Imagine doing SimRacing in a community where only vintage cars are driven on iconic tracks. Imagine racing a Lotus 49, a Ferrari 312, a Lotus 98T or a McLaren MP4/4 - cars from the most iconic eras of racing history. Still this has one immersion-breaking flaw: the wheel in your hands is a modern standard 30 cm wheel.
And now imagine that it could be different / it could be just right…
But the products which fit best to what we do at THR is the awesome vintage wheel collection which can be used with Logitech (G25 / G27 / G29 / G920), Thrustmaster (T500rs / T300rs / TX / TS-PC / T-GT), OpenSimWheel and Fanatec (Podium- / Clubsport- / CSL- HUB).
Because of the vintage rims that 3DRAP makes, we had some nice talks over the past weeks and have entered into a partnership, that we are very excited about.
It was a bit cold on May 28, 1983, when Stefan Bellof competed for the qualifying of the ADAC 1000-kilometer race at the Nürburgring as part of the sports car world championship.
His car: The Porsche 956 K with the chassis number 007; first equipped with 13-inch wide rims on the front axle. More camber and modified steering levers ensure better steering behavior. A distance of 20.835 kilometers per lap was to be mastered at that time. Less than 2 km shorter than usual. Due to the new construction of the Grand Prix circuit and the pit system, a connector with a short pit lane behind grandstand T13 was created. No one guessed that on that weekend a record would be set, which would stand more than 35 years later.
After becoming World Champion of Drivers in 1959 and 60, at the wheel of the revolutionaries Cooper-Climax, Jack Brabham joined with his countryman, engineer and race cars designer Ron Tauranac, to found, in 1960, the Motor Racing Developments Ltd. The MRD presented its first car, a Formula Junior, in the next summer, and quickly evolved to become a great builder of competition cars for customers.
In 1962 Jack Brabham left Cooper to drive his team's cars and MRD presented its first F1, BT3 (BT from Brabham-Tauranac). Ron designed the cars and Jack drived and developed them.
The former Formula 1 driver Jochen Mass ends his qualifying with a time of 6:16.850 min, as one of the last drivers Stefan Bellof starts on his lap. Bellof does the unthinkable in a Werksporsche, a fabulous time of 6:11.13 min, 5 sec faster than teammate Mass. The reigning Formula One World Champion Keke Rosberg, even takes half a minute longer on his tour of the Green Hell. Bellof was at an average speed of 202 km / h - faster than any racer before. Despite two small mistakes, as he would then say, typically relaxed.
In 1966 Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme, participated in 19 races, 10 of which were of the F1 World Championship, having won 6 and allowed Jack Brabham to win, in 1966, his third Drivers' Championship and the first title of Constructors for the brand. Jack Brabham was also, and until today, the only driver to win a race and a F1 World Championship at the wheel of a car with his name.
RECORD LAP NORDSCHLEIFE: 6: 11,13 MIN
Date: May 28, 1983 Driver: Stefan Bellof Vehicle: Porsche 956K chassis no. 007 Lap length: 20.832 km Lap time: 6:11,13 min Average speed: 202 km / h
In the race on Sunday, the second Werksporsche with Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass crossed the finish line as the winner.
Stefan Bellof had to park his Porsche in the section Pflanzgarten after an accident in lap 19. He made a looping and his car came to rest at what is called the Bellof-S since 2013..
Since this record, the history of Stefan Bellof and the history of the Nordschleife are inseparable.
In 1967 Brabham introduced the BT24, which was more compact and lighter than its predecessors. It was powered by a new and lighter Repco engine, with a block manufactured by the brand and with the exhaust pipes positioned centrally, which allowed the engine to reach 330CV, and left more space for the rear suspension. Taking advantage of the youth problems of the also new Lotus 49, Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme won 3 races and, for the brand, the World Championship, with Hulme overtaking his colleague and boss to win his only driver.
Bellof´s record stood for 35 years until the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo broke it. But the 6:11.13 is still the fastest laptime driven in an official event.
Can you beat Bellof´s time?
The Brabham BT24 never drove at Fonteny, but we chose the car because despite winning the titles in 1967, it is chanceless in the GPL mod and therefore mostly ignored.
On Saturday the 15th of December 2018 we had our first THR race. This means that THR will be 4 years old in a few days and we have experienced a lot in these four years:
First Race
Our first race was held with the GPL Mod at Silverstone and we had 4 Racers on track. Our race format in the first weeks was to run as many 20-minute races in a row as we were able to. Our first regular driver was Ben Barson. Thanks a lot for showing that the community idea was not that bad.
