A memoir of the NROS - by Jaim Friesen, former NROS Official
Why tell the story?
Well... no one else has, and I think it's something worth remembering. I keep searching online for references to it, and there just seem to be fewer and fewer every day. This memoir is my way sharing with you the history of the NROS, and my view of that whole experience. The thing is, I have a unique viewpoint of what happened. I saw it from all sides. I was a racer, a car painter, an NROS official and an Administrator (in a limited capacity). I got to see the whole picture, from the business side of it to the competitor's side of it.

Before I get into it, a lot of you may not even know what the NROS was... so let's start with that...

What was the NROS?
The NROS was the NASCAR Racing Online Series (thus the acronym). It was actually a brilliant idea. There were thousands of us racing this NASCAR game against each other over the web. --- wait... huh? Racing Online??

Oh, yeah. I should probably explain that, huh?

Why would someone race cars online, and how?
You see, auto racing is unique among other sports. It's the only one that really translates well to the online environment. When you're racing online, you get the same emotional highs and lows that real racecar drivers get. You get the same feeling of accomplishment when you win, the rush of adrenaline when you make a pass at the stripe on the last lap for the win, and the same knot in the pit of your stomach when you let one get away.

You also have to bring all the same skills to bear... driving skill, strategy, patience and endurance. Pushing the envelope, finding that last 10th of a second. It's all the same as racing in real life. You have to put in the same kind of practice, and you have to hone your skill as a driver in the same way. Whether you ultimately succeed or fail, you feel the same feelings, and get the same rush that one gets when driving in a real race car. That will never be true of any other sport when played online. Only auto racing translates so true to it's real-life experience.

And get this... in Sim racing, you get all the same rewards, but you can't get killed or hurt, you don't have to sit in a 140 degree car to do it, and you don't have to leave your house to compete. Yeah... now you get it. ;)

How it worked
The nuts and bolts were... Papyrus/Sierra supplied the game; a brilliant PC racing simulation/game called NASCAR Racing 2 (forefather of the NASCAR Racing 2003 Season now in use today). It accurately modelled NASCAR racing in way that no other game came close to at that time. The Total Entertainment Network (TEN) supplied the online gaming service which was actually pretty dang good considering everyone was dialing up over 28.8 modems. NASCAR... well, NASCAR let TEN and Papyrus/Sierra use the NASCAR name. That's... about... it.

So, typically the way guys found themselves in the NROS was this:
You'd see this NASCAR Racing 2 game at your local Wal-Mart or whatever. You're a NASCAR fan and have a computer that's not doing much at home. You think "Why not?" and pick it up. Big mistake, your life is no longer your own. You run home, install the game, run 20 laps at Bristol and you're hooked for life. Pretty soon, you're upgrading your computer solely for the purposes of making the game run smoother. Then you realize your keyboard or joystick just isn't cutting it for driving. So you go plop down $50 - $100 bucks for a steering wheel and pedals for your computer. And behold, a whole new world opens up to you. You're driving on your computer, and you're running lap times that would put Rusty Wallace to shame. The only downside is, Your significant other feels neglected and starts getting jealous of this stupid NASCAR game that's taking up ALL of your free time instead of them. They hate the game with a passion. You don't care, you can beat the AI at Rockingham at 104%. You're the man. Earnhardt has nothing on you.

Problem is, you're stuck racing the computer cars (or AI - Artificial Intelligence) and well, they suck. So you find out you can race other REAL people online! You sign up for TEN, hop on, and your life is never the same. Pretty soon you're up 'till 2-3AM four nights a week (at least) racing a bunch of people you've never met before that have all become your friends. After a few months of this, the long-rumored NROS (the official NASCAR series) actually happens. You sign up, and before you know it, you're practicing and racing your butt off every week trying to make the finals.

At this time I would like to point out that I just accurately recounted the story of about 90% of the guys who raced in the NROS and are still racing online today (you know who you are), and I did it in 2 paragraphs. Who's your Daddy...

