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This guide outlines the standard "6-Fastest" pacenote system used in DiRT Rally 2.0
, explaining how to interpret the co-driver's calls and how to structure your own notes for co-op play. The "6-Fastest" Corner System
DiRT Rally 2.0 uses numbers to indicate the severity of a corner, where is the fastest and is the slowest Minimal radius; can usually be taken at full throttle 6 Left/Right:
Very fast; requires only a slight lift or minor steering input
Fast; requires a brief brake or downshift to one gear below top. Medium speed; typically a 3rd or 4th gear corner. Sharp; requires significant braking and lower gears. Very sharp; usually 2nd gear. Tightest numbered corner; 1st gear speed Square / Hairpin / Acute:
Non-numbered turns ranging from 90-degree bends to 180-degree arcs Corner Modifiers
Modifiers describe how a corner's geometry changes or how you should position the car Opens / Tightens:
Indicates the radius of the turn increases or decreases as you go through it Long / Extra Long:
Tells you how long to hold the steering angle. The scale typically goes:
Short → Long → Very Long → Extra Long → Extra Extra Long Don't Cut:
Essential warning; there is an obstacle (rock, post, cliff) on the inside that will damage the car Keep Left / Right / Middle:
Instructs your positioning on the road to prepare for the next turn or avoid a hazard Hazards and Road Features
A rise in the road that obscures your view of what's immediately ahead Jump / Bump:
Warning that the car may leave the ground or become unsettled Bad Camber:
The road slopes away from the direction of the turn, reducing grip Caution / Braking:
Immediate warning to slow down earlier than usual, often because of an upcoming hidden hazard or sharp turn Creating Your Own Pacenotes (Co-op Guide)
If you are writing notes to read for a teammate, follow these best practices derived from community resources like Scribd's Rally Pace Notes Max Bechtold's transcripts Dirt Rally 2.0 Pace Notes Guide | PDF - Scribd
Mix of tightening and opening turns over crests through narrow gates with jumps and caution for bad camber and logs.
DiRT Rally 2.0 , pacenotes are a critical shorthand language used by your co-driver to describe the road ahead, allowing you to drive at the limit without memorizing every bump and turn. The game uses the "Six Fastest" system, where lower numbers indicate tighter, slower corners. The Core Numbering System (Corner Severity)
The primary system uses numbers 1 through 6 followed by a direction ("Left" or "Right"). Recommended Gear 6 (Six) Fastest, nearly flat-out. Very wide radius. 5th or 6th 5 (Five) High-speed corner. Slight braking or lift may be needed. 4th or 5th 4 (Four) Medium-speed corner. Clear braking required. 3rd or 4th 3 (Three) Standard corner. Significant braking; maintains momentum. 2nd or 3rd 2 (Two) Tight corner. Sharp turn requiring low speed. 1 (One) Very tight. Slowest numbered corner before special turns. Special Corner Callouts
Beyond standard numbered turns, specialized terms describe extreme sharp or technical maneuvers. dirt rally 2.0 pacenotes pdf
Square (L/R): A 90-degree corner, typically requiring a downshift to 1st gear.
Hairpin (L/R): A 180-degree turn requiring the handbrake to rotate the car.
Acute (L/R): Even tighter than a hairpin, often forming a "V" shape. Road Conditions & Modifiers
These add critical detail to the base corner calls to prevent terminal damage.
Distance (e.g., "100", "50"): The length in meters of a straight section before the next call.
Crest / Jump: Indicates the road rises; "Over Crest" means the road drops away after, while "Big Jump" warns of significant air.
Opens / Tightens: The radius of the corner changes midway (e.g., "5 Left Tightens 3").
Long / Extra Long: Describes the duration of the turn; these require patience with the throttle.
Caution / Don't Cut: Highly critical warnings. "Don't Cut" usually means there is a rock, ditch, or log on the inside of the turn that will wreck your car.
