Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Announcing something new in our online racing clubs across all simulations hosted here at RaceDepartment..... introducing our brand new (or in some cases rebranded)... Friendly Events!
If you have been around RaceDepartment for a while, or even if you are brand new to our site and community, you have probably already noticed we are into sim racing in a very big way. We love eSports, we love the community and we just love getting together and fighting out on the track whilst having a great time with our fellow community members both in the forum and on TeamSpeak during the races themselves.
Now in order to do what we do best and spread the sim racing love as far and wide as possible we recently launched an incredibly successful series of 'Rookie' events. Designed with the less experienced driver in mind, we hosted a series of one off regular events across several of our simulations to a generally incredibly warm reception. Those of us with more experience pitched in with advice and support for the newer drivers, the fighting was generally clean and fair on track and plenty of the natter on TeamSpeak was occasionally unrepeatable and almost always hilarious, which is the perfect combination for a superbly satisfying night in behind the wheel of our virtual machines.
Inevitably as the success grows and the numbers of full servers continue to increase we found ourselves lucky enough to have a very wide batch of drivers joining our events on a regular basis, several of which have shown incredible speed and experience over the course of the events we have run so far.
Now a few months after launch we had a think and thought it seems a bit inappropriate to call these events "Rookie" races going forward, seeing as many of our drivers have become regulars and we are starting to attract some guys with bigger experience than just a handful of online races. From here on in we will be rebranding the regular club races formally known as 'Rookie Races' to our brand new 'Friendly Events'. Not just a name change, the hugely successful scheme has been formally rolled out across all the simulations we run here at RaceDepartment, so check out your game(s) of choice and pick some events from our race calendar that suit your availability and game preference and have yourself some fun!
So, what are the Friendly Events and what do they mean to me?
We want these races to be open to everyone and anyone, but with even less emphasis on the formal and competitive nature of league and standard club racing events held here at RaceDepartment and elsewhere on the internet.
Yes our usual club racing rules will still apply and of course you will be expected to produce a clean and fair performance to your fellow competitors out on track, but the big difference to our other usual club racing events is we want you to get on TeamSpeak and have a laugh, not take the race too seriously and share tips and learn from each other to help promote learning and improvement for all drivers taking part in the event.
When I was asked by my fellow RD staff member @Rupe Wilson to put together a front page article Rupe mentioned it should contain some of the following key points mentioned below. Now I could look to scribe together something long winded and wordy to put these notes into text, but to be honest Rupe sums it up pretty much perfectly, so I'll simply just paste part of his post in the staff section directly below..
"Although its hard to say teamspeak is mandatory we would like all drivers who enter these events to be on it, so they can at least hear any tips given out through practice...
We also want to make it quiet clear the you can chat in these events you don't have to stay quiet at any point.. lets get rid of the serious side of racing and promote the fun side!"
We also want to make it quiet clear the you can chat in these events you don't have to stay quiet at any point.. lets get rid of the serious side of racing and promote the fun side!"
With our previously titled 'Rookie' events in Assetto Corsa setting the scene for this incredible boost in popularity amongst those drivers new to RD and online, our move to the new 'Friendly Events' programme has been rolled out across all our simulations, so Assetto Corsa, RaceRoom Racing Experience, Automobilista, rFactor 2 and once it releases Project CARS 2, all you need to do is look out for the 'Friendly' tag at the head of the event title, register for a place in the comments, turn up, log in to TeamSpeak and have yourself an incredibly fun time learning, laughing and racing door to door! It's fun, it's fast, it's slow, it's close or it's far, love it, live it and sign up to become part of it!
If you love sim racing and want to take the virtual sport to the next level, check out our Racing Club forums for all games and get yourself in on the action! We publish our upcoming races on the left hand side of the home page here at RaceDepartment, we have an up to date calendar on the top menu bar of the site and of course we have the dedicated League and Club Racing forums for each game. Check them out below:
Assetto Corsa
Automobilista
Project CARS
RaceRoom Racing Experience
rFactor 2
Sim racing is awesome people, come have yourself some fun and find out for yourself what all the fuss is about!
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