In a nutshell

The Legends League is a community of dedicated simracers. Most of our members are GPL-veterans, a mix of slow and fast, making it a good place for beginners and experienced racers alike. The current sim of choice is rFactor1. We race every Sunday at 19:00GMT. 

We take our racing seriously, but in a friendly and sportsmanlike spirit. Legends members come from all over the world - from Russia to the USA, from Sweden to Thailand and Australia.

We race using our real names. Setups are freely shared and members help each other become better racers. That’s the spirit of the Legends League.

Since 1993

The Legends League may well be the oldest active simracing league in the world. Its origins lie in the SPRTSMS forum of Compuserve, when a group of racing enthusiasts founded F1SA (Formula 1 Simulators Association) - to keep their messages apart from the golf simmers!

That was in 1993, when HTML, email and the world wide web were largely unknown. We raced F1GP (known as World Circuit in the USA and Canada) and GP2 by Microprose, and Indycar Racing 2 by Papyrus. Mostly with keyboard or joystick, wheels and pedals being rare in those days. Consequently very few people managed to race without driving aids, those that did were called Water Walkers. And oh yes, the racing was done offline exclusively. Multiplayer didn’t exist. It was basically a hot lapping competition, as well as full length off-line racing against the AI and then comparing authenticated race times to decide the league's human (and alien even then!) winners.

Grand Prix Legends

All that changed on October 9, 1998, when simracing took a giant leap: Papyrus introduced Grand Prix Legends. This sim featured a sophisticated physics model and, even more important, multiplayer racing over the internet.

In 1999, one of its beta-testers and distinguished member of F1SA, Joachim Trensz, ported the whole community to e-Goups (now Yahoo groups) and re-baptized it to Legends League. We no longer use GPL, but the name will remain. It doesn’t reflect the quality of our driving but our origins.

Here's an early website that we used circa 1999. See what we looked like when in our online infancy and before we had quite so many grey hairs (or for some of us - when we had hair!).

rFactor

Grand Prix Legends was succeeded, after a few years of low league activity, by the Trans-Am mod for Papyrus’ Nascar Racing 2003. The physics and the racing were good, but the tin-topped cars didn’t spark much enthusiasm. After a brief spell of frantic racing the league turned dormant once again.

In September 2005, ISI [Image Space Inc.] sent a wake-up call: rFactor turned out to be another step up in realism. When the F3 Euroseries mod was added, we were wide awake. These were easily the best simulated open wheelers we had ever driven! The Legends Trans World Formula 3 championship (or TWF3) was organized. When the GP79 mod for rFactor came out, the Trans World Formula 1 championship (or TWF1) was added. Since then numerous rfactor championships have been organised with different mods along side the main GP79 series. Off season, Special and Annual events are on the calendar every season as well.

iRacing

2012: Unfortunately the iRacing venture has not been succesfull despite numerous efforts* by admins and members. We had to close the iRacing department and for now its future remains uncertain in legends.

 * The main reason we where unable to implement iRacing into to our League was due to iRacing's own format. For drivers out there it was no longer needed to join a league because iRacing took care of the bulk and we simply could not get enough drivers to commit to our own events.

Current administration

Legends League consists of all it's members, and is owned by all it's members. Legends League members are generally prepared to contribute their knowledge and time, and is managed on a purely volunteer basis.  Legends League is currently managed with the help of:

• Bret Metcalf - Managing Director &  RD 
• John Wallace - Membership & General admin
• Rouke vd Hoek - Webmaster & RD
• Ray Walton - Financial Director
• Rik Walker - Tech & General Admin
• Kat Scott - Chief Steward
• Rick Stratton - General Admin
• and the invaluable contributions from our Race Stewards

Joachim Trensz is still a member, of course, but has retired as a director and alien...

Why Sunday night racing?

All championship races last around 50 minutes and are all held on Sunday nights. The reason is that it’s the only night where the vast majority of people in both Europe and North-America are simultaneously available for racing. Every other night will simply yield lower numbers of drivers, including Saturdays when many people have social obligations.

Now you know why things are as they are.