Better known today as the developer of Skyrim and Fallout, Bethesda once had a well-respected racing game franchise and were deep into development of a licensed Skip Barber Racing title that never released.
As a direct ancestor of iRacing, the ‘Grand Prix Legends engine’ had multiple stock car racing false starts, before eventually releasing as NASCAR Racing 4. The original NASCAR 3, cancelled and replaced by one that used NASCAR 2’s engine, is barely remembered.
N1 is first example of a first person racing game and included basic simulation features such as gear changes.
Released only on an Arcade platform in selected parts of Europe, sightings were rare, but the title was seen by Atari’s Dave Shepperd after the German IMA show in Spring 1976 and was then cloned as Atari’s Night Driver for Arcade and Atari 2600 systems.