Rockstar Racing and Triumph at the Nürburgring 24 Hours

In the summer, we wrote about a car with Rockstar Games logos winning its class at the Nürburgring, but we made one important mistake — the creators of GTA and RDR are not just sponsors of the team, they form its core. The Washington Post detailed the success of the game developers behind the wheel of a racing car, and as usual, we’ve gathered all the most interesting details.

Ben Lyons, the current Technical Director at Rockstar North, has always combined a passion for cars with recreating them in video games. In his spare time, he participated in popular autosolos in the UK — solo competitions primarily for individuals driving their own cars. Now, Ben isn’t sure if these events were safe, but he calls them an excellent way to learn about a car and its behavior on the road. Once he joined the studio, he immediately found like-minded colleagues. This led to the creation of Rockstar Racing, a team of car enthusiasts who transferred their knowledge and experience into games. While working on GTA 5, they purchased and modified a used 2006 BMW 325i. Using it RR participated in numerous races in Scotland.

Nearly 10 years later, the team faced a new challenge — entering the V4 division (for sedans with 2.5-liter engines) of one of the toughest endurance tests, the Nürburgring 24 Hours, an event open to amateurs despite its difficulty. The Nürburgring, located in the Eifel mountains in Germany, features 73 corners, an elevation change of about 300 meters, and challenging weather conditions.

Once, during a pit stop, heavy rain began, but one of the drivers, a friend of Ben’s who wasn’t a Rockstar employee, confidently said:

I know it’s raining here, but it’s dry further on. We don’t need to switch from dry tires to wet ones.

This was a risky decision, but it was made. After continuing, Ben had slight issues with the clutch on the wet section, but it quickly ended, and the rest of the track was dry. This decision became the decisive factor in the final result — Viken Motorsport (the name of the Rockstar Racing team during the competition) finished in the top 75 out of over 130 cars and came in first in their class on their first attempt.

In the future, the enthusiasts plan to continue adding new vehicles to GTA Online, transferring their real-life racing experience into the game, and they aim to return to the track in real life soon.