Written by Darin Boyd for AutoSimSport DEC 2005

2005 marked a year of transition and change for GTN in many ways. Prior to late 2004 GTN had mainly been involved in leagues hosted on F1rst2 lobby for F1c and related mods.

In a hard fought battle with Team DSB that went to the very last round of the season, we were able to clinch both the drivers and team titles in the 2004 F1c league. This league was run using the RH2003 mod and had well over 300 participants in two classes and mirrored the actual F1 calendar. GTN resident alien Claus Juel took the expert drivers title over some very stiff competition and several other GTN drivers made significant contributions, including 3 of the top 5 overall.

Most of our members cut our sim racing teeth on Simbin's GTR 2k2 for F12k2, and so all felt the “new GTR” would be our future home. The game arrived in the form of a German release in late ’04 and our members who spanned the globe eagerly set out to procure copies from Germany. Once we had gotten the key members online we set out to host our first league using this fantastic new sim. This took the form of our own GTN 2005 nGT series, which took us back to our early roots.

As we progressed with testing and planning for this league it quickly became evident that GTR was going to present challenges in the ability to host the larger fields of drivers we were hoping to compete in. These challenges helped us to really learn the ins and outs of the game and ultimately resulted in long time member Larry Man providing us with a server. Larry took it upon himself to provide and co-locate a server rig on a 100mbit line for our general fun and league racing needs. This server also afforded us the opportunity to team up with friends, LNR and VRE among others and start our forums under the domain gtndclnr.com.

The increase of bandwidth along with help in the form of patches from Simbin allowed us to go on to host a great full 10-race season of GTR nGT racing action. Through our own knowledge and ability to work around shortcomings we were able to incorporate the weight penalty feature of GTR, which greatly added to the realism, and competitiveness of the racing. Despite having a substantial ballast handicap at many races, Claus Juel was still just too strong to be beat and took top honors. Fellow “Board” members D Boyd and Emmo Plate rounded out the top 3 positions when all was said and done. By this time the increased exposure of our forums and Emmo’s great web pages, as well as word of mouth had gotten the word out about us. As we began our 2nd season featuring GT cars we had attracted a few new names. This included eventual series champion Wilfred van den Brink who became the first driver other than Claus Juel to win a league seriously contested by GTNDC. Resurgence from perennial GTN Finnish ace Krueger saw him take 2nd and Claus rounded out the top 3.

As the GT season was winding down GTN desired to once again prove itself both individually and as a team on the “world stage”. This lead to our drivers seeking out and participating in various other GTR based leagues and also lead us to the FILSCA family. We fielded drivers in the prestigious Masters of GTR league (MoG) featuring many of the top drivers in the world. GTN fielded teams in both GT and nGT classes with various drivers throughout the season. Key members for the GT squad included Wilfred, Emmo and Krueger. After getting a late start this group narrowly missed taking both the team and driver titles in a hard fought battle with Sim Racing for Holland and their ace Bob Bakker. On the nGT end of the grid key players were Claus Juel, Kent Welker and D Boyd. These 3 surprised all comers by taking the oft viewed as a “pig” Porsche Bi-Turbo to a convincing victory in both the team and drivers cups. Claus took top honors and also helped to deliver the overall team title for the league.

GTN also participated in the FILSCA hosted Comet league for the first time late in the year for season R. Due to scheduling restraints only our European drivers were able to participate in the prestigious league. Despite limited participation from Claus, Emmo and Krueger, we were able to bring home a 2nd place in the team competition, with Claus taking 4th in the driver’s standings. Other leagues with varying degrees of involvement included, Danish GTR Society’s GTR Series, and Nordschleife Cup. WOSEC’s GTR League in which we dominated with the likes of Kent Welker, Wil van den Brink, and Larry Man among others. Several great events from our USF1 and LNR buddies, predominantly for guys here on the “West side of the Pond”. These included events using both GTR and more recently rFactor in various forms. We have a great start in the just beginning GTR Endurance league from the folks at TMcArthur.net, with a win and 2nd place finishes in the opening round.

All in all it has been a great year for both GTNDC and the sim racing community in general. We have seen a lot of great strides in the quality of both sims and racing, and even better things seem just over the horizon. We look forward to the coming year and the opportunity to continue to showcase our talents around the world and also share and serve the community in any way that we can.