Good day,
In a prior forum post, I announced that we are making good progress on a highly requested item, new license types for dirt oval and dirt road. I am pleased to announce the work is nearly complete and in testing. Our plan is to release these new license types in the next season update for dirt oval and right out of the gate for rallycross in regard to the dirt road license. Keep in mind, with any development, there is always a chance new bugs are found by testers, that could delay our plans.
Here is our plan:
Dirt Oval:
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. 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!!!
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.
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.
Dirt Road:
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.