WRM Online - Saturday Night Drive

It gives me great pleasure in announcing a brand spanking new weekly league on the Xbox One as Wheelwash Racing Media & Across The Pond racing team have joined forces to bring Saturday Night Drive to life. Its been an idea thats been with us all at Across The Pond for a good few months now, we are very blessed in the organisation department for series, as the majority of ATP members have been involved in the organising and running of online series on various sites, and those that havent have been stewards, car builders, painters or involved in the promotion and media side of series, which does give us quite an abundance in the experience of online racing.

We dont though have an abundance of time on our hands, being a bunch of middle aged family men in the main, with have plenty of other distractions to contend with, meaning a get together as a team as a whole is restricted to one time slot, a Saturday evening in the EU Timezone, its the reason why the VM Classics has always been a big focus of the team, as its the one time we get to settle scores, crank up the rivalry and enjoy the banter. Unfortunately with the introduction of the Xbox One and the way Forza Motorsports 5 panned out, the VM Classics is now in the history books as The Greatest Online Racing Series on the Xbox 360.



Across The Pond is a team thats never had a home site for racing, we like to race everywhere, and thats something thats going to continue in 2015 and hopefully beyond. But a trend thats developed on the Xbox One, especially on the big two racing sites and judging by the Project CARS car list and the initial announcements so far, the series all involve speed and lots of it. The single seater championships like IndyCar and F1, the LMP / GT type series seem to be the only go to at the moment, everything seems speed induced and so for the few members of ATP that like there GT racing, we are well catered for in that area.

The days of the lower class racing versus the track seem to have disappeared, the origins of Across The Pond came out of a Friday Night Spec Series on the now defunct VTCC and as a team, we miss those days, as it delivered the racing that we enjoy on a weekly basis. A few of the team actually worked on this group of series, which was an excuse to try a few different things in all aspects of the racing, trying to mimic the style of real world series, but with an extra slice of imagination attached.

With all the cogs in place amongst the team to create race series, run them and make them into a complete package, the decision to give it a shot came a month or two back, since then, the team have popped ideas together, and we feel we have a great accompaniment to the online racing that already exists, and as part of the expansion of Wheelwash Racing Media, we now have a weekly Saturday Night at the races online league called Saturday Night Drive.



The format is simple, a range of short four to five week series as well as the one night specials, in cars thats not going to be dominated by speed. Thats not to say our cars wont test you, we have series in which you need to work hard, after all, racing cars isnt as straight forward as the online world would have you believe, we want to get back to racing the track, the conditions, the opposition, the good old racecraft which seems to be disappearing behind an abundance of restarts and ill judged manoeuvres.

To us, the racing is only part of the deal, being a team thats strong on appearances and getting into the spirit of a series, we shall be aiming to pass our ethics into these race evenings, we know its not going to appeal to everyone, but we arent trying to, if you like to race in firm but fair conditions in cars which may not get a look in elsewhere, we may well appeal to yourself. Cosmetic damage will never see the light of day on WRM Online, neither will restarts, except in extreme cases of lag. Accidents happen in the real world, sometimes biting the bullet and finishing the race to try and salvage a few points is the way it goes, it will be no different here and penalties ranging from grid drops to pit stops will be issued if needed, patience is required, respect is earned, your challenge awaits!!
 


Amongst the events planned in the early part of 2015, we shall be kicking off with the Shelby Daytona 50th Birthday Challenge, details are already posted and sign up's open. We have some Fun Cup action around Spa Francorchamps, the first of our looks at the Legends Of Motorsports taking an era of time and celebrating the cars of which we dreamed.

Every event will be running on a Saturday, start time of 20:00 GMT / 15:00 EST / 06:00 AEST, daylight savings time will be used when it arrives in March, full details and race number registration can be found on the WRM Online Forum by clicking >>> HERE <<< or visit the http://wheelwashracingmedia.co.uk/ no expense spent homepage to be directed to all of the wonderful media outlets of WRM.

Thank you for taking the time to read this piece and from myself ATP Wheelwash and the rest of the Across The Pond guys, we hope to see you all on track soon