years, § 195 German Civil Code).
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR where a contract or steps prior to a contract are concerned, otherwise Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR — legitimate interest in answering enquiries.
11. Payments: Stripe
Payments are processed by Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd., 1 Grand Canal Street Lower, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, Ireland. When you take out a subscription we transmit your email address and your account identifier to Stripe; you enter your payment details and your billing address on Stripe's own page. You can pay there by card; on the annual pass and on the Team monthly subscription you can also pay by PayPal.
We never see your full card details. They do not pass through our server and are not stored there. What we receive back from Stripe is the customer number, the status of your subscription, the tariff you booked (which tells us whether you are on the Standard or the Team plan) and its period end. If you change to the Team plan in your account, we instruct Stripe to change the tariff of your subscription and to charge the difference to the payment method stored there. If a payment is refunded, or reversed through your bank or PayPal, Stripe tells us; we then end what was paid for with it (see terms, clause 6a) and record this in the security log.
Paying by PayPal. On the annual pass and on the Team monthly subscription you can choose PayPal at checkout instead of a card. The payment is then handled by PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., 22–24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg. Your email address and the amount are transmitted; signing in and approving the payment happen on a PayPal page, and PayPal's own privacy notice applies in addition. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR.
Transfer to the USA (Stripe, Inc.) may occur; the basis for it is the EU standard contractual clauses, and a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is in place. Stripe's own privacy policy applies to what Stripe does with the data as a controller: stripe.com/privacy.
Free trial, and why we remember a device. The trial is free and needs no payment details — Stripe is not involved in it at all. It can be started once per person and once per device. To make that hold even after an account is deleted, we store the device identifier the app transmits anyway (see section 13) when the trial is granted, together with the time and the identifier of the account that started it.
That single entry deliberately outlives your account; without it, deleting an account and signing up again would reset the trial. After a deletion the account identifier in it points to no account and says nothing on its own. The entry is deleted after 24 months.
Until 7 September 2026 we stored a digest of your payment card for this purpose instead, because the trial required a card back then. We no longer do.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of contract) for the payment itself, and Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in preventing repeated use of the free trial) for the device entry.
12. Cancellations
You cancel your subscription in Stripe's customer portal, which you open from your account under "Manage subscription". For this we pass your Stripe customer number to Stripe so the portal can show your subscription. Stripe receives the cancellation and then tells us the new status of your subscription (see section 11).
If you cancel by email, we process your message to carry out and confirm the cancellation, and keep it as evidence until the regular limitation period ends (three years, § 195 German Civil Code).
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of contract) and Art. 6 (1) (c) GDPR (legal obligation).
13. Access check in the software
PaceGuru signs in to our own server with your account — no third-party licensing service is involved any more. Transmitted are your account identifier, the session token and a device identifier. As with any request on the internet, your IP address is technically visible; what happens to it is described in section 3.
The device identifier is computed by the app on your machine and only a digest of it is transmitted (SHA-256 over identifiers of your Windows installation). Neither your hardware nor your Windows user account can be derived from that value. For us it answers exactly one question: is this the same machine as last time?
The device identifier serves two purposes: limiting how many machines use one account at the same time, and limiting the free trial to one per device (see section 11). For the second purpose it is stored separately and outlives your account — that is the only case in which this happens. You can see your devices in your account and sign each one out individually. A signed-out device is not deleted but marked as signed out — otherwise a shared account could no longer be told apart from someone simply changing computers. These entries are deleted with your account.
If our server is unreachable, PaceGuru keeps running on a previously issued, time-limited offline pass; no data is transmitted during that time.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of the contract) and Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in preventing unauthorised multiple use).
14. What the software does NOT transmit
- no telemetry or driving data, unless you upload a lap to a team yourself (section 15)
- no recordings (
.ibt) as a whole and nothing in the background: every upload is a single action with a confirmation - no setups
- no iRacing name and no iRacing ID, neither yours nor other drivers'
- no settings or layouts
- no usage statistics, no analytics tool, no crash reporting service
This data resides solely on your machine and is not transmitted to us.
15. Teams and shared laps
With a subscription you can join a team with an invite code and share laps with its members; you open a team of your own with the Team plan or a Team plan code. For this we store whether, and until when, your account may run a team. If you offer your team to a member for handover, we store that offer until it is accepted, declined or withdrawn, for seven days at most. The feature is not part of the free trial. It is optional; without it, everything stays as described in section 14.
What is uploaded from a recording — and what is not.
