Want to try some racing, but can't afford to actually get a car out at Knockhill yet? If so, then online racing could be the thing for you. Myself and Mike (also known as Knockhill Fan on our forums) are both very active members (and admins) of the European Stock Car Online Racing Series (ESCORS), which uses the NASCAR Racing 2003 Season game by Papyrus, and we both have a lot of fun there. ESCORS tries to simulate real-life NASCAR as much as possible, but with the obvious benefit that you don't get injured when you crash, and neither do you have a huge repair bill. There's talk of a money system being introduced to the league for next season, so repair bills may well happen then, but even then it's still "virtual" money, rather than real money, so a lot easier for those of us who have to watch our bank accounts!

Mike and myself currently run our own team, Team Ecosse, and you might just find our main sponsor looks quite familiar (right). Those car are the ones we run in the British Challenge Series, which is one of the Touring divisions (fourth level from the top, the level which most new drivers go into after their initial licence evaluation period - more on that later). We've both run in that series all season, and Mike is the boss of the series, so we're pretty heavily involved in it now - it's got a fantastic atmosphere, and almost all the drivers get on with each other really well. As the name suggests, it's aimed at British drivers, but we also have two Germans, an Austrian, a Belgian, a South African, an American and a Dutch driver as well, so it has quite an international flavour to it. Sadly there aren't many Scots - we were the only ones until recently, however another two have signed up in the last few weeks; one of them, Ewan Lawson, has joined our team, too, which makes it all the more fun for us to have a new driver joining us.

Unfortunately we haven't had a huge amount of success in the BCS as yet, with Mike's best result being 3rd at Texas, and mine 5th at Berlin, but mostly I've been only just inside the top ten, as this is my first season of racing, and I still have a lot to learn. However, consistency pays off in this game, and Mike is currently second in the championship standings, heading into our second race at Rockingham Motor Speedway (yes, we even have races in Britain!) on Wednesday, so on that front we're doing fairly well.

As well as the BCS, we both run in the European Challenge Series (based on the real-life ARCA series), which is the third-highest series in ESCORS. Mike has been running there since he joined ESCORS in 2001, while I ran a few guest starts in the early part of this season, along with several starts substituting for other drivers, before becoming a fulltime driver in early June, after some consistent, if slow drives. As with the BCS, we haven't had a lot of luck, however Mike won his first ever race at Daytona in February (left), while I finished that race in 3rd place, which was a huge result for me, in my first race at that level!

If you're interested in joining, then the first thing to do is to get NASCAR Racing 2003 (assuming your computer is capable of running it - it's a bit graphics intensive, although you don't need a super-fast machine), and get to know it. It's best to use a steering wheel and pedals with the game, as it gives you far better control than a joystick or keyboard would do. Also it is a good thing to ensure you have a good connection to the internet, as "warp" can be a big nuisance in a race - there's nothing more irritating than finding the cars around you vanishing and reappearing again, whether it's you or them who is warping! Any broadband connection will be good enough, however if you are using 56k dial-up you may find you have some problems. I've had to run with it a couple of times, and have managed a reasonably stable connection, but it is very variable, depending on your ISP and phone line quality.

Once you have your equipment set up, then you can get going with the racing. The best way to go about it is to visit the ESCORS website at www.escorsracing.com, and follow the link at the top of the page to sign up. From there, you will go into a Weekly Series (decided by which day of the week you select as your preferred day to race), and then you will run on that track for seven weeks, before the admin in charge decides if you are suitable to race at a higher level. I run the Nashville Weekly Series, on Tuesdays, and I really enjoy it - all the weekly series run on short ovals, so they can be quite tricky to learn, but they make for good racing even with small grids. Although if, like me, you're not the quickest, then you get lapped all the quicker when it's a 20 second lap! Especially as I'm unlucky enough to have one of the quickest short track drivers in ESCORS running on that track as well! If your track is in one of the regions with more than one track (each track is placed in a region according to the real-life NASCAR Weekly Series regions), then you're free to race on the other tracks in your region, as well, which can make a nice change, assuming you actually like the other tracks.

Once you're finished with the Weekly Series, then you can step up to another series, depending on which licence you've been awarded. Every series in ESCORS is based on a real-life NASCAR series, so at the top we have the European Cup Series (Winston Cup), where all the big stars race. Next up is the Alienware Series (Busch Series), which Mike has made several guest starts in, and hopes to step up to fulltime for next season. Next up in the NASCAR hierarchy is the Craftsman Truck Series, however there hasn't been a CTS version of the NASCAR games for some years now, so there has been no corresponding series. But, recently it was announced that a modification for N2003 will be released shortly, so the European Truck Series will soon be making a comeback (its last season ended in early 2001). Not surprisingly there's been some big excitement about this - we're going to run a couple of trucks in the series, but as we already run two series fulltime, it wouldn't be realistic for either of us to run fulltime in the ETS, so we will be sharing a non-regular truck, while Juhani Oksanen, a Finnish driver from the Alienware Series, will run the other on a fulltime basis.

Below the ETS comes the ECS, which I've already mentioned as being the second series we both run in. Unfortunately it runs on Sundays, and the schedule (which incidentally follows the real life ARCA schedule, as all the ESCORS schedules follow their real-life counterparts) worked out so that there was an ECS race on every single Sunday that we have/will visit Knockhill this year, so we don't get to run as many races as we'd like! Finally come the touring series, which are all marketed at a particular region of Europe, although anyone is free to join any series - the most popular is the British Challenge Series, probably because its main language is English (the official language of ESCORS), and it is one of two series which is in the "Grand European Division" (equivalent of the NASCAR Grand National Divison in their Touring Series structure), the other being the Nordic All-Stars Series, which is aimed at Scandinavian drivers, and also has English for its official language. The other touring series are all in the Elite Division, and are the European Southwest Series (Spanish), Dutch All-Pro Series (Holland/Belgium), and the Francophone West Series (France).

As you can see it's all pretty realistic - the majority of the rules are based on real-life, as well, to make the experience as near to reality as possible, for example until recently drivers were not allowed to run in races at different tracks on successive days (the weekly series is exempt from these rules), as obviously in real-life it's not easy for drivers to travel between tracks so quickly. However a few weeks back someone noticed that a real-life driver had in fact raced on two different tracks on two successive days, missing qualifying for the second race, so the original rule has now been modified to account for that! All the rules can make it a bit complicated, but it's great fun, and I really enjoy being there - the community spirit is fantastic, and I've made several new friends through it as well.