Seasons and series

A season's page is where you turn a season into races on the calendar. This page explains each series setting, how races are generated, and what you can do once they are running.

Season and series

• A season is a run of weeks with standings, for example 12 weeks from 1 October. You create it on your community's page. See Community setup.
• A series is what drivers sign up for: one car class, one race format and one timetable. A season can run several series side by side, for example a GT3 league night and a GT4 sprint.

Standings are kept per series. Select Standings on a series to open them.

Add a series

The New series card has three presets under Start from. Select one to fill in the form, then change anything you like. All presets use the GT3 car class.

Preset	Sessions (P/Q/R, minutes)	When	Pit stops	Most splits	K factor
League night	20 / 15 / 60	Wednesdays, one race at 19:00	1	2	1.5
Daily sprints	10 / 10 / 25	Every day, 18:00, 19:00 and 20:00	0	1	1.0
Endurance	30 / 20 / 180	Saturdays, one race at 18:00	2	2	2.0

Select Add series to save.

The main settings

Field	What it does
Name	Shown to drivers.
Car class	The cars drivers can choose from.
Session lengths (minutes)	Practice, Quali and Race. A session set to 0 is left out.
Race days	The weekdays races run on.
First race of the day	When the server starts and the first session begins, on the clock of Time zone. This is the start of practice, not the green flag.
Time zone	The zone the race days and times are in. A new series starts with your browser's zone. Races stay at the same local time when the clocks change for summer or winter. Drivers see every start in their own time zone.
Races per day	How many races each race day has (1 to 48).
Every (min)	Minutes between the starts of those races (5 to 1440).
Servers	Where races run. Machines running the host agent (yours first, then the platform's) uses your registered machines. Servers I start by hand, with an API key uses servers you registered by hand.
Region	Which machines can take the races. Only machines in this region are used.
Ratings	Ranked races change ELO and Safety Rating; Unranked races change neither and are just for fun. Only a community with ranked status can choose Ranked, and a new series in one starts ranked. See Ranked status.
Who can sign up	Anyone who meets the entry rules, or Community members only: then only drivers who joined through your invite link, and your organisers, can sign up. Everyone can still see the races. See Organising.

A race that would start after midnight in the series' time zone is left out, so a race always belongs to the day it starts on.

Splits, ratings and entry rules

These settings are under Splits, ratings and entry rules. If one of them has an error, the heading shows needs attention.

Field	What it does
Most splits	The most splits a race can have (1 to 50). New series start at 2.
Split size	The most drivers per split (2 to 110). Defaults to 30.
K factor	How far one race moves ELO (0 to 5). 1.0 is normal. Use more for longer races.
Mandatory pit stops	Stops each driver must make. A mandatory stop includes a tyre change.
Split by	How drivers are sorted into splits. See below.
Unsafe below SR	The Safety Rating below which a driver counts as unsafe (1.0 to 3.49). Only used by the two "unsafe drivers" options.
Minimum licence	The lowest licence that may sign up. Open means anyone.
Min SR, Min ELO	The lowest Safety Rating or ELO that may sign up.
Signup password (optional)	Drivers must enter it to sign up.
Discord webhook for stewarding (optional)	bdr posts to this channel when a report in this series is filed or decided.

Options for Split by:

• ELO only: fastest drivers in split 1, and so on down.
• ELO, unsafe drivers one split down: unsafe drivers race one split lower than their ELO would place them.
• ELO, unsafe drivers to the bottom split: unsafe drivers all go to the last split.
• ELO × Safety Rating: drivers are sorted by ELO multiplied by Safety Rating.

Splits are balanced: their sizes differ by at most one driver. Drivers who don't fit into Most splits × Split size keep their signup but get no seat, lowest rated first.

Why Most splits × Split size matters

When you generate races on machines, each race books room for its largest possible field: Most splits × Split size drivers. The booking lasts from 5 minutes before the start until the race's sessions end plus 30 minutes. A machine holds 100 drivers unless you set another capacity when you registered it.

For example, the defaults (2 splits of 30) book 60 drivers. Two such races that overlap on one machine need 120, which does not fit into 100. That is why the Daily sprints preset uses 1 split: hourly races overlap for a while, and 2 × 30 still fits. See Machines.

When your races run on servers you start by hand, nothing is booked. But each split needs its own free server, and a server you register by hand holds 30 cars. A split with more drivers than that can't be placed on it.

Pick a track for each week

Each series has a row of weeks, W1, W2 and so on. Choose a track for each week. It saves as soon as you choose. Weeks left on No race are skipped.

Week 1 is the first seven days from the season's start date, week 2 the next seven, and so on.

Generate races

Select Generate races on the series. bdr creates a race for every race day and time in each week that has a track, and shows how many it created.

• Race times that have already passed, or are less than a minute away, are skipped.
• If no machine in the region has room, you get an error with the numbers, for example "no machine in EU has room for 60 drivers then (2 splits of 30)". Lower Most splits or Split size, or change the timetable.

Update races

Once a series has races, the button reads Update races. It brings the calendar in line with the series' current timetable and weekly tracks:

• Missing races are added straight away.
• If races would move, bdr first shows the Calendar changes, day by day: struck-through times are removed, green ones are added, blue ones get a new track. Select Apply changes to carry them out, or Keep the calendar to leave everything as it is.
• A race nobody signed up for is deleted. A race drivers signed up for or marked interest in is cancelled instead, so they can see what happened to it.
• Races that have locked, run or been cancelled by you stay as they are. So do races in a week without a track.

For example, you generated Wednesday races at 09:44 and meant 08:00. Edit the series, set First race of the day to 08:00 and select Save. The calendar changes appear with every 09:44 race replaced by one at 08:00. Select Apply changes.

Publish the season

Until you publish, the season is a draft: only your community's owners and admins can see it and its races, and no signups open. Select Publish season when it is ready. The season becomes Active, its races appear on the race calendar and it is listed publicly with its standings. Each race then opens for signups on its own schedule. When the season is over, select Finish.

Running the races

Each series lists its races with start time, track, entries, state and servers. bdr moves each race along by itself:

1. Signups open 7 days before the start.
2. 60 seconds before the start, signups close and the race locks. bdr splits the field and gives each split a server. If fewer than 2 drivers signed up, the race is cancelled instead.
3. After the race, the results arrive and standings and ratings update.

You can step in with the buttons on each race:

Button	When	What it does
Open	Scheduled	Opens signups now.
Lock	Signup open	Closes signups and assigns splits now.
Cancel	Before the race goes live	Cancels the race and frees its booking on the machine.
Upload	Any time after signups open, unless the race is cancelled	Upload an ACC result file by hand.

After the lock, the Servers column lists each split's server. Use the download icon beside a split to get its ACC config files. See Race servers.

To upload results, select Upload, choose the raw .json file from the server's results/ folder, then select Upload in the panel. Upload qualifying and race files separately. If a file doesn't match the race, for example because it has drivers who were not on the entry list, it is stored but flagged for the stewards.

Edit a series

Select Edit on a series, change the fields and select Save.

• If the series has races and the new settings move them, the Calendar changes appear after saving. Nothing moves until you select Apply changes. See Update races.
• Session lengths, split settings and entry rules are read when a race locks or a driver signs up, so they also apply to races already on the calendar.
• Machine bookings are made when a race is generated. Raising Most splits or Split size later does not book more room for races that already exist.
• After changing a week's track, select Update races to give that week's races the new track. To drop a single race, Cancel it.