No one is happy when they get a safety rating penalty they didn’t deserve. Think of those times when you were hit from behind and ended up with the penalty. It’s infuriating, isn’t it? When we introduced SimGrid Seasons, it became clear that we needed a safety rating system due to the sheer number of races taking place. It was impossible to steward them all.

Instead of recycling the iRacing safety rating system, we decided to spend some time researching if there was something better suited for the way people use SimGrid. We’re happy to announce that we think we have found a neat solution.

Grid Cred Voting System by SimGrid

Rolling out on SimGrid today is our new Grid Cred voting system. It’s a smart way to give feedback to your fellow drivers about how they performed on track. If you had a nice battle with someone, leave them a “Clean” vote. If you encountered someone doing their best Pastor Maldonado impression, causing more accidents than performing overtakes, then you can vote them as “Crashy.” So now you have to race like everyone is watching.

With this system, we anticipate driving standards to improve across the board, whether it’s a SimGrid Seasons race or a host event. Nobody wants to show up to their next race being known as the “Crashy” driver. Inspired by other games with similar voting systems, players reported improved community spirit and fairer play. Being the driver who shows up to the grid with an immaculate “Clean” record will be something to be proud of and respected by other drivers. 

That’s pretty much it. No algorithms, no robots making stewarding decisions. Just you and your fellow competitors giving each other feedback on how they drove in their last race. That’s not to say that other safety ratings are bad or don’t work, but they don’t really make much sense for SimGrid.

Lets Us Explain Why

Take the iRacing safety rating, for example. It does a great job for their game; it’s a sophisticated system that uses multiple data points to make automated judgments on your driving standards. But why do they do this? Yes, to moderate driving standards, but also to gate content in the game. This system gives new users an easy route onto the platform by allowing them to only drive slower, more forgiving cars first. Eventually, as your rating improves, you gain access to new cars and series.

We don’t have that problem. You can race any car on any track in any game, whenever you want. So we needed to do something different, something that reflected the needs of the community. Enter Grid Cred. What you are seeing on SimGrid is version one of our crowd-sourced safety rating system. Two voting options post-race to give feedback to your fellow drivers on how you and your competitors performed in their last race. This snapshot of who you’re sharing the grid with will give you a clear indication of who you can battle door-to-door with and who you should give a bit more room.

Using Grid Cred

Using Grid Cred is easy. After each race, there is a thirty-minute window in which you can place your votes. Here is how to use the new system:

• Once your race is completed, head to the Results page
• Find the column next to the driver names labelled Votes
• You’ll see two buttons in the “Votes” column:
  • Crashy – Crashing car icon
  • Clean – Sparkles icon
• Click the appropriate button to cast your vote
  • Crashy votes cost two votes each
  • Clean votes cost one vote each
• Use any combination of votes totaling four votes per race. For example:
  • Two Crashy votes
  • One Crashy and two Clean votes

The Rules To Voting

• You must complete the race to earn the right to vote
• You have a maximum of four votes per race
• You cannot vote on yourself
• You can only vote in races you have participated in
• After your race is completed, you have 30 minutes to vote

You will then see the corresponding symbols next to the drivers’ names change as they receive votes from other drivers. These votes are collected on a rolling ten-race cycle, meaning that if you have a rough patch and collect a bunch of “Crashy” votes, you only need to drive a bit safer and they will be gone from your Grid Cred record before you know it.

Remember, if you get a “Crashy” vote, don’t worry about it, just move on and enjoy your next race. However, if you do start racking up a lot of “Crashy” votes, then you probably should think about how you’re driving. If you continue to accumulate “Crashy” votes, then you will be timed out of the service for a set period, because at that point, it’s not an accident that you got that many “Crashy” votes.

If you want to see your all-time votes record, you can do so by visiting your Grid Feed user profile.

In addition to this new safety system, we will continue to have the “Report Rammer” form as an option to report intentional rammers. As most of you already know, we have a zero-tolerance approach to people deliberately choosing to ruin other people’s fun. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, the offender is banned from the platform for life, with no turning backsies.

Grid Cred is now live across the whole of SimGrid, on both host events and SimGrid Seasons. So from now on, race like everyone is watching.