On May 22nd 2004 Mercury racing was born, and on May 23rd 2009, the day after our 5 year anniversary we’ll be closing the team down.
It isn’t a decision we’ve taken lightly, the vast majority of the team have been involved in LFS since v0.1 days of 2002/03, and we’ve had some great times in LFS. Sadly the last 18 months or so has been quite disappointing in LFS, for the last year or so we’ve kept up appearances in leagues, but with nothing changing in LFSs development and no sign of improvement in the level of interest in racing with LFS, we’re not going to force our drivers to race in something they’ve no desire/passion to keep on playing and there aren’t signs of things arriving which will help motivate interest either.
Why Close...
The decision to close the team down was something we discussed behind closed doors 2 weeks ago, only 1 thing has really kept the team active in the last 12 months and that’s been MoE and even thats been a stuggle, aside from that there’s very little motivation to keep on racing. We’ve always prided ourselves on only inviting drivers we’ve felt would build upon the team, and while im sure we’d have been able to recruit plenty of new members allowing us to keep the team going, the core part of Mercury wouldn’t be there and we’re not interested in watering down what we’ve achieved simply to keep the team name going, while building an almost completely new team in a game which is seeing the racing aspect of its community fade away. Mercury is/was as much about being part of a family as it was a racing team, its the people who have made it special, not the name, and replacing the people just to keep the name was never going to work.
We'd like to thank...
Regardless of how the future looks in LFS, in the 5 years we’ve been together as a team we’ve had a lot of fun, we wanted to start something special and become recognised as one of the best teams in LFS, we feel we’ve achieved that and we’ve been fortunate to be involved in some of the best races & events witnessed in LFS. We’d like to thank the LFS Devs for what they’ve done, we understand their approach to their ‘game’ and we’ve always applauded the fact that they’ve aimed for perfection rather than a deadline so they can rush something through, its just a real shame that the pace of development has got to a point where the part of the community we are involved in has been gradually fading away for the same reasons we’re calling it a day. The fact that LFS has been around for over 6 years for many of us, and there still isn’t anything around which comes close to matching what LFS has, even as an unfinished product, which speaks volumes for what they’ve achieved. Its the game which brought us together, without their hard work we wouldn’t have met and formed such a great relationship with each other, so we’ll always be thankful for that.
We’d also like to thank the vast number of league organisers who’ve given us a reason to form as a team, a target to aim for, and something we’ve had hours and hours of enjoyment from. Your dedication to providing something for the community to enjoy, from short sprint races to 24hr endurance races, we owe you guys a huge thanks because our reason for creating the team was to be involved in these events, to take the racing serious and have fun doing just that, and every season the leagues have got better and better, and its good and well being in a racing team, but without the leagues there’s just no point.
Lastly, thanks to everyone in the community, it kinda makes event racing more enjoyable when theres other people to race against, and we’ve certainly had some great races over the years. As a whole the level of racing at the top has been great, and having competition who are honest, fair and challenging has given us some great memories and we hope that never changes.
Going out with a bang...
This coming week quite a few of the guys who’ve been inactive for some time will be coming back and we’ll be spending most week nights on our server and having one last week together, we’ll be throwing on some of the various skins we’ve used over the years and remind ourselves of the fun we’ve had over the years. The server will be private, but we’d like to invite the community to join us as we celebrate our time together, I’ll post the password in this thread for Monday and hopefully the people who want to join us will do so, without the risk of random folks joining and ruining races.
We’re not entirely sure what we’ll be doing on Friday 22nd, but chances are it’ll just be team members only, other nights will be open to others to join us. Hopefully we’ll get some good racing and we’ll go out with a bang rather than a whimper.
Life after Mercury...
On the 23rd we’ll be officially closing the team down, we’ve already passed on our support and best wishes to our drivers if they wish to look for another team, and im sure those who are still interested in being part of a team will make inquiries with those teams when they are ready, in the meantime we’d ask that people refrain from sending PM’s to everyone. If any of our drivers wish to receive offers then they can post in this thread making their intentions clear, and you can get in contact with them.
I think a fair amount of us will still be found running the skins on the rare occasion we're racing regardless of the team being closed, we had hoped to use the 5yr occasion to bring everyone together and try and remotivate, but sadly we're all people who want to race competitively, but the time required to be at the level our drivers insist on being at means you can only really do it if your motivated and passionate about it, and unfortuately that time passed quite a while back.
Thanks,
(\/) Mercury Racing Team.
Server: (V) Mercury Racing
Password: cya
Just a small update to things:
1) Server password is posted above, i'd imagine a few people will be in there from 20-22UTC till quite early hours
2a) Anyone who wishes to, will be allowed to run in Mercury colours for the week ONLY inside the Mercury server, its not a forced thing but everyone who wants to is welcome to do so as a bit of fun.