What was the NROS? (continued)
So... we were all racing this NASCAR game against (or with) each other online. Thousands of us. We had user-run leagues and 'pick-up' racing, but no 'formal' competition of any kind. The whole thing was just screaming for NASCAR to step in and get involved. Well, the NROS was an attempt to do just that. The goal was ultimately to give online NASCAR racers a chance to compete in a NASCAR sanctioned racing series online. It was a bold idea that still has potential to this day. I don't wanna give away the ending, but since this is a 'memoir' and I keep talking about 'remembering' it, you've probably already surmised that it's now dead. Even if you didn't Sherlock Holmes that one, you'll get the jist as you read this anyway, so... Unfortunately, the three major businesses involved could not reach a mutually beneficial agreement beyond the first season, and the NROS went the way of the Dodo after just one season. More on that later.

The actual series started in September. We raced at 2 different tracks each week. Each competitor had a 3 day window to run their race at a particular track. TEN automatically recorded the results in a database. The top 8 finishers in points after all of the events got a free trip to Daytona, and free tickets to the Busch and Cup race that weekend (AKA - the Daytona 500). Not to mention a shot at the title and the $3000 check and crystal trophy that went with it (I saw them, they were both very nice).

Now we take a bit of a detour. My being an official (and how that came to be) sets up a lot of the stories I'm going to tell and my whole view on this thing, so for the next few minutes we need to bridge off into my becoming an official and what we poor officials had to do. ;)

How I became an NROS official
Let's see... It was July of 1998, I was 23 and had been playing Papyrus' NASCAR game for several years at that point, and had been painting cars for it as well. I had gotten pretty good at the car-painting thing over the years, and learned HTML so I could build my own website to share my paint schemes with other people. To soupe up the website (and get better at car painting) I learned a lot of the skills your professional webmasters and graphic artists have. So, by the time 1998 rolled around, I had HTML skills, knew the game inside and out, knew a lot about racing, (online and in the real world) and had substantial digital graphic arts skills as well. I had just quite my job working night security for a retirement home (the only time in my life I've quit a job without having another already) so I was a little worried about what I was going to do next.

I was racing in the AOLL (America Online League - a GREAT group of guys) and one of the admins of the AOLL (Don Wilburne, GOD BLESS YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE!!!) told me that TEN (based in nearby San Francisco) was looking to hire NROS officials and that if I didn't apply, he was going to do it for me. I had just quit my night security job, and sent my resume in the next day (it would have fit on a postcard. LOL). Two weeks later (on August 18th, 1998) I had an interview at the TEN offices, and was hired on the spot. Wow. My hobby had just become my job, and they were paying me pretty good to do it. HALLELUJAH!!!!

They hired two other guys right after me (Mike and Will) and we had our team of Three officials.

What did an NROS official do?
Too much for only three people, but I wouldn't have changed a thing. Here's a list of the things we officials were responsible for. These were largely shared duties between the three of us:
  • Worked with other officials to develop the race schedule.
  • Worked with other officials to develop and modify the official rules of the series.
  • Monitored the race arenas (where the racers met on TEN to organize their races).
  • Reviewed protests and race replays (the fun part).
  • Penalized rule violators (the not-so-fun part).
  • Monitored the official NROS newsgroups on the TEN server (the antithesis-of-fun part)
  • Oversaw the NROS guides, a group of racers who helped us monitor the rooms (another very fun part of the job)
  • Any formal communication between the NROS and the competitors came through us (boring as hell, but good experience)
Here's a list of the special duties I had:
  • I was responsible for maintaining and updating the NROS website each week
  • The guides had their own private website. I designed, coded and maintained that site as well.
  • Research into online Audio/Video broadcasting options (so that people could watch the races)
  • Re-work of the processes for handling and tracking penalties and race reviews.
Ok. Now you know what our jobs were, let's get into some of the fun stuff that went on during the season and the finals in Daytona.

The Season
Like I said, the season started in September of 1998, and it lasted into December. It was a really hectic schedule and one heckuva roller coaster ride. 14-18 hour days for us officials, and probably 20-hour days for the racers (between working, practicing and racing). It was the fun type of chaos, though, and I get a wry grin on my face whenever I think back on it. I mean think about it, each week the real Cup series has about 50 competitors to deal with, they're the same competitors from week to week, and they only run on weekends. Well, we had 700+ competitors and they were racing EVERY DAY.

