ACC watches everything you do in the car and turns it into seven numbers. Most of them you can ignore. One of them decides which servers let you in.
Here is what each rating means, how it goes up, and the order I would work on them.
The seven ACC ratings at a glance
| Rating | Name | What it measures | How it goes up | Unlocks at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR | Track Competence | Do you know the track well enough for clean laps | Medals. Three per track | From the start |
| CN | Consistency | How close your laps are to each other, sector by sector | Many clean laps in a row at the same pace | TR 50 |
| CC | Car Control | Driving at the limit without going over it | Smooth inputs, no slides, no saves | CN 50 |
| PC | Pace | Raw lap time against everybody else | Your rank in the special event leaderboards | CC 50 |
| SA | Safety | Can people trust you wheel to wheel | Laps close to other cars without contact | PC 50 |
| RC | Racecraft | How you do against the drivers around you | Clean fights won, positions held and gained | SA 50 |
| CP | Competition | Your results in ranked races | Finishing well on the Competition servers | RC 50 |
Every rating goes from 0 to 100. They unlock in a chain. You start with Track Competence only, and each new rating opens when the one before it reaches 50.
The order makes sense. First the sim wants to know that you can keep the car on the track. Then that you can do it lap after lap. Then that you are quick. Only after that does it look at how you behave around other cars.
You find them all in the Driver profile from the main menu, with a total that sums them up. In the car, the rating widget on the HUD shows live which rating is moving and why. If you do not know that widget yet, I go through it in the ACC HUD explained.
TR: Track Competence
This one is simple. Every track has three medals.
| Medal | What you need |
|---|---|
| First | One clean lap |
| Second | Two clean laps in a row |
| Third | Four clean laps in a row |
A clean lap means all four wheels inside the track limits and no spin. The lap does not have to be fast.
Your TR is the average over all the tracks. So to get it up you need medals on many circuits, not a perfect score on one. It is also the only rating that never drops. Once you have a medal, you keep it.
Some servers ask for the medals on the track they run. It takes ten minutes per circuit. Do it once for all the tracks and you never think about it again. The full list is in my ACC tracks list.
CN: Consistency
Consistency compares your laps with each other. The sim checks your time through each part of the lap against your own reference. Same time as before, green. A big gap, red.
It rewards you for doing the same thing again and again. It does not care if that thing is fast.
This is the rating that is closest to real racing. In a real car, the engineer does not look at your best lap first. They look at the spread across the stint. A driver who does ten laps within two tenths is worth more than one who does a quick lap and then three slow ones.
To raise it, slow down a little. Do long runs at nine tenths with the same braking points every lap. CN drops very slowly, so one bad session will not hurt it.
CC: Car Control
Car Control looks at how you drive at the limit. It likes a car that is right on the edge of grip with calm inputs. It does not like slides, big corrections and locked brakes.
So a spectacular save costs you points. The sim reads it as a driver who went over the limit, which is what it was.
If CC is stuck, look at your hands. Slower steering, one input per corner, and the throttle on early but gently. The technique is in my guides on ACC braking technique and understeer and oversteer in ACC.
PC: Pace
Pace is the first rating that compares you with other people. It comes from your rank in the special events, the hotlap and hotstint challenges with a leaderboard.
Around 50 means you are in the middle of the field. To get close to 100 you have to be near the top of the board.
Normal practice does not count, however fast you are. If your PC sits at zero, that is why. Go to the special events and set a time in a few of them.
Do not worry much about this number. It tells other people nothing about how safe you are, and no public server I know of asks for it.
SA: Safety
This is the important one. When people say "my rating" in ACC, they mean SA. Server hosts set a minimum SA to keep the worst drivers out, so a low number locks you out of the good lobbies.
It is built from two things.
| Part | What it is | How it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Trust | Time spent close to other cars with the car under control | Goes up fastest side by side or bumper to bumper. Almost nothing when you drive alone |
| OBWP | Warning points for contact and accidents | A light touch costs nothing. Pushing a car off or spinning it costs a lot |
| SA | Trust weighed against OBWP | Lots of clean close racing and a few incidents still gives a high SA |
That is the part most people miss. You do not get SA for driving clean. You get it for driving clean close to other cars. Ten laps alone at the back of a race give you almost nothing. Ten laps half a second behind another car, with no contact, give you a lot.
And it works against the AI as well. You can build SA offline before you ever join a server.
