Frequently asked questions

A competitive ecosystem for Automobilista 2: ranked races with Safety Rating and GRating, rankings, records, communities and real stats. It runs on AMS2 dedicated servers connected to the platform.

It's free. Sign in with your Steam account — no passwords to create. That's enough to race ranked, join communities and appear in the rankings.

Open Automobilista 2, go to the server browser and join a Gonky Racing server. Your result is recorded automatically and starts counting towards your SR, GR and licence. See How it works.

It measures how clean you drive, on a 0.00–5.00 scale. You start at 1.25. You gain SR by completing corners without incidents and lose it with contacts, track cutting or retirements. Full detail in How it works.

It measures competitive performance with a pairwise Elo system — a 1v1 duel against every other driver. Everyone starts at 700. You gain GR by beating other drivers, plus an overtaking bonus. Detail in How it works.

Your licence combines your SR, your GR and the number of ranked races you've run. Race clean and fast and you climb through the licences. Full tables in How it works.

The Race session — never practice or qualifying. With 2 or more drivers it already moves your SR and GR, scaling with the field size (15+ = full effect). But only races with 6 or more drivers count towards your LICENCE. Detail in How it works.

Sign in with Steam, go to Communities and click Create. It's free and takes under a minute.

You choose the mode: open (anyone joins directly) or by request (you approve or reject from the panel). New communities are "by request" by default.

There are two places: "Manage Node Manager" holds servers and tokens, rotations, remote control, events and championships; "Settings" holds profile, members and join requests. Full walkthrough in Community guide.

Yes. From the management panel you can create championships with scheduled rounds that show up on your community page and in the calendar.

No. You can run a server just for yourself: install the app, sign in with Steam and choose “Mine”. A community adds a public page, a spot in the directory, events with sign-ups, several servers and more than one admin — but you do not need any of that to race. See Run your own server.

A free Windows app that installs and manages a dedicated AMS2 server — yours alone or your community’s — no command line, no config files. Just click Start. More on Run your own server.

A Windows PC to act as host, an internet connection and a few minutes. The Node Manager downloads and installs SteamCMD and the AMS2 dedicated server for you — you don't even need the game on that PC.

Create or open your community → "Manage Node Manager" → "Servers" tab → copy the token (XXXX-XXXX) from the "Linked servers" card. It lasts 10 minutes and is single use, so have the installer ready first. See Get your token.

Download the installer, run it on the host PC and, on first launch, paste the token. The app pairs the node, downloads the AMS2 server and configures everything automatically. Download Gonky Node Manager (.exe).

In the visual rotation editor you pick circuits and car classes (with photos and logos) and the Node Manager writes the config for you. You also set session lengths, weather, damage and penalties from a simple form.

It updates itself: when you open the app it checks for a new version and offers to install it. The server agent is also kept up to date automatically.

Two checks before you touch the router, because they cover the real cases we have seen. (1) If your ISP puts you behind CGNAT, forwarding ports will never help: check your router's WAN IP and if it starts with 100.64–100.127 you are on CGNAT and need a public IP from the ISP. (2) If "sportsPlay" is enabled in the server config, the server vanishes from the AMS2 browser even on LAN — leave it off. Once those are ruled out it really is ports: the Node Manager tries UPnP, and if your router has it off, manually forward the UDP ports shown in the panel to the host PC. Use "Copy join link" to share IP and port.

Browse Liveries and Car mods and use the Install button on any detail page: it opens the Pilot Manager (a free Windows app) which installs it for you. First time, download the app from that same page.

Yes. On Liveries click Upload livery (signed in with Steam): it's published instantly in the Community section under your driver name. Teams can also publish their own liveries, public or members-only.

Clean driving: respect others, leave room and avoid contact. The full rules — and the consequences — are on the Rules page.

Gonky Racing is an independent, free project. You can support it on Ko-fi; every contribution helps pay for servers and infrastructure.

In the AMS2 Wiki section you'll find guides for FFB, setup, graphics, VR, tyres, pit stops and more, plus the Hardware catalogue. Start at the Wiki.