Version 1.8, competitive gaming, World RX and more. It’s time for the DiRT Roadbook!

Version 1.8 is here!

Version 1.8 of DiRT Rally 2.0 is here and with it comes a whole bunch of fixes, improvements and new things to do. The headliner is that our official competitive gaming series is kicking off next week, with Qualifers starting on September 10 for both Rally and Rallycross. Full details on the series along with all of the official documentation can be found here.

Participating in the Qualifiers has its benefits even if you’re not the fastest player DiRT has ever seen. The BMW M2 Competition is awarded as a participation prize! By setting a valid time in the Qualifiers you’ll unlock a special version of the car for use in My Team, which gives you free car repairs. They’ll come in handy as Rally GT cars can be tricky to drive fast!

Even if you don’t compete in a Qualifier you can still drive the BMW M2 Competition, as it’s available in Freeplay, Custom Championships, Clubs, Time Trial and Multiplayer. Also available now in Freeplay is DirtFish! The location was added in Version 1.7 but limited to Test Drive only at the time, and now it’s more easily accessible to all players.

There’s a whole host of changes in Version 1.8, including Clubs fixes, VR improvements, AI balancing and more. Hit the links below to read up on it all and submit your feedback.

FIA World Rallycross Championship (and a special DiRT guest) at Lohéac Bretagne

The FIA World Rallycross Championship had its eight round of action in France last weekend with competitors taking on the rapid Lohéac Bretagne circuit, the very same one you can drive in DiRT Rally 2.0. As with all events this season the action was dramatic at the top, and as we head into the final rounds the championship battle is closer than it’s ever been in World RX history. I won’t spoil the result as you can watch the Finals above, but you definitely don’t want to miss the next race weekend in Latvia.

DiRT has had a special connection with World RX for a few years now and that resulted in a special weekend for one DiRT player in particular. Joona Pankkonen, who you may remember as the winner of the Volkswagen R DiRT World Championship back in the DiRT 4 days, was invited to attend and also take on the RX cars himself as part of the Supercar Lites Sampler Day on Monday. He had the rare opportunity to put this DiRT skills to the ultimate test and drive a racing car for real, and from what I’ve been hearing he impressed quite a few paddock-watchers! Here’s what he had to say:

“I went into the Supercar Lites test day with absolutely zero experience of driving a racing car, and I had a blast!

It was even more fun than I had expected it to be, and the car is just spectacular. As a discipline, rallycross really excites and inspires me, and when I got behind the wheel for the first time, I just wanted to put my foot to the floor so I had to rein that in a little!

I had an excellent teacher in Oliver [Eriksson], and with every lap I learned more and more and got quicker and quicker.

Driving the car itself is not the difficult part; it’s driving it fast and finding the extra lap time that’s the challenge, but the gaming definitely helped me to prepare for this opportunity – there are actually a lot of similarities between DiRT and the real thing.”

With DiRT Rally 2.0‘s competitive gaming activities kicking up next week Joona’s even more fired-up to defend his title now and who knows, we may have the next WRX superstar on our hands.

Greece Rally – Available September 10

The next DiRT Rally 2.0 location is coming and we’re off to Greece! Always presenting itself as one of the most gruelling rally locations on any race calendar, Stages in Greece feature dusty roads and hidden rocks, capable of severely damaging cars that cut corners or run too wide in the wrong places. The dusty conditions mean visibility can become an issue for drivers further down the running order.

One thing DiRT fans will be excited about is the inclusion of a rain variant as one of the selectable Stage Conditions. As if Greece wasn’t hard enough it’s doubly-tricky in the rain, yet I’ve already seen Jon Armstrong pull off some crazy stuff in the upcoming F2 Kit Cars!

We’ll have more info on Greece available on Tuesday, and the usual heads-up regarding DLC releases applies: timing varies per platform and region, and Season 3 Deluxe players may need to wait a while before it’s added to their in-game entitlements. Also as a heads-up, we won’t be doing a “Welcome to Greece” show next week (as we did with Wales and Estering) though you can expect more good DiRT gameplay on our YouTube in the future.

That’s all for this week, happy rallying everyone!

-PJ