Understanding the pacenotes system in DiRT Rally 2.0 is essential for high-performance driving, as the game utilizes a technical language to describe hundreds of kilometers of varying road surfaces
. This system, rooted in real-world rally practices and popularized by legend Colin McRae, allows drivers to anticipate hazards and maintain speed without memorizing every bump. The Core Numbering System (1–6) The primary descriptor in DiRT Rally 2.0
is a number from 1 to 6, which indicates the severity or radius of a corner. 6 (Fastest)
: An open, high-speed corner that can often be taken at full throttle ("flat out"). : A fast corner requiring minimal braking. : Medium-speed corners; 3 is tighter while 4 is more open. : A tight, slow-speed corner. 1 (Tightest)
: A very sharp turn requiring low gears and significant braking. Extreme and Special Corner Calls
Beyond the 1–6 scale, specific terms describe turns that fall outside standard radii: : A 90-degree corner, similar to the vertex of a square.
: A roughly 180-degree semicircular turn; can be "Open," "Tight," or "Very Tight".
: The tightest possible turn, even sharper than a standard hairpin.
: A corner with almost no radius variation that can be taken at maximum speed. Road Features and Hazard Modifiers
Co-drivers provide critical context to ensure the car stays on the road through varying terrain:
How To Understand Your Co-Driver in Rally Games (Pacenotes Guide) 27 Oct 2021 — This guide outlines the standard "6-Fastest" pacenote system
Dirt Rally 2.0 Pacenotes Resources Searching for Dirt Rally 2.0
pacenotes often leads to community-driven guides and collaborative documents since the game does not provide official text transcripts for every stage. 📄 Pacenote PDF & Digital Guides
Dirt Rally 2.0 Pace Notes Guide (Scribd): A detailed document covering specific stage sequences for locations like Argentina and Wales.
Rally Pace Notes Cheat Sheet (Scribd): A quick-reference cheat sheet for symbols like "K" (Kink) and "!" (Caution).
Steam Community Guide: One of the most popular visual guides for understanding co-driver calls, corner severity, and road geometry.
GitHub Database: A project hosted by maxbechtold that aims to collect community-transcribed stage notes. 🏎️ Key Pacenote Terms
The cardboard box wasn't marked for archive or disposal. It just sat there in the corner of the garage, under a film of dust that matched the rally car parked beside it. Leo wiped his hands on an oily rag and nudged the box with his boot. It was heavy.
Inside, buried under old magazines and a shattered helmet visor, he found it. A thick, spiral-bound printout. The cover sheet was smudged with something dark—oil, maybe, or coffee—and read: Dirt Rally 2.0 – New England Pacenotes (Ultimate Edition).
He almost laughed. A PDF. Someone had actually printed an entire PDF of videogame pacenotes. Hundreds of pages. Every crest, every caution, every "don't cut" for a digital forest that didn't exist.
His father had been obsessive like that. For six months before he died, the old man had done nothing but run the same stages in that simulator. Thousands of miles on a rig that shook and squeaked in the basement. "It's about precision, Leo," he'd say, eyes fixed on the screen. "The notes are the map. The map is the truth."
Leo had thought it was sad. A waste.
He flipped to a random page: "6 Left, over crest, tightens to 4, bad camber." Then another: "3 Right, don't cut, logs outside." Then a page where his father had scribbled in red pen: "Water splash actually 50m later than game audio. Adjust timing. LF tire loses grip here."
That was when Leo noticed the Post-it note stuck to the inside back cover. He pulled it loose. It wasn't a note. It was a set of GPS coordinates, written in shaky handwriting. Below it, two words:
Try me.
He should have ignored it. The car in the garage—a battered 1995 Subaru Impreza—hadn't run in two years. The tires were flat. The battery was dead. But the coordinates weren't far. Just an hour north, into the real New England woods, where logging roads spiderwebbed through state land.
Three days later, the Subaru coughed to life. The tires were new. The fuel tank was full. And the spiral-bound PDF sat on the passenger seat, pages fluttering as he drove.
The road at the coordinates was unmarked, barely a gravel scar between the pines. Leo stopped at the mouth of it, engine idling. He picked up the notes. Stage start was the first line. Straight 200, into 4 Right, caution.
He set the stopwatch on his phone. Then, with a breath, he launched the car.