Our AC server
The first races were hosted on Duderei's home server. But we quickly moved to a professional hoster. The first entry in our STracker Database is from 2018-12-25. After that we changed the hoster 2 times until we moved to a rented LinuxMachine (thanks franglais) which runs the ServerManager and 5 AC-Servers. In the next weeks we plan to move to new more powerful server to (hopefully) get rid of the LagSpikes we experienced in the last weeks.
Races in THR
Over the 4 years, 974 different drivers have raced on our servers. We have driven tens of thousands of laps and countless kilometers.
We had around 180 official events, 58 weekday races and many fun races. We have completed 19 championships and the next upcoming are already planned. Our former champions can be seen on the Wall of Champions.
Discord
The Discord Server has been set up on 2018-12-07. Our first member besides Dude and me joined on 2018-12-14. Currently we have 1,562 Members. Some of them are very quiet or bots, but no matter what time of day, there are always more than 200 members online. What I find crazy is that I have written nearly 23,000 messages in our THR Discord. The number of PMs are also high, but I can´t count them.
Website
The Website followed a little later. The first entry is from 2019-01-17. It contains 200 pages and 290 news and I wrote more than 88,000 Words. Funfact: You will need nearly 6 hours to read them all.
To represent our races we have made 183 posters. Our Website has more than 130,000 visits and more than 492,000 views.
Nearly 1 year after our foundation we started our Youtube-Channel on 2019-02-17. At first we started with a short PromoVideo which was made by Bo Stamper. Another year later we started to stream our races and with the help of Klopstick and Ted we produced another brilliant PromoVideo which has been watched 1.285 times since then. To celebrate the start of our fifth GPL championship, Greg produced another stunning video which has been watched 590 times until today.
The channel contains more than 319 videos/streams and has 398 followers. It was visited 31,656 times and more than 2.800 hours of our videos were viewed.
Social Media
Besides of the above we have a Facebook site, which get not much attention from our side, but has 344 followers, cause of the website news which get posted on Facebook automatically. Also an unused Twitch Channel, an equally unused Instagram Account and some other cool things which I might have forgotten.
Shop
We opened our own THR shop on 12/21/2022. The idea behind the store was to send prizes to our championship winners / participants.
Since the opening we have donated 27 prices to our members and on top of that sold around 25 products. It doesn't sound like much 😉 but those who have ordered are very satisfied with the quality of the products.
I want to send out a very special thank you to the members of the Orga - Group. margar, Flashor, Flow, franglais and Valentin. I appreciate our meetings and the decisions we make. You take work from me and you also support in balancing, track testing and many other things. You are a great help for me!!!
I would also like to thank the members of THR Race Control. For many members it is not visible how much time you invest, but I can assure you that it is many hours. It's great that you guys take the job so seriously!
A special thanks also to Evgeny for creating such great THR videos last year. I have watched the cinematic a dozen times and I am really looking forward to the cinematic about the F1 1991 championship!
And I bet I forgot to mention other supporters. Therefore, I thank everyone who has supported THR's work.
The most important part of THR > YOU
But the most important thing is the community that has grown up around THR.
Thank you all for being members of THR and for making THR what it is!
It is also nice to see, that you help each other in Discord and that you respect each other. I appreciate that very much!
I would also like to thank those who have made a donation via Paypal or started to be a Patreon of THR! That's phenomenal!
Your [THR] pitman
We plan to celebrate the 4th anniversary with a full length GP.
Please excuse the stuttering in the video. We have upgraded our streaming pc some weeks after this race.
Quotes from our members race reports
gg all. Congrats Anthony on Race 2. Nice racing.
Nat Stevenson
Intense races ! But what a frustration to see these damn Mustang go away in the straight line...
Flow
Thank you very much and congratulations to you, it was very hard to keep you behind me haha..
Anthony Ruffat
thanks for the battles @Steve Hayward @Flow @Rolf Biber most fun i have had this season
franglais
GREAT! JUHU! First wind since a longer time. Tastes good.
pitman
Congrats to the winners and podium finishers of the race!
And many thanks to every participant. It was a pleasure to have you on track! (There are some open incidents which might inflict the results afterwards.)
Congrats to everyone who survived this and congrats to the winners.
meisterjäger
Yeah, we probably all made a couple of mistakes this evening. Coongrats to Pete for holding it all together in the second and most important race.
Steve Hayward
I'm sorry to everyone who got involved in the big crash of race 2, in the village. Due to a small mistake i ruined many peoples race. Congrats to everyone who survived this track.
Flashor
Good fun in race 1 all, particularly the late fight with @Pete Bondurant and @Tyler Van Beek.
Valentin Knechtel
Congrats to the winners and podium finishers of the race!
And many thanks to every participant. It was a pleasure to have you on track! (There are some open incidents which might inflict the results afterwards.)