In the app you pick an iRacing recording (.ibt) and, within it, a
stint or a single lap. The app cuts out only that excerpt and
builds a new, separate file from it on your machine. The .ibt itself
is not uploaded. Before uploading, the app shows you what goes to which team and
asks for confirmation.
| In the uploaded file | Not in the uploaded file |
|---|---|
|
Per sample: position on track, speed, throttle, brake, steering angle,
gear, coordinates on the track and heading of the car, lateral and
longitudinal acceleration, whether the car is on pit road, lap number and
time. Plus: track (ID, name, length), car name, lap times, time of the recording and sample rate. Alongside the file, as plain numbers: weather and track conditions at the time of the drive — air and track temperature, track wetness, cloud cover, wind, humidity, precipitation and the rubber on the track (track state). |
No setup and no setup values (suspension, aerodynamics,
tyre pressures, gearing, differential and so on). No iRacing name, no iRacing ID, no iRacing team name, no licence or rating data. Nothing about other drivers in the session. No tyre, fuel or engine data. No file name, no folder path, no Windows user name. |
From the session part of the .ibt, where iRacing stores drivers, IDs
and the setup, the app takes only the track, the car and the track's rubber
state. Nothing else from it is
written to the file. Our
server checks every uploaded file against exactly this format and rejects
anything beyond it — including appended data.
What we store.
| Data | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Display name (optional) | A name you choose yourself. It is not your iRacing name and is not taken from iRacing. Without it you appear without a name everywhere. |
| Record of name display per membership (time and version of the notice text) | Proof of since when, and under which version of the notice, your display name is shown in a team. |
| Team, membership, role, time of joining | Determines who may see and manage which team. |
| Invites | The invite code is stored as a hash, which lets us recognise it when it is redeemed, and additionally encrypted, so that the team's creator and admins can retrieve it again. It is not held in the database in plain text. Stored with it: its expiry and number of uses. |
| Shared laps: the file plus track, car, kind (stint or lap), lap count, best lap time, duration, time of recording and of upload, weather and track conditions, size, checksum, uploading account | Display and delivery to the members of the team, quota, detecting duplicate uploads, deletion. |
| Security log (event, account ID, time, IP address only as a hash) | Tracing joins, uploads, deletions and consents; protection against abuse. No names, no email addresses. |
Who sees what.
- Only members of a team see its member list and laps. There are no public teams and no team search.
- Members see a lap's track, car, times and date and can load it as a reference in the app.
- The members of every team you are in see your display name once you have saved one — in the member list and next to your laps. Without a display name you appear without a name everywhere.
- Nobody sees your email address or your account ID.
Consent and withdrawal.
Saving a display name is a consent: the field is empty until you enter something yourself, and the notice next to it says who sees the name. It applies to every team you are in or join later; since 6 October 2026 there is no longer a separate setting per team. You withdraw by emptying the field in the app or on the “Teams” page and saving. Withdrawal takes effect immediately and everywhere, including for laps already shared. If you change the name, the new one applies in all your teams straight away.
Storage period.
- A lap is stored until you delete it, someone entitled to do so in the team deletes it, or the team is deleted.
- When you leave a team, you decide whether your laps there are deleted or stay in the team without your name.
- If you delete your account, your laps in all teams, your memberships and any team you created, including all laps in it, are deleted immediately.
- Team without the Team plan. If your account may no longer run a team (Team plan run out, Team plan code expired or subscription ended), your team becomes read-only after three days, and 30 days later we delete it including all laps in it. We email you when it becomes read-only and again before the deletion. If you regain the right before then, or hand the team over, nothing is deleted. This does not apply to protected existing teams (terms, clause 7a).
- Without an active subscription, your laps in other people's teams and a protected existing team remain for three more months. After that we delete those laps and that team, including all laps in it. We email you twice beforehand: when the period starts and 14 days before the date. If you subscribe again before then, nothing is deleted. The members of an affected team also see the date.
- Members who have loaded a lap have a copy in the app's cache on their machine. The app removes it as soon as its next sync finds that the lap was deleted or the member no longer belongs to the team.
- Entries in the security log are removed after 12 months at the latest.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (providing the feature you use); for showing your display name Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR (consent, withdrawable at any time); for the security log and abuse prevention Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.
Please share only your own driving, and do not choose a display name or team name that identifies another person.