The first few corners were clumsy. The notes felt absurd—calling out "crest" for a bump in a real gravel road, "6 Left" for a bend that looked like a 4. But then, around the third mile, something clicked. The notes weren't describing the road he saw. They were describing the road his father had felt. The rhythm of it. The flow.
"5 Left, don't cut, ditch inside," Leo read aloud, and sure enough, a shallow trench ran along the left edge. He trusted the page. He lifted off the throttle just enough, let the rear slide, and powered through. The cardboard box wasn't marked for archive or disposal
"Caution, 3 Right, over bump, tightens to 2."
He braked late, felt the suspension unload over the rise, and the corner tightened exactly as promised. The car stuck. The gravel spat against the wheel wells. For ten seconds, twenty, a minute, he wasn't driving a twenty-year-old Subaru on a forgotten logging road. He was flying.
Then he saw it. The watermark.
It wasn't on every page, just the last one. At the bottom of the final turn before the finish, in faint gray letters: "Turn 73 – 'Dad's Leap.' Unverified. Send it."
He crested a small hill at 70 miles per hour, and the road vanished.
Not into a crash. Into a perfect, blind jump over a dry streambed. The car hung in the air for a lifetime. Leo didn't scream. He just held the wheel and whispered the last line from the notes, the one his father had typed himself:
"Flat out, faith required."
The Subaru landed hard, bottomed out, and shot across the finish line—a broken yellow gate that hadn't been used in a decade. Leo sat there, shaking, the engine ticking as it cooled. He looked at the PDF on the seat. The pages were smeared now with his own sweat and dirt.
He picked up his phone. The stopwatch read 3:42. He didn't know if that was good. He didn't care.
In the silence, he realized his father hadn't been lost in a game. He had been drawing a map of a place Leo would only ever find if he was brave enough to drive it. The PDF wasn't a manual. It was an invitation.
He turned the car around and drove the stage again. This time, he didn't read the notes. He knew them by heart.
While you can't legally download a PDF of every single stage's pacenotes (as the stages are procedurally generated or proprietary), the best way to learn is to use the game's built-in tools:
❌ Not Stage-Specific Enough
Most generic PDFs list the vocabulary, not the corner-by-corner notes for Argentina vs. Poland. For true mastery, you need stage-specific charts (which are rarer).
❌ Requires Memorization First
A PDF won’t help mid-drive if you have to read it while racing. You need to internalize the system before it becomes useful.
❌ Outdated or Inaccurate Community Versions
Some fan-made PDFs mix up “Left 3 tightens” or omit “into” calls. Always cross-check against in-game audio.
❌ No Replacement for Practice
Even the best PDF can’t teach you braking points or weight transfer. It’s a supplement, not a shortcut.
| KM | Co-Driver Call | Driver Note | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | 0.2 | Right 3 long | Brake to 3rd. Exit wide. | | 0.5 | Left 2 tightens | Handbrake entry. Don't apex early. | | 0.8 | Caution – Right 1 | Slow to walking pace. Hairpin. | | 1.1 | Left 4 over crest | Lift-off oversteer. |
In the world of simulation racing, few games demand as much precision, memory, and raw listening skill as Dirt Rally 2.0. While graphics, force feedback, and car tuning get significant attention, one element separates a podium finish from a wrecked chassis: the pacenotes.
For years, the community has searched for a "Dirt Rally 2.0 pacenotes PDF"—a cheat sheet, a translation guide, or a stage-by-stage breakdown of Phil Mills' iconic calls. But is there a perfect PDF? And more importantly, how do you use one to actually get faster?
In this long-form guide, we will dissect everything you need to know about pacenotes in Dirt Rally 2.0, including what a useful PDF actually contains, how to interpret the UK rally system, and advanced strategies to memorize stages without breaking immersion.
| Feature | Why It Matters | |---------|----------------| | One-page quick reference | Print and tape to your wheel base | | Color-coded corners | Red=slow, green=fast | | Caution symbols | ! = risk of roll, !! = immediate danger | | Surface icons | Gravel, tarmac, ice | | Example stage snippets | Shows real calls in sequence |
Because the game is a few years old, official support has waned, but the community is still active. Here are the best sources for your PDF download: