MWM Team History

In 1994, Papyrus released a racing sim called NASCAR Racing (NR). Pretty advanced stuff at the time, NR included SVGA graphics (640x480 resolution), stereo sound and offered nine tracks on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit. In 1995 a track pack was released that added seven additional racing venues to the sim.

NR was definitely not the first racing sim. There were many open wheel sims out there already, and there had been an attempt at a NASCAR sim with Konami's Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge back in 1990. But it was NASCAR Racing with it's "advanced" graphics and physics that hooked many sim racers on the door-to-door style of stock car racing.

In 1996 Papyrus released NASCAR Racing 2 (N2). This new release included all of the tracks from the 1996 season except Daytona and Indianapolis. Included in the box for N2 was a small flyer advertising a pay-to-play service called the "Total Entertainment Network" (AKA TEN, AKA ten.net) that would allow drivers to connect to the service and race live against other drivers over the internet. The service was not online when the game released, however.

Finally, in November of 1997, TEN went live with NASCAR Racing 2. Providing servers across the country (SF, Chicago and NY), boasting field sizes of up to 20 drivers, and hosting the official NASCAR Racing Online Series (NROS), there were no other on-line racing offerings to rival it. At the time, leagues were almost unheard of, so "pickup racing" was the way to play. Unfortunately, pickup races, because of the extremely high potential for incidents brought on by careless, inconsiderate driving, became known as "wreckfests". It was at this point that MountainWest Motorsports began to take shape in it's earliest incarnation.

Early Days

By January of 1998, three drivers (CmptrGuy, TRS/Wezbad1 and Buck_Nekid) decided that the best way to get quality seat time on-line was to race among friends who could drive fast and clean. Not just acquaintances, but buddies who would share advice and setups (and a hard time every now and then). It turned out to be a good idea. The group expanded almost immediately to include SCOOTTER and MonTCarlo and soon after, Shysty, Qn_Shysty, Terit (AKA Ding_Bat), NDE, RASync and SilverBullet. Practicing on one night and hosting a "Team Race" the next, a core group of 5-7 drivers raced together every week until October of 1999, when TEN announced its intention to close its doors. Final TEN Statistics are available here.

TEN decided to get out of the business when Sierra/Papyrus completed NASCAR Racing 3 (N3). Unlike NASCAR Racing 2, N3 allowed for free internet play, but at the price of the organization, familiarity and relative security of TEN's "Pay-for-play" zones.

By comparison, the free on-line racing environment Sierra provided with NASCAR 3 was total chaos. It was at this point that we decided to band together officially to form a team. Of the original TEN crew, TRS (Ted), Buck_Nekid (Bob), Scooter (Scott) and NDE (Rob) remained.

Making it Official

By Christmas of 1999, it was agreed that the team had to come up with an official name. Nominees included Rolling Rubber, Gold Rush, PacNet, Gearhead and Foot-to-the-Floor. After some discussion and tweaking, we decided on MountainWest Motorsports. This was our first logo (right).

One reason we chose MountainWest is because it covers our geographic area as a team. It also kind of has a nice ring to it. The web site came online at almost the same time in December 1999. Since forming as an "Official" team, MountainWest Motorsports has raced in the Online Stock Car Auto Racing League (OSCAR), the Outcasts Online Racing League, the Western States Racing League (WSRL) and others.

In mid 2000 the team roster expanded with the addition of new member, Doug Cox, AKA Gearslingr. The team web site had several enhancements, including a the addition of a N3 chassis setup area and the public message board, hosted by EZ Board. We also made some visual changes to the site. Here is our second logo:

The mountains in the logo may have reminded us of Disney's "It's a Small World". So it didn't last very long, as we quickly updated it:

MountainWest also launched it's own on-line NASCAR 3 race server and began utilizing it's own Roger Wilco Base Station for all in-race team communications. The year ended with three championships, the first for the team: NDE won the Friday IROC Championship in the WSRL, while Buck_Nekid won both the WSRL Monday IROC and the regular season points Championships for the Fall/Winter 2000 Monday Series.

Changes continued to follow in 2001 as Papyrus released NASCAR Racing 4. This next version of the sim caused the team to update the server for hosting N4 practice sessions. At the same time the third generation of the web site came online and our "Classic" MWM logo made its first appearance, below.

With N4 server bugs worked out, in early 2001 the team welcomed aboard it's sixth member: Paul Eigsti, AKA, Paul_E the founder and administrator of the WSRL.

In 2001 MountainWest also added it's fourth and fifth Championships to the trophy case: Gearslingr (Doug Cox) brought home the regular points Championship for the Spring/Summer 2001 Friday WSRL Series (where drivers from MountainWest scored 6 of the top 7 positions in the final Friday standings) and Rob Gall won the Championship in the NCRL Spring/Summer 2001 Series.

In August 2001, the Team held its first ceremony for our members. Check out the Awards Banquet page, here.

As 2001 came to a close, MountainWest member Doug Cox brought home his second consecutive WSRL Friday Championship, bringing the team total tosix. Late 2001 also saw the return of OSCAR, under the direction of the Flashpoint Racing League after a two-year absence.

