When a racing title or game launches, or when a new feature appears, PC players often get the best experience first. Meanwhile, console players are frequently left to wait while the features are ported to the console versions of the game.

Not this time! This time console comes first!

Of course, SimGrid’s founder David Perel began sim racing on console and still dabbles in a bit of console racing to this day, and this is why he understands there is a need to provide various solutions for console sim racers too.  

Welcome To SimGrid Seasons!

Over the past couple of weeks, you may have seen our newsletters and announcements seeking console drivers to test our new products. We’re happy to report that the testing has gone well and thanks to your help, we are now ready to officially launch SimGrid Seasons.

We are over the moon to announce this brand new daily racing and matchmaking system for Assetto Corsa Competizione on consoles powered by our partners, G Portal. With round the clock racing, utilising our proprietary “Grid Rating” system it will now be possible to race against other drivers at the same skill level across full championships at any time of day. 

How The Matchmaking System Works

As we touched on above, we have a new daily racing and matchmaking system that will give console racers round the clock racing, matching drivers as fairly as possible in every race for every series. 

This works by taking a drivers Grid Rating and matching it against all the other drivers registered to the event, which will then separate drivers into equal splits, or races with all the drivers being of a similar skill level, making for a fairer and more enjoyable experience for everyone involved

The more drivers that sign up, the closer the matchmaking will be!…Akin to the same style of daily racing you get in Gran Turismo. 

Seasons Available At Launch

At launch there will be four series you can take part in, each with a different race format, each season lasting 6 weeks long. These are;

Quick Race – Exactly as the name suggests, quick 12 minute races with no qualifying, all the action and loads of fun, you’ll be able to get 3 of these races in every hour. 

Proving Grounds – Slightly longer races than Quick Race but this time with a qualifying session, designed to get you ready for the more serious stuff to come. 

Half Hour Dash – Where it starts to get serious with longer qualifying and race lengths to contend with. Prizes are likely to appear for this series in the future.

Mini Enduro – The flagship series where drivers will need to consider pit stops, weather and race strategy. Don’t be surprised to see prizes up for grabs in the mini enduro series in the near future. 

We have created an in-depth help guide right here for you to better understand all of the series available in SimGrid Seasons and what’s entailed with each of them. 

How To Register For Seasons

So you want to get involved with SimGrid Seasons but don’t know where to start! It all begins by ensuring you have an active SimGrid profile. 

If you have not signed up to SimGrid before you can do this here. It’s a very simple process and takes less than 60 seconds to complete.

We then need to get you on track as quickly as possible and so we have written a step by step guide of how to go racing with SimGrid Seasons. 

SimGrid Pro Rebranded To Grid Pass

For the past 18 months many of you will have come to know and love SimGrid Pro. Which has been our premium offering unlocking a whole host of extra features that elevate your SimGrid profile and platform browsing experience. 

Beyond being able to enter events, create teams and customise your profiles, SimGrid Pro unlocks advanced driving statistics and detailed Performance Analysis, as well as disabling adverts on the platform and enables your Calendar Feed.

This is now rebranded to Grid Pass. The Grid Pass still includes all of the features from SimGrid Pro, but now with the addition of access to Seasons racing. For more information on the changes from SimGrid Pro to Grid Pass check out this in-depth article explaining the change. 

Further Updates To SimGrid

As well as SimGrid Seasons, we are also rolling out some additional SimGrid updates that have seen almost half of the site’s code rewritten. The constant need to improve and move the platform forward never ceases. We listen to the feedback from our users and have implemented a bunch of new changes. 

These updates include:

• Dark mode – SimGrid goes dark…finally!
• New featured hosts section on SimGrid homepage. Displays SimGrid Partner hosts on the home page of SimGrid
• Improved mobile experience – This is a sitewide overhaul of the mobile browsing experience. It’s an improvement for everyone but most notably console players that may not be visiting on a PC
• New improved Grid Feed – This is UI focused and will bring a new home for all of your racing
• New design – New navigation bar with quick links
• Improved results section – Now easier to see all your results in one place. Results pages also now include a summary of your performance at the top of the results page showing your qualifying and race position, round points, places gained, grid gating change and your best lap 
• Stats page redesign – See your racing statistics beautifully presented and improved for viewing on mobile

And stay tuned for another huge SimGrid feature that will help organisers streamline their events workflow coming in the very near future.