The other thing is... no one had ever tried anything like this before. We had a framework and an idea of how it should be done, but really we were just doing our best to feel our way through it without the whole thing going down the drain. We ran into all sorts of 'growing pains'. Sim racers are a difficult crowd to please (You SIM Racers know I'm not saying anything that isn't true, so quit booing) and it was really all we officials could to to keep things going. Here are just some of the issues we ran into:

  Changing the schedule
Probably the thing that caused the most stress for everyone was when we had to change an upcoming track on the schedule. As I mentioned, we changed tracks twice a week. Well, we did not have time to test out each track for potential problems prior to the season (we'd only been hired a month before the season started) so we ran a beta test race a few days ahead of time at the next track on the schedule. Well, a couple of times we found some serious issues with the track that basically made it unusable. Either black flags would come out unfairly, or there was serious warp in a bad spot on the track, or something like that. When we found something like that, we HAD to change the schedule. We couldn't have people getting unfairly black flagged 'en masse'.

Problem was, often we couldn't give much notice of the change. Sometimes we had to change it just 1 or 2 days before the track was coming up on the schedule. Well, if you're a racer, and you've spent several hours over the last few days practicing for one track, and you find out you're running somewhere else, that's pretty upsetting. Your practice time isn't totally lost, but you don't have much time to practice up at the new track.

Anyway... this was one of those no-win situations for us officials. We got TATTOOED on the message boards for every schedule change we made. But, if we hadn't changed those tracks, we'd have gotten double-TATTOOED when all the competitors got wrongly black flagged.

BTW, I'd like to take a minute to thank all the guys on our beta test team. They were some of the best racers and people in the SIM racing community, and they were a HUGE help to us. Guys like Matt Merciez, Justin Belfiore, the aforementioned Don Wilburne and others gave up practice time to come help us test. The beta testers and NROS guides were the unsung heroes of the NROS, in my opinion.

Protests and Penalties
The NROS rules were thorough, specific, clear, and posted right on the NROS website. If one competitor saw another one breaking the rules, or there was a scoring problem (finishing positions, unfair black flags, etc.) he/she could e-mail us (the officials) after the race to protest. It was then our job to review the race replay and chat logs, and make a ruling. Watching the replays was a TOTAL blast. Doling out the penalties just flat-out sucked. I absolutely hated it... in most cases. If you've ever seen Shawshank Redemption, you probably remember the line "There ain't no guilty men in Shawhank.". Well, apparently there weren't any guilty racers in the NROS, either. I can count on one hand the number of times a guy owned up and accepted his penalty. Didn't matter how blatant it was, or the fact that we had the race replay and the chat logs... no one ever "deserved" their penalty. Which I almost always thought was funny. ;)

I saw some pretty amazing things while reviewing penalties. I saw guys absolutely lose their minds on the track. Pillars and 'saints' of the sim racing community would cuss a blue streak over the slightest little thing. Guys would run backwards on the track after being wrecked from the lead. I saw several times where a guy would intentionally ram the field from behind (at full speed) while they were pacing around the track under caution. We had one guy who literally tail-gated and harassed a fellow competitor (who had accidentally wrecked him earlier) for the remaining 150 laps at Atlanta. He was much faster than the other guy, and probably could have come back to win the race, but was so pissed off that instead of trying to get back in it, he spent the entire race harassing this other guy. Talk about your cyber road rage...

We kicked several guys out permanently, too. They'd join races to intentionally wreck the top competitors (after they'd been pretty much eliminated from long-term contention). Others would just stay out on the last pit stop, then brake check the entire field with 5 to go. No apparent reason for it... they just wanted to mess up the whole race for the other guys.

Other thing that cracked me up... there were several guys who probably would have made the final 8 if they'd just learned to keep their temper under control and their mouth shut. Mike Ramsden was one of those guys. He was probably the fastest guy at every track in every race he entered, but he was reckless and would always blame the other guy when he ended up in a wreck. Then he'd file a protest, we'd find out it was his fault and nail him, and OOOOHHHH, did that chap his hide. Mike's actually always been one of my favorite guys in Sim racing, but he talked and false-protested himself right out of a trip to the finals. He's probably still cursing us to this day. hehe

Anyway... all tolled we probably watched a thousand hours of replays, and if I remember correctly, we processed over a thousand protests during the course of the 5 months. About 25% were bogus, as I recall. Not all were from Mike, it just seemed like it sometimes. =)

