What got you into sim racing?

[Jax Humanhater]

It started with these adorable stories when I was five.

I was watching a CART or maybe IRL race on TV and I was rooting for the lead car (aka Mark Blundell) and when he won, I was so happy. The next race I watched, I was rooting for Mark Blundell again, but he DNF'ed, so I was sad.

I also played some F1 games on the Sega Genesis back in those days.

When I was eight, when I would go to Pakistan, I saw motor rikshaws (we called them "popcorn machines" because their engines sounded like popcorn popping) and I used to commentate on how the rikshaws were racing each other.

Also, when I was eight, I wanted to rent a racing game, and, my brother was not to happy about, but, he ended up loving the game. (Gran Turismo)

When I was eleven, I played Formula One 2001 with my brother. Being simplistic then, I raced with Mika Hakkinen with all aids on and a PS2 controller.

Fast forward to when I was twenty, I played F1 2010, which was the reason I found myself at RaceDepartment looking for setups; I played with a PS3 controller, but, this time, all of the three major aids were turned off.

When I saw YT videos rFactor, I decided I wanted this game and having Aspergers', I wanted to live out my F1 fantasies in a mature manner.

So far, I'm not having problems with grip in rFactor, but, I have trouble finding the right setup on RACE 07 and rFactor 2.

 

[Lee Knight]

A friend I used to visit played Gran Tourismo all the time & got me into it.
I bought the whole series up to number 4 including all the prologues & wot-not but was SERIOUSLY pissed with the way they changed number 4.
It just felt like they'd made it TOO unrealistic, but I kept persevering, only due to Nordschleife....
One night, after a few drinks & giving another mate an arse-kicking, I was lamenting the lack of tracks & how they were all too short when my mate suggested I try rF (this was 2007 & I'd not long bought my first ever PC).
Not to long after that I bought a PS2 controller adaptor, bought rFactor & locked myself away for a week....
It was around this time I found out about BTB & I haven't looked back since besides PC upgrades & slowly learning how to make roads with nodes instead of heavy earth moving machinery....
I hadn't long been into rFactor when I had to stop working for quite a while, while I got my shoulder fixed-up by doctors & if it wasn't for BTB & the sim-modding community here at RD I'd have gone completely around the bend!
Or maybe I did....
Mwa HAHAHAhahahaha!!!

 

[Eric Diaz]

Papyrus NASCAR Racing, back in 1994. Man those were the days. Pretty much through to 2000, I had so much time to just race. All the hours I spent on NASCAR racing 2, GPL, indycar racing 2, and Toca touring car racing. Ahh, sweet memories. Funny enough I became a life long fan of real auto racing because of discovering Nascar racing in the Daytona intl speedway giftshop back when I was just 10 yrs old. I'll always be thankful to Papyrus for making those sims and igniting my love for Motorsport that I'll hopefully pass onto my children one day.

 

[Rui F. Martins]

when i was a young boy i used to play my father's pc games, he also likes racing games, so i started to get in racing simulators since i was young, my father had, and still has a game called "24 hours of Le Mans" by Infogrames, i loved and still love that game, it was really good, i was never really good at it but i had lots of fun playing it, unfortunately, after not playing it for a while, some of the files must have become corrupt because some of the funcionalities don't work, for example, i can't do the 24 hours of Le Mans.At this period i also played sportcar GT.
Then there was a period were i didn't played racing games as much as before. Then, 2 or 3 days before Christmas i saw rfactor on a store shelf and i said to my parents that the game seemed to be rally cool, they offered it to me on Christmas, some time after i started to go to rfactorcentral for mods and such, and from that i start racing online, from there i started to really get into simracing and know i don't want anything else

 

[Hiroshi Awazu]

My console systems kept failing on me, went through 3 PS3's and two XBox 360's so one day while at London Drugs i came across Race On and GTR Evo bought them both and got hooked on PC simracers.

Then i bought GT Legends, rFactor and GTR2 and Richard Burns Rally and all the expansions for Race.

Having what i have it is easy to not want another console system although the thought of buying another console had crossed my mind a few times but never took it seriously to go out and buy one.

I still have my Forza4 but it's just sitting picking up dust. I may look into another PS when i see that GT6 is worth buying.

 

[Craig Hume]

My father was a racing driver. But he stopped racing before i had any memory of watching any. Seems i had the bug through the blood and its all i ever wanted to do. Found out from some racing buddies that they often used RF for practise and to keep them on their toes. So got that and many more until i could eventually get a real race car. Race car is now gone, but still loving my sim racing.