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.
If you ever played Papyrus’ seminal Grand Prix Legends then you’ve read his name. Rich began working as a tester on NASCAR Racing (1994) and was with Papyrus at the end. In this interview, published in 2022, we discuss his time at the legendary studio and the design of Grand Prix Legends, including initial feelings of hurt at not being asked to join iRacing.
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SRMZ formed around 2003 and grew from the RSC forums Grand Prix Legends community due to the hosting failures suffered there. This community kept Grand Prix Legends very much alive. You can search the SRMZ archives here.
VirtualR formed in 2007 and became the leading news source for sim racing. After a couple of false restarts and a news post as recent as 2021 the site finally went offline completely. You can search the VRnet archives here.
Although the game remains available for download via Steam, Reiza’s free to play Game Copa Petrobras de Marcas Web site went offline in 2020.
RSC, for this period under the control of SimRaceWay developer Ignite GT, posted a significant amount of important news between 2010-2013 that is available in this archive.
Founded in 1998 and initially operated as a sim racing team Web site, BHMS became a mainstay of the sim racing community with news, reviews, files, forums and more. Search the BHMS archives here.
This ISI Web site was created before rFactor and includes some really nice company information and images. Downloadables include technical demos.
RAS is an unmoderated usenet newsgroup that was created on November 30, 1993. The topics begin with discussion of IndyCar Racing (1993), F1GP (1992) and end with users trying iRacing (2008) for the first time. You can search the archive here.
After dropping FIRST-Racing branding, iRacing’s first Web site contained a great amount of information on early sponsorships, licenses and technology.
SIMBIN’s GT Legends Web site carried previews, downloads and linked to product reviews by media outlets. It originally included a number of Flash-based animated advertisements for branded merchandise.
ISI’s rFactor.net Web site, founded in 2004, offers a complete archive from first public demo up to the time development of rFactor 2 began.
Almost entirely designed using Flash, we have converted the available SWF files of the RBR Web site to GIF and retained their functionality where possible.
The Grand Prix Legends Editors Association Web site released and hosted the real “must have” mods for Grand Prix Legends, including the Murasama and Coventry-replacing Honda and Cooper cars.
Founded in June, 2004 by John Henry and David Kaemmer with the acquisition of Papyrus assets, FIRST would eventually become iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations.
The “Ultimate GPL Links Page” was a great resource to find news and downloads for Grand Prix Legends and other simulations from the time. The archive links to archive.org and in some cases you may need to alter to an earlier date to find a working Web site.
At this point RSC still used a HTML front-end for all content with the forum hooked in via SSI as a commenting system. A large number of the articles and interviews can be accessed in this archive.
Papyrus Web site after the release of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, it’s patches and Track Pack. No further updates were ever made before it was taken offline.
Founded in 1998 and initially operated as a sim racing team Web site, BHMS became a mainstay of the sim racing community with news, reviews, files, forums and more. Search the BHMS archives here.
Better known today for their open world fantasy games, Bethesda released a number of racing games during the 90s and were planning to continue in the genre until the Zenimax purchase.
Broadsword worked on a number of racing titles but are best known for leading development of Spirit of Speed 1937.
Papyrus Web site before releasing NASCAR Racing 4. Includes profiles and downloads for titles released in 1998 and 2000 including NASCAR Racing 3 and NASCAR Legends.
Software Allies developed and released SODA Off Road Racing and worked under the Papyrus studio banner many times.
The official Web site for bike simulation GP500 developed by Melbourne House and released in 1999 by Microprose.
EA’s product page for Sports Car GT unfortunately used un-archived Flash files for information display and the archived non-Flash version is much more simplistic. However, you can still see the headline information as it was displayed.
LOR were a sim racing team and league site that had some terrific track and driving guides, modern grid mods for Grand Prix Legends and more.
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A site by a sort of sim racer, for sim racers, about racing sims. News and information on both modern and historic sim racing software titles.
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