I see the same thing in karting when I coach. The drivers everybody wants to race against are not the ones who stay away from fights. They are the ones who can sit on your bumper for five laps and never touch you. That is what SA is trying to measure.
The step by step method is in my guide on how to improve SA in ACC.
What SA do you need?
It is the host of each server who decides, so there is no single number. As a rule of thumb from the server lists:
- Under 50: open lobbies only. Expect chaos in turn one.
- 50 to 70: most public servers open up.
- 70 and above: the cleaner lobbies. This is where I would aim.
- 90 and above: the strictest public servers and most league entry rules.
RC: Racecraft
Racecraft unlocks when SA reaches 50. It looks at how you do against the cars around you during the race, not only where you finish.
Win a fight against a driver rated higher than you and it goes up. Lose places to slower drivers and it goes down. One mistake does not ruin it. The sim looks at the whole race.
It only really moves online against people. The way to raise it is boring: qualify where you belong, survive lap one, and take the places that come to you. I cover that in ACC race starts and ACC race strategy tips.
CP: Competition
The last one. Competition comes from your results on the Competition servers, the official ranked races that Kunos runs on a schedule. Finish well against a strong field and it goes up.
Those servers have their own entry rules based on your other ratings, and they have changed over the years. Check what the server list asks for on the day.
Honestly, a lot of the serious racing in ACC moved to leagues and third party services a long time ago. So plenty of very fast drivers have a low CP. It is not a number to lose sleep over. How the different server types work is in my ACC multiplayer guide.
The order I would raise them in
| Step | What I would do | Rating it moves |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pick one car and one track. Drive until you have the three medals | TR |
| 2 | Do 10 to 15 lap runs at nine tenths. Same lines, same braking points | CN, CC |
| 3 | Do the hotlap and hotstint special events | PC |
| 4 | Race the AI in a full grid. Follow cars closely, pass cleanly | SA |
| 5 | Go online on servers that ask for an SA close to yours | SA, RC |
| 6 | Race the Competition servers when they are open to you | CP |
If you are new, do steps 1 to 4 offline. A weekend is enough to get to an SA that opens most public servers. The single player modes you can use for that are in ACC single player, and for the level of the AI see ACC AI difficulty settings.
One tip for step 4. Set the AI a bit slower than you, start from the back and work through the field. You spend the whole race in traffic, and traffic is where Trust comes from.
Problems and fixes
| Problem | What is going on |
|---|---|
| My SA does not move when I hotlap | Normal. No cars around you means no Trust. You need traffic |
| My SA drops after every online race | Too much contact for the Trust you earn. Go back to AI races and rebuild it |
| I got hit and I lost SA | The sim does not judge who is at fault very well. Both cars can take points. Leave more room |
| CN is stuck | You push too hard. Take half a second off the pace and repeat the same lap ten times |
| CC is stuck or dropping | Sliding and sawing at the wheel. Slower hands, earlier on the throttle but less of it |
| PC stays at zero | It only moves in the special events with a leaderboard. Normal practice does not count |
| I can not join a server | The host asks for a minimum SA, and sometimes TR medals for that track. Check the server info |
Do the ratings matter?
SA does. It is the door to decent online racing. TR matters once, for the medals.
The rest is feedback. Useful feedback, though. If your CN is at 40, the sim is telling you that your laps are all over the place, and it is right. Fix the driving and the number follows. It never works the other way round.
New to the sim? Start with my ACC beginner guide and the ACC tips.
FAQ
What are the seven ratings in ACC?
Track Competence (TR), Consistency (CN), Car Control (CC), Pace (PC), Safety (SA), Racecraft (RC) and Competition (CP). Each one goes from 0 to 100.
How do you unlock the next rating in ACC?
Get the current one to 50. The chain goes TR, CN, CC, PC, SA, RC, CP.
What is a good safety rating in ACC?
Above 70 gets you into most of the cleaner public servers. Above 90 covers the strictest ones. Under 50 you are stuck in open lobbies.
What do Trust and OBWP mean in ACC?
Trust is what you earn by driving close to other cars with the car under control. OBWP are warning points for contact and accidents. SA is the balance of the two.
Can you raise your SA offline in ACC?
Yes. Safety counts against AI cars as well. Clean races in a full AI grid are the quickest way to build it.
Why is my Pace rating at zero?
Pace only comes from the special events with a leaderboard. Laps in practice or in a normal race do not count for it.
Can ACC ratings go down?
Track Competence can not. Consistency and Car Control drop slowly. Safety, Racecraft and Competition can drop quickly after bad races.