As CQR Club prepares for another season of racing, we take a quick look back at the origins of the club and the highlights from 2012.

Close Quarters Racing Club (or ‘CQR’ for short) was founded in June 2011, but the origins of the club date back to 2008, where many of our members raced together as WWR (Wire-to-Wire Racing) on Forza Motorsport 2. Even after WWR disbanded as a team, many of the former members kept in touch and continued to race together, and so with rumours of Forza Motorsport 4 coming later in the year, our new club was formed, as a general gaming club, with a strong focus on racing and motorsport. Founding members included CQR MAGiC (formerly WWR MAGiC turbo), CQR CHRiS (WWR Nitrous), CQR PHIL (WWR PHIL), CQR Dizzy (WWR Dizzy) and CQR Basher (WWR Basher).

Many friends-of-friends who we’d got to know and raced with over the years also came and joined the new club too, some had never been part of a club or team before, others such as CQR Champion (formerly PLOW), CQR Magictap (formerly of VVV) and CQR Jono & CQR Cobblepop (formerly S2M drivers) wanted to come and join our fledgling new team. CQR also built a strong and productive relationship with the VTCC, run by CQR Rusty and several other VTCC drivers also joined us too. CQR currently has 28 official club members, many still racing in Forza Motorsport events at TORA, VTCC, Virtual Motorsports and FLMS, as well as competing on iRacing, the Project CARS beta and non-racing games too. Effective communication is one of the keys to the club’s success, with a busy club website and forum, and most members actively using social media such as Twitter to help build a strong team brand and image with the larger community.

A large squad of CQR drivers entered multiple TORA championships in 2012, including the TCC, TORA GT and ISCC. The official MSA recognition and well organised racing was particularly appealing, as well as the opportunity to race against other established teams such as British Gamers, VVV and F4H. CQR (and WWR before) has always had a reputation for being FWD (front wheel drive) specialists – which comes from our dominant FWD B-class cars on Forza 2, so the TORA Touring Car Championship was perfect for many our drivers. CQR entered several teams in the championship, with the CQR Ikea team of CQR MAGiC, CQR HABURi and CQR Hungover winning the team’s championship in the Kia cee’d, and the driver’s title going to CQR MAGiC, his second TORA TCC championship. It was a season long battle against the other in-house CQR team of CQR Randoms (CQR VtecTorquE, CQR D4N13L and CQR Smokey) in their Acura RSX. Several other CQR teams and privateer entries also took part in the championship. With CQR’s FWD reputation upheld, many of us wanted to show that we could race other, faster cars too – hence our slightly tongue-in-cheek Twitter hashtag… #FastInAnyCar

After some toe-in-the-water test races in the TORA ISCC and Le Mans 24 Hour races, we decided to put together a strong attack for season 9 of the TORA GT Championship, with as many as 5 teams and 17 drivers competing in all or part of the season. As the championship progressed and the teams and drivers became more familiar with the cars, two teams started to emerge as the leading contenders in the championship fight – CQR Bulldogs (Jaguar XKR RSR) and CQR Skullcandy (Ferrari 458). The quality of racing and standard of driving in the championship was outstanding, with some terrific battles and real racing throughout the season. CQR VtecTorquE and CQR MAGiC went head-to-head on many occasions, as they have done many, many times in championships elsewhere and there were some outstanding performances from new TORA drivers including CQR D4N13L (winning his first ever TORA race at Mugello) and CQR Jono (a first time winner at Nurburgring), along with some fine drives from CQR HABURi in several different cars including the underpowered McLaren MP4-12C. CQR Shifty ended the season in fine style with his first TORA win, driving a Corvette ZR1, and CQR Bulldogs won the teams title, with CQR MAGiC finishing 2nd and CQR D4N13L 3rd in the drivers’ championship. For the club as a whole, the championship was a great opportunity for us to learn about tuning the cars, improving our driving ability and most of all, to show how we can race wheel-to-wheel in a clean, competitive fight against other top-level drivers. TORA’s strict rules and regulations and excellent promotion (including the TORA TV coverage) made the championship feel like a real event, just using virtual cars.

CQR also won its first overall endurance event at the Nurburgring 8 Hours in December, winning both the SP1 class (CQR Bulldogs Mercedes SLS) and SP3 class (CQR Ikea Honda Civic SI). The CQRish team also finished 2nd in the SP1 Cup class (Porsche 911). It certainly made up for the technical and mechanical failures in earlier endurance races in 2012!

CQR is looking forward to more excellent racing in 2013, with 10 drivers already entered in the TORA GT World Championship, with many drivers also looking to enter TORA TCC races, endurance races, as well as events at Virtual Motorsports, VTCC and FLMS. Many members are also interesting in PC sim racing, including iRacing, and the prospect of Project CARS in late 2013 is very exciting for the club – several members are actively involved with the PC beta version at present, and are very encouraged by what we’ve seen so far, as it’s a real ‘motorsport’ simulator, which appeals very much to the core of what our team enjoys. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our racing this season, and hope that everyone we’ve raced with has found us to be fair, clean and decent racers, and we look forward to more next year :-)

CQR MAGiC, on behalf of everyone at CQR Club

www.cqrclub.co.uk

@CQRClub