Tag: iracing dirt license

More Information About iRacing Dirt Licenses

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment
iRacing President Tony Gardner
iRacing President Tony Gardner

iRacing’s Tony Gardner today revealed more information about dirt licenses and how they will work. According to Gardner, progress has been good on the new license system and the current plan is to release the new license types in the next build in early December. The license will be applied to Rallycross coming out of the gate. The license types could be delayed if bugs are found during testing.

Gardner went on to explain how the licenses will work.

iRacing Dirt Oval License:

If we had rolled out the new license type with dirt racing, we would have started everyone at the same rookie license class and with our starting standard rookie iRating [2.0]. However, that is not the case so we are taking the following approach in which every member will fall into one of three categories A, B, or C:

A) We are going to grant the exact same dirt oval license class and safety rating at the time of the build as your pavement oval license class provided that you have raced in 25 official oval dirt races. Therefore if your pavement oval license class is B and you raced 25 official dirt oval races, you will receive a B dirt oval license and the equivalent safety rating. Go out on track and get your 25 official dirt oval races in before the season end/next build!!!

B) If you have raced in some official oval dirt races, but fewer than 25, your new dirt oval license will be scaled between the starting Rookie license and your current oval pavement license, according to the percentage of the 25 required races that you have run. This is done by computing your new oval dirt CPI as being scaled between the new-member CPI and your current oval pavement CPI, and then matching that CPI to a license and safety rating. For example, if you have an oval Class B 3.x license, but have only run in 2 oval dirt official races, you are likely to end up with an oval dirt license close to Rookie, whereas if you have run in 23 oval dirt official races, you are likely to end up with an oval dirt license close to your oval pavement Class B license.

C) If you have not raced in any oval dirt races you will be placed with a rookie license.

[I’ll take the rookie license because I still can’t drive these cars. That way I have nothing to lose! 😆 ]

Everyone, regardless of any prior dirt racing, will start with our standard rookie iRating (skill rating). We are well aware that match-making, splits, etc. will take a bit of time to start working as intended. Although, it should be fun with everyone getting a fresh start.

iRacing Dirt Road License:

We will roll the dirt license type out with Rally Cross from the start. Everyone will start at the same rookie license class and with the same rookie iRating.

We will likely have a rookie series and a D series to start. The rookie and D series will probably just be a little different. The rookie series will use all free content as per normal and the D series will use a combination of free and paid content again per usual. The two series will probably also have other minor differences besides content whether fixed or open, race distance perhaps, environment or race structure. Keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier we also are hoping to roll out heat racing in the next build which provides additional options for dirt oval and dirt road.

It all sounds great! I’m really looking forward to the heat race format and I’m hoping it works really well. However, some people that came on board specifically for dirt racing and developed a high iRating are not going to be happy. Their only consolation is they should be good on their licenses.

Tony Gardner Clarifies the iRacing Dirt License Issue

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment
iRacing President Tony Gardner
iRacing President Tony Gardner

Tony Gardner took to the forums today to clarify and issue with which all dirt drivers are concerned: The separate iRacing dirt license.

We all hoped the license would be there and ready right from the start with dirt racing, but it wasn’t, and another iRacing staff member recently posted that it is not a priority and that it won’t be ready any time soon. Tony clarified that it is a priority, but it will take some time to get the license working. The way I read it, it’s either part of the new in-sim interface, or dependent on it. Here’s what he had to say:

Good morning,

Let me try and update you but it is a little complicated.

We actually are working on creating new license types like dirt and in fact are actively working towards that. Steve Reis simply heard a conversation in the sim engineering meeting that he attends remotely. (There are several other engineering meetings depending on the type of engineering.) It is not a “big” project on that side compared to the overall project so he heard a someone tell a sim engineer don’t worry about that for now for your part, it is not a priority, work on xyz.

The most amount of work for this is on the front end end web, back end web, data and infrastructure side and it involves multiple people. The entire (large) infrastructure and data system are built on road and oval only and we essentially have to rip out the guts of that and do it all over again to have the flexibility to create new license types. On top of all that, we are building essentially an all new infrastructure and application. You have hopefully already noticed some of the backend work in regard to this project including better site stability, etc. but it is also front facing. As we are building the new infrastructure/application we are building it with the ability to create new license types. It made much better sense from an efficiency perspective to build in this capability in the new infrastructure rather than the old. We are actively doing that.

Projects like this and like most things have multiple projects within the overall project. We also have done some work particular to dirt licenses but it will move much faster hopefully relatively soon as more people free up off their current projects. All the different people needed to work on their part (skill set) are not yet available to work on this particular project currently so it is tough to give timing but it will not be in the short term unfortunately. However, it is one of the top few priorities for the overall web team and like I said it is mainly on their shoulders.

We apologize for any confusion. We probably should not have mentioned it was part of the plan from the start but also nice to try and give people a sense of the longer term.

I think it was mentioned as part of the plan from the start because 5000 people asked if it was part of the plan. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other but that’s just me. I may never run an official dirt race. I prefer league racing. I’m a lot more concerned with other areas in the dirt racing part of the simulation.