Philosophy

Our purpose is to enjoy simulated motorsports in a fun, inviting and educational atmosphere.

Our focus is ensuring that the competitive aspects of league activities don't undermine anyone's opportunity to enjoy themselves, regardless of skill level or motorsports knowledge.

Members of Grid Motorsports will find themselves interacting, both on track and off, with people whose sim-racing investment ranges from totally casual to fanatically hardcore, but everybody maintains a high level of respect and tolerance, and that's what makes it work.

There are some very specific reasons why we elected to form our own league instead of joining an existing league.  First and foremost, however, is that we felt the current state of online simulation racing left us with little choice but to forge our own trail.  'Pick-up' racing is essentially dead, due (ironically) to the vast array of community-developed vehicle mods and tracks, enabled by today's extensible and generally mod-friendly titles (like rFactor).   The sheer quantity (and admittedly mixed quality) of community content effectively splinters any given game's online presence and acts as a catalyst for people to band together in small groups focused on their particular shared tastes.  There's nothing wrong with that.  The net effect (no pun intended), however, is that most of the decent racing occurs within the context of a league setting, on league servers, according to league rules, etc..  So we set out to find a league that shared our tastes, only to discover that our tastes are apparently eccentric, or at least poorly accommodated by the existing medley of leagues.  Just what are those tastes?

We think simulation racing shouldn't require all of the participants to be hardcore simulation racers.

We think our league motto pretty much sums it up: just because the physics are hardcore doesn't mean that you have to be.  Apparently this opinion is in the minority, as most leagues conduct their racing under constraints that are, quite frankly, extremely hostile to anyone who isn't a hardcore simo-phile.  Aids are typically completely disabled (save for auto-clutch), damage is always set to 100%, races are configured for full length and with all the trimmings.  That kind of environment is a perfect way to cause someone new to simulation racing, or simply casual about their participation in it, to have a perfectly miserable time.  And when people have a miserable time, they tend to not participate often or at all.  While some of us are more serious about our racing than others, we believe a league should be able to accommodate a much broader spectrum of racing-inclined gamers (and gaming-inclined racers).  In short, the elitist attitude that dominates the simulation racing community is fine if you only want elitists in the simulation racing community.

In fairness, it's worth noting that we're not the only 'friendly' league, as there appear to be a few others (mostly based overseas, whereas we are North American) that share a similar philosophy.  So our decision to form our own league was also driven by schedule concerns, which isn't nearly as interesting to write about as social elitism.  Also, and not least, we enjoy being able to experiment with game design in a league setting, so the promise of creative freedom loomed large.

We wanted to create a league that allowed friends with an affinity for simulation racing to indulge in that affinity together in a non-hostile, collaborative environment.  And more than that, we wanted an environment in which we could actually encourage newcomers to discover if they had an affinity for simulation racing in the first place.  It is our expectation (and our experience thus far) that both veterans and rookies, hardcore racers and casual racers, each bring something complimentary to the league, and are capable of forming a mutually-beneficial relationship that creates a uniquely satisfying sim-racing community.

To this end, we've adopted the following as some of our fundamental league tenets:

• No aids discrimination.  If you want to use aids, then use aids.  We don't particularly care how you get fast.  Having said that, though, once you get fast you'll be encouraged to challenge yourself by slowly dialing back the aids until you find a comfort level that keeps you competitive without being unfair.  Please note that while we don't discriminate against a driver for using aids, we may find it necessary to discriminate against a particular aid itself, if the usage of that aid proves to be too disruptive to the league's collective ability to enjoy the racing.  The point of this policy is not to simply allow anyone to use anything, but rather to allow drivers to ameliorate their own individual frustration level by employing aids when necessary to allow them to better integrate into a field of diverse drivers with a broad skill spectrum.
• Open, collaborative learning.  The faster drivers are expected to help the slower drivers get faster, and the slower drivers are expected to take an active role in their own development, by both soliciting and being receptive to assistance.  Share your vehicle setups.  Spend a few laps watching someone who's slower than you and give some tips.  Spend a few laps watching someone who's faster than you and ask some questions.
• No gloating, taunting or unsportsmanlike behavior.  The fact that you can make a fake car go around a fake track in a fake simulation 0.5 seconds faster than someone else doesn't mean jack.  We're in it for the thrill of racing, and if you're in it for the thrill of attempting to humiliate others in order to compensate for your own physical and mental shortcomings then go find someplace else to indulge yourself.  We want to be able to have fun whether or not you win, and especially even when you win.
• Prioritizing close-proximity racing.  We'll do whatever seems reasonable to encourage, enable, and facilitate intense, wheel-to-wheel (or bumper-to-bumper) racing.  We are gaming first, and racing second, so fun takes precedence over real-life emulation for the sake of emulation.  We want to spend as much time as possible actually racing each other, and as little time as possible spread around a track staring at gap times and hardly seeing each other.  We do this with easy steps like favoring shorter tracks that shrink the learning curve and get people up to pace more efficiently.  We also employ different event formats, many of which include an increased number of shorter races rather than just one really long race.  We configure game settings in ways that improve the odds of drivers completing races and competing in as much of each race as possible.  We've developed a points system that encourages people to complete races and compete for the duration of the race.

In short, we believe that while simulation racing may be an all-consuming obsession for some, that need be neither a prerequisite for admittance nor integral to enjoyment.

We feel that simulation racing, as a game genre, has suffered from unnecessarily constrained design, pigeon-holed as merely a throw-away, sugary adrenaline rush that encompasses nothing outside of the starting grid and the finish line. In the wild, however, the real value of the genre manifests as cohesive communities of like-minded gamers looking for substantially more than the adrenaline rush. They're looking for role-playing, collaboration, persistence, and structured competition. Time and again the sim-racing titles ignore these elements and the communities are left to fend for themselves, cobbling together a hodge-podge, ramshackle collection of tools, websites, and mods to suit their needs. We would like to work towards providing a comprehensive solution, on one platform, integrating all aspects of the motorsports experience.