Season 8 – “The 2021 Summer Season”

Hello to all of you who currently race at ThePitCrew, and all of those that are new to us; we’re excited to announce the next season of championship racing here at ThePitCrew, and we’re doing things a little differently due to the changing climate, not just in the weather, but also in terms of the relaxation of those COVID restrictions of which all of us have been under that has allowed for the community and simracing, in general, to thrive the way that it has!

We’ve got some changes coming in for this season, which will set us up for Season 9 as well… Scroll to the bottom to find out all about our Season 8 Championships!

If you’ve been in our discord for the past few weeks, you may have been a part of some of the conversations and voting for what happens for this season and provide us valuable feedback throughout the season on what you’d like to see.

So what’s changing you might be asking?

1. PitSkill

PitSkill has been an integral part of our championship formats and allows for everyone to be ranked close to people of the same skill level; we’ve made some adjustments to PitSkill towards the tail end of last season so that drivers now have to meet a few criteria to maintain their rankings, we’ve also updated the logic and released a whole bunch of information in an easy to digest format which can be found here.

Some of the changes we’ve made:

• PitSkill now only looks at your last 4 months of data.
• PitSkill races happen daily, on all the “popular” tracks in Assetto Corsa Competizione.
• PitSkill ranking is only calculated based on your races here at ThePitCrew, global SimRacing.gp races are no longer contributing factors.

We are working on a whole new PitSkill system, which will allow us to rate you on any game, any tracks and any cars, we have no expected release date yet, but if you have any features which you wish to suggest, feel free to do so on our discord server!

2. Attendance Requirements

We’ve had feedback that some drivers, especially over these summer periods may have holidays booked, or may not be able to race for whatever reason over the summer period, due to this, we’ve changed how our 3-month ban policy works for drivers who do not attend the minimum requirement of races over a season, below are the changes:

Previously, drivers who missed out on 2 races during a season of under 10 races were automatically banned for 3 months, no matter their past attendance history or reason.

Now, we’ve updated the requirement to, if you miss out on 2 or more races across a 10 race season and your past attendance is okay (Based on League Council/Admin Discretion) you can now appeal a ban by messaging a league council member and we’ll check your attendance history and unban you, you will get a notification if you are banned from a championship to remind you.

3. BWP Changes and Live Stewarding

We introduced Live Stewarding with Season 7 and are planning to live steward as many races as possible in Season 8 as well, depending on availability; we are working on a revamp of the introduced BWP system as we have noticed a few flaws in it, namely that some punishments may seem very light when extracted over a season. We also plan on removing the reduction of BWP from a clean race. A percentage of BWP from previous seasons will be carried over to the next, so the only way to reduce your BWP is to continue racing clean season to season, but information regarding that will come when we’ve fully fleshed out the new BWP system for Season 8, we will continue to use some of the old one.

Your survey feedback from Season 7 was crucial in helping us create some new processes and provide live stewarding for all of our races and we’re hoping to increase that going forwards past Season 8, we are always on the lookout for more live stewards to bolster our ranks, so if you think you have what it takes to be non-partial and judge others incidents, either in post-race or live-stewarding formats, please, fill in the form for recruitment.

4. ThePitCrewTV and streaming/Commentary

You may have noticed that some of our races haven’t been streamed, that’s because I haven’t been able to stream as much as I would like due to moving house and having other IRL stuff in the way… Maybe I should give myself a 3-month ban?

The Beginners Cup has been commentated by Callum Bethell since it started, and he’s done a fantastic job making the newer drivers feel welcome and part of ThePitCrew ever since we started the Beginners Cup, it’s been fantastic to see how not only the championships have grown, but also how Callum has grown as a commentator and league admin in general, and you will be pleased to know he will be back for another season of commentating on Sundays next season!

Season 8 will be a little different, from my point of view as I will be picking and choosing which leagues to stream and which to race in, that’s right, I’ll be out on track in some of the events once I’ve got my PitSkill Rating, I believe, I may also be competing in the Friday Team/Solo Series with a very special guest, find out who when we sign up!

5. Feedback

We recently ran a poll to find out what everyone thought of running a regular poll to find out what the community thinks, sadly it didn’t meet the required 100 votes to go ahead, however, it did meet over 50 votes, so to that extent, we will keep the feedback channels open to drivers and members who wish to voice their feedback and will keep an eye on running surveys when we need drivers valuable feedback.

We ask everyone to please provide any feedback for anything in our main discord where there’s a few feedback channels for you to post in, this allows us to ensure we’re providing the very best racing experience for you!

The feedback and bugs section of our discord is only available to those who have done the pre-requisites as defined when you join the discord.

Racing-feedback is for all things game related, for example, rules adjustments, configuration issues, did you hate having a lot of rain in our leagues? Post it in there.

ThePitCrewTV feedback is for anything to do with our twitch stream.

ThePitCrew.co.uk feedback is for anything to do with the website you’re on right now!

PitBot feedback is for anything to do with our discord bot, want us to change notifications? Want more notifications? Would you like a new command? Let us know, we’ll add it into our tracker!

6. The Championships/Series in Season 8

We’re changing how we deliver news, updates and championship information to our drivers, previously we listed everything on discord for everyone to read and digest, but as we grow and we have extra processes in place, we’re starting to add more and more information to our website and update it with some much-needed features and styling upgrades, so without further ado, all the championship information for Season 8, is now on our website, we’ve included a handy table below to help you get along!

This means, that it’s even easier to find out what prerequisites etc are required, and we’ll update the website if anything changes, allowing for new drivers to be able to drive with us easier, we’re hoping to bring some new features to the website to allow for you to get racing with us easier!

Click any of the championship names below, to find out more information, all links open in a new tab.

The Weekday “2021 Summer Series”

The Weekend “Beginners Cup”