So... back to the season. We ran three divisions, Beginner, Advanced and Pro (based on your rating on TEN), and that was a GOOD idea. There were different settings for each division, and that actually worked pretty well. The higher divisions ran longer races with random weather and 'open' setups (Bring your own setup). The lower divisions ran shorter races with predictable weather and 'fixed' setups (everyone runs the same setup). The suprising thing was, the Beginner races were typically cleaner, better and had fewer incidents than the Advanced and Pro races. Don't know if they just didn't have as many hot-heads or what, but... the beginner series was actually the easiest to work with. There really was a difference in skill between the competitors in each division, though. There were a few exceptions, but... for the most part the guys in the Pro division deserved to be there.

We used the same points system as the Cup Series, so it rewarded consistency. Being consistent wasn't easy. The races were limited to 22 car fields, but since there were several hundred participants, it was a total crap shoot as to who you were going to end up in a race with. You were racing with 21 different guys at each track (for the most part) so to finish well at each race, you really had to be able to avoid trouble skillfully and be smart. All it took was a bad warp or being an unfortunate victim of one of the aforementioned 5-to-go brake checks and you could find yourself out of the running for the final race in a hurry.

Summary
Honestly, I think the whole thing went pretty smoothly, all things considered. We had a few server meltdowns and the aforementioned schedule changes caused a ruckus, but in the end I think we ended up with the cream of the crop in each division, and the guys who made the 'final event' for their respective divisions really did deserve to be there. There were definitely some very talented racers who had bad luck who should have been there, but that's always true in racing. It's as much about luck as it is skill. The same was true with the NROS.

The final events
I think a lot of people who were in the NROS forget about the Beginner and Advanced finals. They didn't get a trip to Daytona, or a trip to anywhere, for that matter, but they raced their butts off, anyway. They got some cool prizes; cash, NROS memoribilia and stuff like that, but these guys were really just racin' to be the best (in their division). There were some exceptional racers in those events, and I recall them both being just GREAT, GREAT races. We officials watched and officiated those in real-time, and it was a BLAST.

So on to the Pro division finals. This was like the first Super Bowl of online racing, and I got to be there for the whole thing. We set up these 8 'racing pods' at the Volusia mall across the street from Daytona. The pods were custom built with 32" TVs, real racing seats and ECCI wheel and pedal setups. Pretty sweet rigs, actually. During the week, Sierra rented out an empty storefront in the mall, and we put the pods in there for demoing purposes. People could come in and try a demo of the game for free (in the pods) and we officials hung around and answered questions, demo'd the game and stuff like that.

I remember my feet hurting that week like CRAZY. Unlike your normal 'mall' employees, we were there from open to close. 8 AM to 8 PM for the entire week prior to the 500. To this day my feet have never hurt so bad, and I used to work in a mall. I had good shoes on, too... it was just a long time to be on your feet. Still, it was fun to see the light go on for people as they sat down and raced the person in the pod next to them. It was also fun just to get to talk to people about the NROS and share the idea, being as enthusiastic about it as we were. ;) I got to meet a LOT of the competitors who came down for the final event and the 500. I also got to meet a lot of the guys from Papyrus, which was very cool.

I remember one person in particular... a girl named Crystal who worked trade shows for Sierra. She and another girl (can't remember her name) helped us out and demo'd some NASCAR Pinball in the storefront. I remember Crystal because, well, she was insanely cool and we got along great. In fact, I had a thing for her. Too bad she lived in Tampa and I (still) live way out here in California. Another one gets away...

Anyway... On Friday morning we moved the pods out into the middle of the mall, which had a big huge open atrium in the middle. We set them up in a semicircle so the crowd could see them all from one side, but the racers couldn't see each other. I remember SPEED channel had a setup out there and they taped a show where Kenny Wallace and Adam Petty (God rest his soul) came by and we saw them. It was pretty cool.

We set the pods up, with a big display in front of them with a leaderboard (that looked like something from a 6th grade art and crafts class) and two huge monitors so the crowd could watch the race. Being the wordy and outgoing guy I am, I got the job of emcee for the race, while the other guys officiated. They ran a 50% (of Cup length) race at Atlanta (it was still the old oval configuration then). It was really an amazing race. Passes for position throughout the race, and just a blistering pace. Let's see if I can remember all 8 finalists, shall we?:
  • Keven Angelbeck
  • Bill Bollinger
  • Dave Trager
  • Mike Blackstone
  • Donnie Lia
  • Dave Brown
  • Darren (something) - dangit
  • Bill Bollinger won the race, but Kevin Angelbeck (AKA FastKev) had the point lead coming in, and held on to win the whole shebang.

