First off, apologies for the long post, I’m feeling sentimental/nostalgic today, LOL.
I was always a fan of racing and racing games and was immediately an addicted fan of Gran Turismo since it’s inception in 1998 and when things officially went online in GT5 everything changed, both good and bad. There was actual, better, competition than ever experienced before and some of the racing was out of this world, for an online racing game! Then came the realization that a good majority of these online racers were not racers at all, and they only had two strategies, win the race or wreck the field and this became very annoying to me so I was on the search for a group of clean racers and was quite lucky to find a good group that was running almost nightly and no intentional wrecks. The only catch was that these guys were hardcore NASCAR guys and only ran the Daytona oval, which was fun at first with different strategies on fuel and setup, but the constant left turns were getting old, fast, so the search continued. Then one cold afternoon in the winter of 2016, I saw a room called Snail Spec Racing and I joined the lobby to find a bunch of guys in the same street car, running laps at a track called “Twin Ring Motegi Road Course”, just cannot for the life of me remember the car. Anyway, my Snail journey started that night and I’m sure the Snail members that were in the lobby that day, really wished I wasn’t coming back, as I hit everything but a good lap time that afternoon! Lol. I thought I was a very fast and very clean driver, but man did I have a thing or two to learn…..Gradually I started to join these practice lobbies on a consistent basis and finally decided to join the group and show them how good I was. 😊
After the first couple of Sunday nights, I was absolutely stunned to find that somebody had filed an incident report against me! What? How could that be? Ok so maybe I wasn’t as clean as I thought I was….come to think of it, I wasn’t as fast as I thought I was either. Not sure why I took it so personal but after receiving a private message from
@TEX36 explaining why he reported me and offering to help me improve my sportsmanship and driving, I immediately knew I was in the right place. He was the first of many in this group that took the time to help me progress into a semi-fast, and very clean, racer. It didn’t take me long to realize that the clean aspect of this was far more important than the being fast part…..it would eventually come too.
So to make this very long story short, here are the answers to the questions on the original post:
What drew me to Snail? The chance to race in a clean group of people and improve on my own racing and sportsmanship.
What keeps me coming back? Although I haven’t been as present as I would like to be, the reason I keep coming back is the members and the willingness of the top / senior drivers to help the new people to the group adjust and improve their skills to create a competitive, respectful experience.
How would I describe/sell it to someone new? This is a very respectful community of online sim racers that prioritize clean racing, sportsmanship and comradery over winning and being the fastest, although the competitiveness of this group is always very high with different divisions for different skill levels, providing the opportunity for all members to take part in the prize-winning process, while improving on their own skills by competing with similarly skilled players in their respective divisions.
Like I have alluded to, it’s the BOD, stewards and members in this group that make this league what it is and always has been. I did make a shout out to one driver but honestly there are several that stand out as the reason for my joining and staying with this league and here are just a few name drops from Division 4 back when I started, as well as some old, but not forgotten tracks, that I really hope make another appearance in Gran Turismo some day soon.
@TBongX
@TEX36
@Alexrider007
@pubason
@gulfvet67
@cliffeden
@rkzjb04
@basswerks
@dvd7227
Twin Ring Motegi Road Course, Midfield Raceway, Apricot Hill, Tokyo R246, Cote d’ Azur, Circuit de Madrid, Silverstone and Indy Road Course.
