Keep the regular tours but add tougher ones with harder ai for cooler rewards like shiny badges, a honey badger outfit and new accolades.
Only HOF can enter and you must have completed x number of tours.
The game has a difficulty setting that players can adjust to make the AI easier or harder. The problem is that in some cases such as many seasonal challenges the difficulty is fixed for all players, making it easy for some and difficult for others. This is the same problem with tours.
For tours the solution is simple. Allow users as you say to select the difficulty before queueing. To unlock each difficulty you must win a race in that difficulty. When the system forms a group it waits the same amount of time and then bases the actual difficulty based on the average of everyones selection. I.e. 4 select hard and 1 select easy. Difficulty will be set to hard.
That could work. But amateur and pro is my preference because once I’d unlock the hardest difficulty it’s what I’d stick to.
Isn’t the “hardcore” mode just the horizon open? That way you can also pick your style too.