A Brief History of Realish Racing

Realish Racing has been a simracing community since 2011. Like any community active for so long, there's a mountain of lore and in-jokes. This is but a brief history of Realish Racing - if you stick around, you'll learn an awful lot more

In the beginning, there was the F1 Fanatic (now RaceFans.net) forum. There, in June 2011, a group of eight members organised a season on Forza Motorsport 3. At the end of the season, they split off, a website and forum were created, and Really Rubbish Racing was born: "From the green light to the blue flag, we races for fun because we're not very good".

Even in these earlies days, community and variety were the keys. We did oval racing, touring cars, MEME (mid-engined, mid-eighties) cars, had a surprisingly controversial GT3 season and even took early steps to test our skills against the wider simracing world

Despite moving to Forza Motorsport 4 at the end of 2011, it was clear that a change was required going forward. In early 2014, after testing various options, there were parallel seasons run on Gran Turismo 6 and Race 07. While interest in GT6 would fizzle out during the year, Race 07 gained a lot of momentum and quickly became the focus.

Getting on TV and Becoming Realish (2014-2017)

Almost from the beginning of official Race 07 seasons, there were race videos with graphics and commentary added in post. While this was a labour-intensive process, it opened the door for Really Rubbish Racing to feature on Motors TV, with the V8 Australicars and British Sports Prototype Cup seasons airing in 1 hour packages in 2015.

In the mist of this, it was decided to change the name to Realish Racing to reflect that fact that we were actually quite good at this simracing thing. 

Being on television (this was before livestreaming really took off) arguable marked the high water mark of Realish Racing's popularity. A surge of new members joined for the popular and super-competitive HBTM season in 2016, the first on Game Stock Car Extreme. However, despite an expanded production team, making race videos at the standards we set just wasn't sustainable in the long term.

Taking On The World (2017-2023)

While Team Realish Racing could trace its roots back to the Forza Motorsport days, it took on a new prominence when a team was entered into the Virtual Le Mans Series in 2016, then Global Endurance series in 2021 (among others), at times entering as many as three teams with several drivers each. While these efforts saw only occasional success, seeing our members take on the wider world, after existing in splendid isolation for so long, really lived up to the Realish mission. That and in a world of Serious Competition, Team Realish Racing had fun and generally tried to make everywhere we went a bit more entertaining.

Closer to home, seasons continued apace. A transition to rFactor 2 started in 2017, while Assetto Corsa Competizione became the basis of our GEARS endurance series in 2020. Also in 2020, lockdowns saw a sudden surge as members new and old hit the track, but this only papered over the fact that numbers were declining and, with the world returning to normal, the difficult decision was made to pause organised racing at the end of 2023.

A New iRacing Chapter (2025- )

After a much-needed break, several Realish members took up iRacing and, inevitably, discussion of a Realish iRacing season started. A test season was held in March 2025 with existing members, and generated enough interest to suggest that iRacing could be the future of Realish Racing. Welcome to the next chapter!