    One thing I will always remember is just how people who had no idea what we were doing got mezmerized by it as they walked by. We started out with a crowd of a few dozen people. Mostly Sim Racers who came to see this (and to go to the 500). But, as people walked by, they could see the race going on in the big screens, and they could hear me yapping about the race and talking about the history of the series, and they got hooked. Husbands and wives with their kids in strollers would come and sit down. They had no idea this was even going on when they came to the mall that day, but they ended up staying for the whole thing, engrossed in what was going on. I think it really helped that they could actually see the racers right in front of them (albeit in their pods) and see the race on the big TV's. It was really neat to see, and convinced me that Sim racing could be a spectator sport, if done properly. By the time we were done, there were about 200 people watching the race in the middle of this mall in Daytona, Florida.

    The whole thing was a success from our point of view. The competitors had a blast, we'd had a chance to show off our ingenious product to thousands of people, and we'd learned a lot of very important lessons that we could apply to next season. We celebrated with pit passes and tickets to the Busch race and Daytona 500. We officials bombed around the speedway on a golf cart, and with our goofy (but official-looking) NROS fleece jackets, literally got to go anywhere we wanted, including right ONTO the track before the race. We had a BLAST. I almost got run over by the 4 car in the garage area. I saw Jackie Joyner-Kersee outside Tony Stewart's garage stall (she and Bob were looking into owning a team at the time). I stood on the Start-Finish line and walked across the grass in the infield of the Tri-oval. It was almost surreal it was so amazing. I'll never forget it for as long as I live.

    Oh, one other thing... I had my first KrispyKreme doughnut in Daytona. I'd never heard of them before. We didn't get them in Northern California until about 2000. I had a hot, fresh Raspberry filled doughnut, and that's about as close to a religious experience as one can have with food of any kind.

    Prepping for Season 2
    We headed home and took 2 weeks off to just rest up and relax. As soon as we came back, we got to work on planning for Season 2. Like I said, we had learned a lot of lessons throughout the course of the first season. We had SO many ideas for things we wanted to do to take the NROS to the next level. It was really an exciting time for those first 2 months or so.

    What we realized is that the business model we had would never work. You can't make money by charging the competitors (which is the only source of revenue we had at the time). What we needed was to maintain a way for large numbers of people to compete, but we had to adapt and use the business model NASCAR uses, too. We needed sponsors. Sponsors only come when you have viewers. Viewers only come when you have something to watch. When it comes to racing, people want elite drivers and personalities, and they want good racing. So far, all we had was the good racing and the elite drivers. The rest we needed to build.

    The problem is, we needed a few years to get there. We had a plan, we just needed the resources to keep things going until the series could support itself financially. These were the steps we planned for Season 2 to get us on that path:
    • Create an Elite Division - NASCAR has the Nextel Cup (then called Winston Cup) as its elite series, and we needed one, too. We were going to set up a mini-qualifying series to grab the best 30 drivers out there. These guys would compete in a new 'Elite' division which we'd use to get the world watching Sim Racing. These were the guys with the skills, the personalities and the goods to be the celebrities of our series.
    • Bring in sponsors - We were lining up sponsors for each division, for special events, and were working on a framework for managing official sponsorships (by real companies) of drivers and teams.
    • Race Broadcasts - We were looking into ways to allow people to watch the races through the NROS website. The technology wasn't there for real-time viewing yet, but we were going to post the races as soon as they were finished as streaming video. Eventually we envisioned a full-fledged online viewing portal where Joe-blow internet user could hop on this site, pick any race in progress, and watch that race in real time. The beauty of this was that they controlled the camera and which driver they watched. Something real NASCAR still hasn't gotten to yet.
    • In-depth looks into the series - We'd even hoped to do a weekly show over streaming video sort of like 'Inside NASCAR' does now. We'd meet with and interview drivers, do in-depth looks at the technologies behind the scenes, and even have an "official's talk" segment where we could explain some of the pressing competition issues going on.
    • A longer season - to cut down on the hectic schedule, and give people more time to practice up (resulting in higher quality racing) We wanted to lower the number of races to one per week, but run them over a longer period of time. Instead of 30+ races over the course of 15-16 weeks, we were going to run 22 races over the course of 22 weeks.
    There were many other things as well, but these were the big things. We obviously wanted more competitors, but realized we'd never have enough competitors to make a profit just off of them (unless we charged an amount to enter that would be too prohibitive). We needed sponsor dollars, spectators, elite drivers, and a product that was viewable to the general public.