15a. Garage61 connection
You can connect your Garage61 account (garage61.net) to PaceGuru to load reference laps from Garage61 directly in the app. The connection is optional, is part of the Team plan (or a Team code) and can be disconnected at any time. If the Team plan ends, the connection stays stored, but our server fetches nothing until you have the plan again or disconnect. Without it, everything stays as described in section 14.
How the connection works.
- You start it on your account page or from the app. Your browser switches to Garage61, where you sign in and authorise PaceGuru. Garage61's privacy notice applies on that page.
- Garage61 then sends our server access keys (tokens) that allow it to fetch laps and telemetry on your behalf — and only what you authorised. We never learn your Garage61 password.
- The app only talks to our server. Our server sends the requests to Garage61; your IP address is not passed to Garage61. Garage61 learns that PaceGuru is fetching laps for your Garage61 account.
| What we store | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Access keys from Garage61 (encrypted), their expiry and the permissions granted | Fetching laps on your behalf. The keys never leave our server, not even to the app or the website. |
| A check value of your Garage61 ID (not the ID itself) | Making sure a Garage61 account is connected to only one PaceGuru account; linking your consent to show your name. |
| Timestamps (connected, last used) and, if given, the time and version of your consent to show your name | Display on your account page, proof of consent. |
| While connecting, for at most 10 minutes, a one-time value and a cookie (section 5) | Protection against someone else silently attaching their Garage61 account to yours. |
| Security log (event such as “connected” or “disconnected”, account ID, time, IP address only as a check value) | Traceability and abuse prevention. No tokens, no laps, no names. |
What we do not store. Our server only passes laps, lap lists and telemetry from Garage61 through; it does not keep them. The app holds a loaded Garage61 lap in memory only for as long as you need it and does not write it to disk. In lap lists we transmit no names and no iRacing or Garage61 IDs of other drivers. General information on tracks, cars and seasons (with no personal data) is kept in the server's memory for up to 24 hours.
Names in Garage61 teams. For laps of your Garage61 teams we show a teammate's name (as it appears on Garage61) only if that driver has expressly consented on their PaceGuru account page; otherwise a placeholder such as “Driver A” appears. The same applies to your name. We do not store the name; it is fetched fresh from Garage61 on every request. If you withdraw your consent (untick the box on your account page), your name no longer appears from the next request on. Team names from Garage61 are shown.
Disconnecting and deletion. If you disconnect on your account page, we delete the access keys and your consent immediately. Please also remove PaceGuru's authorisation in your Garage61 account. If you delete your PaceGuru account, the connection is deleted with it. If Garage61 rejects the keys, for example because you removed the authorisation there, we delete them as well and ask you to connect again. Security log entries are removed after 12 months at the latest.
Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (providing the function you chose); for showing your name in Garage61 teams Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR (consent, revocable at any time); for the security log and abuse prevention Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.
16. Backups
The database is backed up nightly. Backups are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be read on the server itself. They are stored with Hetzner in Germany and deleted after 90 days. If you delete your account, your data disappears from the live systems immediately; it drops out of the backups when that period expires.
Shared laps are backed up separately: each file individually encrypted, also with Hetzner in Germany. A deleted lap is removed from this backup during the next nightly run; it may remain in the automatic snapshots of the backup storage for up to seven days after that.
16a. Which data is needed, and no automated decision-making
You are under no statutory obligation to give us data. For an account, however, we need your email address and a password; for a paid contract additionally the details our payment provider asks for; and for the access check the app transmits the data named in section 13. Without these we cannot create an account, conclude a contract or activate access to the software. Everything else is optional: the display name, two-factor sign-in, sharing laps, the Garage61 connection and the contact form.
We do not take automated individual decisions, including profiling, that produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you (Art. 22 GDPR). The only automatic checks are whether a device has already used the free trial (section 11) and on how many devices an account is signed in at the same time (section 13). If you think the result of such a check is wrong, write to us — we will then look at it personally.
17. Your rights
You have the right at any time to:
- access the data stored about you (Art. 15 GDPR)
- rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR)
- erasure (Art. 17 GDPR)
- restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
- data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
- object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21 GDPR)
- withdraw a consent you have given, with effect for the future (Art. 7 (3) GDPR) — for the display name directly in the app or on the “Teams” page (empty the field and save), for showing your name in Garage61 teams on your account page (untick the box)
An email to info@paceguru.net is enough. You can also delete your account yourself at any time.
18. Right to lodge a complaint
You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is:
Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA)
Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany
www.lda.bayern.de
19. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our processing changes. The current version is always on this page; the date at the top shows when it was last revised.