Cars aren't improving in any of the freeplay modes?

[Spuddywuddy]

Am I correct in thinking that cars are not progressing toward unlocking new tuning levels in any of the freeplay modes? And that in fact you have to drive them in career mode to unlock better tuning packages? Either by starting a new crreer season or by doing daily/weekly/monthly chalenges. I find this rather annoying. I reached elite level and imo starting a new career every time takes far too long, having to do 10 stages over god knows how many events.

[SaxonRaider]

Money and upgrades is in the Career and Online events only. In freeplay time trials and custom events including multiplayer online custom events etc are all with a fully upgraded car. So yes there is no need to play career if your only interest is time trials.

[Xenial Jesse]

Yeah your two suppositions are correct. Only the distance driven in the My Team area of the game goes towards unlocking any car's engine levels; nothing from Freeplay counts. But at the same time, those engine levels also only have any affect in My Team.

So if your main interest is in competing with the Dailies (et al), or in testing yourself against Career mode in a properly upgraded* car, then yes: all you can do is either lots of career or lots of dailies first, in the gimped version of that car. Unfortunately it's a case of repeat for every car you want to race competitively in, since every car you get in My Team is at a disadvantage until this is done. It differs per class and I'm not 100% on this, but I'm fairly certain it's more than 50 gimped-car rallies for something from the 2000cc/R5/GT classes before you can use them at full performance.

As Saxon mentioned, everything's already fully upgraded* in Freeplay so if you're more into Time Trials, clubs, or online races then there's nothing to worry about. (Side note, Time Trials mode has player ghosts, which are fun.)

Interestingly, Dirt Rally 1 tied its online PVP racing to career progress. What you earnt in career was what you got to drive in online races. What credits you won racing against others in real time were added to your career bank. Dirt Rally 2 completely threw that out. A blessing or a curse, depending on how you see things.


* .. or fully un-nerfed, as it's sometimes called.