    The demise of the NROS
    Unfortunately, Sierra, TEN, and NASCAR were having trouble working out a way to support the series financially until it could support itself. The only source of revenue were the subscriptions people paid for TEN (13 bucks a month). If I remember right, NASCAR took 1/3 right off the top, but contributed nothing beyond a little PR (and I do mean a little) and letting us use the NASCAR name. Sierra took another third. They covered the cost for us (the officials) and our equipment. They also footed the bill for the final event in Daytona. TEN got the last 1/3, but had to support the cost of all the servers, bandwidth, and all that jazz, and they were losing money hand over fist. So much so, that they decided to shift focus towards classic card and board games online, which they still do today (quite successfully) as Pogo.com.

    To say we were disheartened by the closure of the NROS would be an understatement. Not only did we really have a strong vision and good plans for it, we (being the officials) also wanted to prove to all of our nay-sayers from the first season that we really did have big plans for the NROS, and that we wanted it to grow strong and big not as much, but more than they did. We believed (and still do believe) in the idea, and to this day I regret that we never got the chance to build the NROS into what we really truly believed it had the potential to be. A profitable and widely followed sport and racing series of its own...

    You should know that I was technically working for Sierra as a contract employee, but working at the TEN offices. And admittedly, I don't have the complete picture on all the negotations and arrangements between Sierra, TEN, and NASCAR. So my recollection of how this went down is probably skewed somewhat. The bottom line is, they couldn't get a deal done that was financially viable for any of them. By August, we officials pretty much knew it was a done deal and spent a good deal of our time killing each other repeatedly (Half-Life, ya goof, not for real). On October 15th, we had a final farewell party because it was the last day of the TEN service. Now sim racers would have to race on matching servers or foot the bill for their own servers, which is basically what's going on to this day.

    I was offered a job answering Customer Service e-mail at TEN/Pogo and I took it (it beat doing night security again). I still work for Pogo, actually, after all these years. I love working at Pogo, and am, so far, building a successful career there. I'm a Producer now, and absolutely love what I'm doing. If it wasn't for the NROS, I wouldn't be where I am now, so I owe much to the NROS and the people who gave me a chance to work on it.

    Anyway... you want proof that fate has a sense of irony? Get this... Pogo.com is now owned by EA, which has the exclusive rights to NASCAR, and is largely the reason why NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is the last NASCAR sim that Papyrus will make.

    Hope for the future
    Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the actual NROS event. I do have some footage of it in VHS format, snd I'm looking into getting it in digital format so I can archive it here and share it with everyone. The show V-Max ran a segment on the NROS (actually used a carset I painted for it) and I have that on VHS, too.

    I really believe that someday online auto racing will be big. There are MILLIONS of aspiring race car drivers out there, and auto racing is one of the most-watched sports in the world. The beauty of sim racing is that it's safe and inexpensive, yet equally as exciting and engaging as real racing for competitors and spectators alike. Someday, the right combination of investors, visionaries, technical minds and racing gurus will build an online racing series, and do it right. I just hope I'm around to see it, and maybe, just maybe, be involved in it somehow.

    A lot of online NASCAR sim racers hate EA (for getting the exclusive license, and because their NASCAR game isn't enough of a SIM for them) but to be honest, they're our best hope at getting something like the NROS done in the future. They have the resources, the vision, and the balls to do it. Problem is, their game is still a long way from being realistic enough. Thing is, it doesn't have to be NASCAR. In fact, Formula 1 would probably be better. Then it could be marketed worldwide. But... who knows?

    Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions or want to know more about the NROS, I'd be happy to talk with you about it. Just drop me an e-mail (use the menu drop-down at the top of the page). =)