Release Notes · July 2026

What's new on DriverDB.

July was a busy month behind the scenes at DriverDB. We shipped a new version of the DriverDB Rating, opened up photo galleries on season pages, made it much easier to actually find a driver, and fixed a long list of things you told us were broken.

DriverDB Rating

Version 1.0 Beta 3 · 24 July 2026

Simpler methodology

We've simplified how a race's value is calculated. The rating has always weighed the grid's strength of field, but that factor used to be calculated by ranking racing events. The new calculation instead averages the DriverDB Ratings of everyone in the grid directly, giving better granularity and resolution.

Retuned calibration

We've also retuned several of the algorithm's parameters, especially how consistency feeds into expected finishing results, using improved quality metrics and a much wider round of experimentation than previous betas. In practice, this means ratings that track real-world performance more closely across different series.

You'll see some ratings shift as a result. That's expected since it's the point of a beta, and it's why we version the rating publicly instead of quietly changing the maths underneath you.

Curious how it all works? The "How does the rating work?" explainer is now reachable from a lot more places on the site, and there's a full write-up in the DriverDB Rating FAQs.

Season photo galleries

Championship season pages now have a Photos tab.

Each year and class now have a gallery. Driver pages may be linked straight to each photo. The tab only shows up on seasons that actually have photos, so you won't hit empty pages hunting for it. We're adding to the archive over time.

We haven't opened this up for user uploads yet, but we plan to.

Changes on driver profiles

Added missing biographical detail

Driver profiles now show place of birth, and for drivers who have passed away, date of death and age at death.

Clearer race history

The Races tab now shows one or more seasons that a race belongs to, rather than the championship. This helps distinguish between classes within a championship, since a driver who won in a class (GT3, for example) may have actually finished 8th overall once Hypercar is included. Both the class and overall result now show in the race history list on each driver profile.

Changing 0's to “–”

We changed misleading “0” values to “–” on the season list on driver profiles, for cases where round-level results were not available or were incomplete. This is common with older championships where only the season-ending standings are available.

Messaging for change submissions

We added admin-initiated messaging for change requests, so more details or clarifications can easily be requested and exchanged if necessary.

Where to find it

Your Submitted Requests table now has a Conversation column, so you can see at a glance where each request stands:

If something looks wrong on DriverDB, tell us. A good chunk of this month's list came from people who took the time to report it: [email protected]

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