6th race of the 1991 F1 season took us to Japan, on the mythical Suzuka circuit. 18 entrants were competing for the win but it was the inevitable Jayden HW who once again took pole position. Followed by Ony and Adamike99, it was a Ligier trio that locked the front grid.
The current choice of tires was split between medium and hards, letting us think that some might think one stop could be faster.
The start went very clean while the most noticeable thing might have been Rolf Biber and Tom Zeeuw gaining several positions in the first corners while Vanderspeed and Tyler Van Beek went into unfortunate spins. As a good battle was on its way, Adamike99 lost the car in the Spoon curve, then Pitman's visor broke lose and sent him off track in the Snake. It was Florian Masse turn one lap after to hit the wall in the first corner, meaning that 3rd, 4th and 5th drivers on the grid crashed right at the beginning of the race. Potatohedron needed no more to secure his position hight on the board as he went also ahead of Linus Jonsson. At the back, Evegeny Morozov suffered a difficult start despite a good qualification at P10 and retired early, as well as Gilvil77 and Tyler Van Beek.
Approaching mid race meant that medium started to wear out and the pit stop ball gets underway. Fresh new tires allowed several drivers to climb up the leaderboard until the end that saw a dramatic outcome. A mechanical failure forced Jayden HM to pit, losing his first place to Potatohedron, who had a particularly consistent race while Adamike99 overtook Florian Masse in the last lap for the 2nd position. Race results showed also a very good race from Tom Zeeum, Doenerfan and Pete Bodurant, gaining 12, 6 and 5 positions compared to the starting grid. Best lap was claimed by Ony and his Ligier.
(Race Report written by Florian Masse)
Live stream from the race
Quotes from our members race reports
florian that was awesome fight at the end
Adamike
game crashed but i at least had a good fight with Tomzee
Jayden HW
Yeah I definitely had some moments, car was very nervous in the slow sections
Potatohedron
That was really cool but you were so fast ! I couldn't do nothing... Anyway I enjoyed every minute of this race. The car was good, the feeling was great and the track is so fun !
Florian Masse
Congrats to the winners and podium finishers of the race!
And many thanks to every participant. It was a pleasure to have you on track! (There are some open incidents which might inflict the results afterwards.)
Congrats @meisterJäger to the wins! Fully deserved them!
Flashor
No problem so it was very interesting and close last lap.
meisterjäger
Considering my few practice laps, I got two unexpected results today: P3 and P4. Nice results. I am happy and will grab a beer now. Many thanks to my Mustang
pitman
Nice race, a lot of fun
gilvil
Congrats to the winners and podium finishers of the race!
And many thanks to every participant. It was a pleasure to have you on track! (There are some open incidents which might inflict the results afterwards.)
For this 5th race of the 1991 F1 season, we move to Portugal on the picturesque circuit of Estoril.
Inevitable since we started at Interlagos, Jayden HW qualified on pole, followed on the front row by pitman. After a clean start, it’s Campbell MacDonald who launches himself the best, climbing from P18 to P14 in one lap. Lap 2, however, is more turbulent, as Florian Masse spin in Curva 3 and fall from P4 to P14, while Vanderspeed crashes at Parabolica Interior and Natan Veksler locks the brakes, making contact with Evgeny Morozov and Technoluddite at Orelha.
The first half of the race shows and incredible pace from Jayden HW, who create a comfortable 20sec gap with his follower, Nik Likar. At halftime, the pack is still grouped from 2nd to 9th place, before the pit stop routine. Indeed, the grid was divided between the choice of Hard and Medium tyres. However, the choice of Hard tyres did not seem to pay off as the race pace on these tyres collapsed earlier than expected.
Anyway, the battle went on until the finish line as Nik Likar and Adamike99 fought it out for 2nd position, while gilvil77 and Linus Jonsson chased Pete Bondurant for 5th. At the end of the race, Jayden HW, Nik Likar and Adamike99 complete the podium. Linus Jonsson takes the best lap in 1.14.8 and Tom Zeeuw makes an impressive recovery, finishing 8th, 13 position higher than his starting position.
Live stream from the race
Quotes from our members race reports
damn this was hardest race of this league so far at least for me
Adamike
no stop wonder > lets go
Jayden HW
I wanted to no stop but the tires just died.
SpeedingRed
Congrats to the winners and podium finishers of the race!
And many thanks to every participant. It was a pleasure to have you on track! (There are some open incidents which might inflict the results afterwards.)
never felt that slow with the Mustang on any track…
Duderei
Amazing 2nd race with the Alfa's that was a serious battles
MackAttack
Crazy races! With a lot of nice fights.
meisterJäger
Congrats to the winners and podium finishers of the race!
And many thanks to every participant. It was a pleasure to have you on track! (There are some open incidents which might inflict the results afterwards.)