Stepping it up

In early 2002, more changes came to our web site, including an URL of our own: www.MWMRacing.com. We designed the fourth generation of the MountainWest logo, below, and made many updates to the site. We stopped using EZ Board for our forum and started using our own SQL-based message board, PHPBB. In addition, after encountering some difficulties with Roger Wilco, we made a change and transitioned over to Teamspeak.

Here is a shot of some of our cars from NASCAR 4:

In mid-February 2002 Papyrus released NASCAR Racing 2002 Season. With the WSRL and OSCAR seasons having just started, we spent some time with both versions of the sim. For a short time, the MWM server was setup with both simulators to support both the teams' N4 and N2002 efforts. But the switchover to NASCAR 2002 was completed by March.

In April, five members of the team met in Southern California along with a bunch of guys from the WSRL for the Napa Auto Parts 500 at the California Speedway.  Paul organized a get-together for the WSRL that included go-cart racing, a trip to the coast & beach, and a lot more. There's a shot of the guys at "Dave and Buster's" on Saturday evening, right.

Additional shots from the weekend are posted here...

In September of 2002, Flashpoint (theleague that hosts OSCAR) merged with Onlineracin.com to form amembership service very similar to TEN. Flashpoint also expandedand formed FASCAR, a fixed setup league similar in size and organizationto OSCAR.

At the same time, the WSRL continued on with it's Fall Season, running divisions on Tuesday and Friday Nights.

In November, the team logo receivedanother treatment:

The changes seemed to agree with the team.  In late November, as the Flashpoint season came to a close, Doug won the Sportsman Division 1 Championship, Scott brought home the Firebrand Division 2 Championship and Bob won the Championship in FASCAR's Stock 4 division, which brought the team total to 9.

In January 2003 MWM welcomed it's first new member in two years: Cory Gall. More change followed in February as NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, announced as the final NASCAR sim from Sierra / Papyrus, was released.

The MWM server was immediately switched over, as was the WSRL server. However, Flashpoint started their season with the previous sim, requiring the team to maintain both sims for a while, but everyone had finished the shift to N2003 by mid-march.

In April of 2003 the WSRL held it's second-annual racers' gathering in "Sin City", Las Vegas, Nevada. Five members of the team attended, along with a healthy number of WSRL'ers.

Paul put in a lot of work and setup a lot of activities for us all to enjoy, including a trip to the NASCAR Cafe, some racing at a local karting facility and a trip to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway's "Bull Ring" for an evening of live racing action. We were the first spectators to arrive, so we relaxed with our favorite beverages and took a picture (right) before going into the stadium. If you ever have a chance to visit the Bull Ring, don't miss it.

In September 2003, Papyrus released a patch for N2003 that opened the code for modification by the enthusiast community. Immediately, mods appeared for the Busch Grand National, Craftsman Trucks, Trans-Am, IROC series and more.

2003 also saw the team enjoy more success on the track. Doug brought home his fourth individual championship for the Spring WSRL Tuesday Series and Cory scored his first in OSCAR's Outlaw Division. In the Fall/Winter WSRL, Doug won number five in the Tuesday Series while Bob won his fourth in the Friday Series.

There were also more changes to the MWM web site, including another treatment of the logo, below, created in flash, to allow a slide show of pictures.

In July of 2004 the team gathered again, this time in Ukiah, to enjoy a week of fun, culminating with Bob and Trish's wedding.

2005 was good for the team as well. Doug and Bob saw success out on the track, winning respective Championships in the WSRL's Tuesday and Friday Leagues during the Spring/Summer season. MWM also expanded, bringing on a new driver: Trish Beltrami got a set of keys to the MWM shop in November. While she's had sim-racing experience dating back to the TEN days, her first league experience was racing in the WSRL Tuesday Series with sponsorship from the San Fransisco-based Ghirardelli Chocolate Company finishing the season in 5th place. The year came to a close with Doug and Rob winning the Tuesday and Friday Championships in the WSRL Fall/Winter Season.

Early in 2006, MWM expanded again with the addition of it's ninth member, WSRL regular Mark Rediker. Out on the track, Doug continued his run of success by winning his eighth career championship in the the WSRL Friday series for the Spring/Summer season.

At Christmas time 2006, Mark sent everyone a die cast replica of our Team cars that he hand painted, along with step-by-step documentation of how he did it, including pictures. On the right is Bob's #20, along with pictures from Mark's step-by-step below. The first shows the eight cars in the midst of the painting process. The cars had been fully painted including decals, so Mark had a lot of prep to do before getting to the painting stage. After the paint was done, the next step was application of the decals. The third picture, below right, shows the final product, the MWM stable in die-cast.

The WSRL's 2006 Fall/Winter Season drew to a close in January of '07. Doug won his ninth Season Championship for his efforts in the Tuesday Series while Bob brought home his sixth for winning the Friday Series.

After a short break and a few non-points races, the WSRL kicked off the Spring/Summer 2007 season in the third week of February, matching the NASCAR Cup Series Schedule. As the season progressed, the league took an extra week off as a group of racers, family and friends gathered in Las Vegas in June. Trish put together activities for the bunch that included dinner on the strip at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, time on track at FastLat Indoor Kart Racing, lunch at the NASCAR Cafe for qualifying, an evening at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway's Bull Ring for "Bullring Bubba Night" and more.

The League Championship Trophy Case