During the aforementioned Traxion Control podcast recording this morning (releasing tomorrow), I asked the question: which is easier to pick up for a classical circuit-racing sim racer: rally or drifting?

The question threw the conversation, originally slated to be a spritely 20 min quick-fire episode, into puzzled disarray. I’m not sure we reached a conclusion.

However, it’s a mighty fine segue into two of the biggest stories of the week:

Grit Games making the new WRC title

and

CarX Drift Racing Online 2 entering early access

For a time, it was unclear where the WRC licence would land. Some had assumed KT racing, others had speculated AC Rally (despite the licence being bought by publisher NACON)

Hark! It will reside in the laps of newly formed French team, Grit Games.

With it’s technical foundations entwined in Unreal Engine 5, the team at Grit Games have promised a brand new vision, “starting from scratch”.

It puts rally in an interesting place in the sim racing market. AC Rally has planted its flagpole firmly in the “super-serious-simulation” territory of the market and yet the premier licence has gone to a new kid on the block.

Will Grit Games look to compete, toe-to-toe with AC Rally on physics or will they instead focus on creating an immersive, WRC-licenced career mode to capitalise on their USP?

At this stage, we don’t know…

Stage… like rally stage?

So, cards on the table, I stole that joke from Traxion senior editor, Martin Bigg. Sorry Martin, it was too good not to be recycled.

CarX, you either live it or you’ve never heard of it.

Creator CarX Technologies are often cited as inviting new players to join “millions” of drivers. This claim is easily supported by SteamDB which estimates between 1.92 million and 3.54 million players own CarX Drift Racing Online.

Drifting is evidently a sizable niche in the sim racing world.

Unsurprisingly then, CarX Technologies has released into early access CarX Drift Racing Online 2.

At the time of writing, the title has received 366 “mixed” reviews, with reviewers bemoaning a broken AI and an unfinished career mode.

Unless you’re new to this newsletter, in which case hi!, you’ll have read a lot about the upcoming SimRacing Expo in Charlotte next weekend.

Well this week, the team at South West Vision responsible for the expo dropped the stage show schedule.

Here are my top picks:

Crimsix - Saturday @ 1630

Am I biased to choose this one? Yes. Ian “Crimsix” Porter, most notably a multiple world champion in the world of Call of Duty, is perhaps best known in the sim racing world due to his close ties with Max Verstappen.

Ian and Max are seen gaming together on the Team Redline streams on a fairly regular basis. Of course, they both need to stay sharp between racing. Ian races in the IMSA Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America championship and Max races in some kind of Formula series…

iRacing - Friday @ 1400

iRacing, regardless of your opinion of their subscription model, are a stalwart of the sim racing genre.

What are they there to discuss? Who knows?! It’s either a secret or they simply haven’t decided yet. I hope it’s the former.

Operation Motorsport - Friday @ 1300

Am I biased to choose this one too? Yes, I am a veteran and Operation Motorsport uses sim racing and real world motorsport to help veterans to stay connected and recover after their tour of duty. I’m really excited to meet this team and find out what they’re up to.

Read Traxion’s full Stage Show Guide

Built by Driver61 (Scott Mansell), trophi.ai is trying to do just that. We’ve all been there, we get a couple of hours to dust of the rig and jump into some ranked sessions, but this week the track is one we’re unfamiliar with. trophi.ai will help you get up to speed faster, with live, AI-powered voice coaching.

Brake a little later here, get back on the power a little later there… you know the drill

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If you’ve ever read a Traxion.gg article, you’ll know that the writers over here all have very distinct voices and opinions. It’s this character and sound that I think makes Traxion special.

Human creation is becoming a rare commodity with which the media seem to trade less and less. But not at Traxion. We don’t use AI to write our articles on the website, and I pledge to you, that I will never use AI to write this newsletter.