We are throwing out license tests, but not in a way you'd think. This will be to effectively satisfy both types of racers that would want to participate in ORB sanctioned races. The racer that just wants to race. And the one who doesn't mind a challenge and taking a bit of time to do testing.
Now there will be two ways of going up in license: by doing races and performing well, or by opting to do a license time trial.
So here's how it works:
All the licenses will stay intact, but the regular way to rise up in rank will be by finishing within a certain percentage of races (this is to scale with number of participants in a race).
Every one starts off with a beginner license. In order to rise in rank you need to place within the top, say, 80% in at least two races in order to get to the next license, which is Amateur.
After that we'll set a new Race Finish Requirement or 'RFR' in order to move on to the license after amateur and so on. It's important to note that the race finish requirement percentage is figured with how many FINISHED, not how many started. This is to keep people that finish high in a race where most people disconnected from getting an RFR. There will also be a minimum race distance that must be met that'll be figured out in the future.
So for example, newly registered driver 'Bob' has just signed up and wants to start racing right away so he joins a series that allows beginner license holders. He finds out that he needs to finish in the top 80% of the finishers in order for the race to count as one RFR. He notes that ten people join so all he needs to do is finish in the top eight. He qualifies last and figures he has some work to do. He races cleanly and gets up to eighth! One person leaves the race so he now realizes he needs to fight for seventh place in order to get an RFR point. He passes for seventh on the last lap and feels like a champ because he realizes that he's now right on his way to an amateur license. ORB just made a fight for seventh place feel like a championship bout and I think that would be awesome.
I think this would, initially, solve the problem people see with drivers not wanting to test just to race. So it makes it so they just can. In the beginning it'll be fun because every one will start out at the same level. But if a new driver comes around much later on he probably won't want to start off at beginner so later on we'll open up the option of getting a higher license by testing for it through a simple testing procedure.
There will also be a side test that I'm making up. It's based entirely on imagery and will present the testing driver with a bunch of scenarios from a first-person driving perspective, sometimes third, where I'll illustrate a racing incident in the middle of it happening and the test will then ask, " What do you do in this situation?" and give him multiple choice questions.
This will be made to be an option for race organizers to use if they'd like to immediately take a new driver but they're not exactly sure that they're clean. This would take much less time then a 1 on 1 track demo to check for racing etiquette and should work just as well at identifying clean racers as long as we put everything we have into it to make sure it's thorough and correct.
The thing that changes here is that we will REALLY have to be on the ball about getting exact results from all participating race organizers. We'll have to be incredibly insistent on getting valid, timely and correct race results. A series won't be sanctioned unless we're completely confident in the organizer's ability to deliver clear and legit results every time. Penalties will also need to be sorted before they give us results. There's going to be a lot of factors that will deem a race to be RFR worthy and I'll draw up all those details soon if we want to go ahead with this system. ALL of the race results will be posted to a spreadsheet after they're confirmed in order to keep a complete archive of all events.
So, keep in mind all of those numbers will be tweaked but the main idea's what I'm after. What do you think? Good compromise?
EDIT:
I just realized that getting RFRs will be hard on regular ORB race series that have long race schedules. I don't want lots of people just popping in and out of lower level racing series just to get their RFRs, licenses and then leave (or maybe it might not be that bad... but anyway) so I thought of something kind of cool.
Sanctioned ORB spot races that run every week, maybe four times a week depending on whether we have someone dedicated enough to run them?
These races will act as yet another way to get your RFRs and with the scaling done well, it'll be really easy to make these races adaptable to different difficulties for higher license RFRs simply by requiring peopel to finish higher. So Amateur might need you to finish in the top 80%, Inter. might be %50, and Advanced might be %30 or something.
So a person could jump into one of these spot races, where we'll of course have set a minimum number of drivers that are needed for the race to count toward RFRs.
They have fun with our directly controlled and sanctioned spot races and hopefully gain some RFRs to get up in license. Sound cool?
After that, higher A-class licenses will require race wins as we already have it. Question about that though: will only race wins made after you have an Advanced license count, or will ones from before count to? I'm thinking the fore.
SOMETHING ELSE:
I also realized that bad drivers might sometimes need to be dropped in license. So drivers will have licenses taken away after they have at least three penalties handed to them. This will be tracked on the same sheet of results under " Penalty count".