2b) Anyone already in a team needs to make sure them running in Merc colours isnt going to cause any strife, we dont wanna hear about people being kicked out cos they're driving in another teams colours, but if they're cool with it, great.
http://mercuryracingteam.com/skins/
I've put LX4 @ KY2r (KY2r is good fun with any car) which i think most people would enjoy as a fun car, im sure we'll swap tracks from time to time but i think we'll probably stick to a specific car/class per night rather than keep swapping around.
It isn’t a decision we’ve taken lightly, the vast majority of the team have been involved in LFS since v0.1 days of 2002/03, and we’ve had some great times in LFS. Sadly the last 18 months or so has been quite disappointing in LFS, for the last year or so we’ve kept up appearances in leagues, but with nothing changing in LFSs development and no sign of improvement in the level of interest in racing with LFS, we’re not going to force our drivers to race in something they’ve no desire/passion to keep on playing and there aren’t signs of things arriving which will help motivate interest either.
Why Close...
The decision to close the team down was something we discussed behind closed doors 2 weeks ago, only 1 thing has really kept the team active in the last 12 months and that’s been MoE and even thats been a stuggle, aside from that there’s very little motivation to keep on racing. We’ve always prided ourselves on only inviting drivers we’ve felt would build upon the team, and while im sure we’d have been able to recruit plenty of new members allowing us to keep the team going, the core part of Mercury wouldn’t be there and we’re not interested in watering down what we’ve achieved simply to keep the team name going, while building an almost completely new team in a game which is seeing the racing aspect of its community fade away. Mercury is/was as much about being part of a family as it was a racing team, its the people who have made it special, not the name, and replacing the people just to keep the name was never going to work.
We'd like to thank...
Regardless of how the future looks in LFS, in the 5 years we’ve been together as a team we’ve had a lot of fun, we wanted to start something special and become recognised as one of the best teams in LFS, we feel we’ve achieved that and we’ve been fortunate to be involved in some of the best races & events witnessed in LFS. We’d like to thank the LFS Devs for what they’ve done, we understand their approach to their ‘game’ and we’ve always applauded the fact that they’ve aimed for perfection rather than a deadline so they can rush something through, its just a real shame that the pace of development has got to a point where the part of the community we are involved in has been gradually fading away for the same reasons we’re calling it a day. The fact that LFS has been around for over 6 years for many of us, and there still isn’t anything around which comes close to matching what LFS has, even as an unfinished product, which speaks volumes for what they’ve achieved. Its the game which brought us together, without their hard work we wouldn’t have met and formed such a great relationship with each other, so we’ll always be thankful for that.
We’d also like to thank the vast number of league organisers who’ve given us a reason to form as a team, a target to aim for, and something we’ve had hours and hours of enjoyment from. Your dedication to providing something for the community to enjoy, from short sprint races to 24hr endurance races, we owe you guys a huge thanks because our reason for creating the team was to be involved in these events, to take the racing serious and have fun doing just that, and every season the leagues have got better and better, and its good and well being in a racing team, but without the leagues there’s just no point.
Lastly, thanks to everyone in the community, it kinda makes event racing more enjoyable when theres other people to race against, and we’ve certainly had some great races over the years. As a whole the level of racing at the top has been great, and having competition who are honest, fair and challenging has given us some great memories and we hope that never changes.
Going out with a bang...
This coming week quite a few of the guys who’ve been inactive for some time will be coming back and we’ll be spending most week nights on our server and having one last week together, we’ll be throwing on some of the various skins we’ve used over the years and remind ourselves of the fun we’ve had over the years. The server will be private, but we’d like to invite the community to join us as we celebrate our time together, I’ll post the password in this thread for Monday and hopefully the people who want to join us will do so, without the risk of random folks joining and ruining races.
We’re not entirely sure what we’ll be doing on Friday 22nd, but chances are it’ll just be team members only, other nights will be open to others to join us. Hopefully we’ll get some good racing and we’ll go out with a bang rather than a whimper.
Life after Mercury...
On the 23rd we’ll be officially closing the team down, we’ve already passed on our support and best wishes to our drivers if they wish to look for another team, and im sure those who are still interested in being part of a team will make inquiries with those teams when they are ready, in the meantime we’d ask that people refrain from sending PM’s to everyone. If any of our drivers wish to receive offers then they can post in this thread making their intentions clear, and you can get in contact with them.
I think a fair amount of us will still be found running the skins on the rare occasion we're racing regardless of the team being closed, we had hoped to use the 5yr occasion to bring everyone together and try and remotivate, but sadly we're all people who want to race competitively, but the time required to be at the level our drivers insist on being at means you can only really do it if your motivated and passionate about it, and unfortuately that time passed quite a while back.
Thanks,
(\/) Mercury Racing Team.
Server: (V) Mercury Racing
Password: cya
Just a small update to things:
1) Server password is posted above, i'd imagine a few people will be in there from 20-22UTC till quite early hours
2a) Anyone who wishes to, will be allowed to run in Mercury colours for the week ONLY inside the Mercury server, its not a forced thing but everyone who wants to is welcome to do so as a bit of fun.
2b) Anyone already in a team needs to make sure them running in Merc colours isnt going to cause any strife, we dont wanna hear about people being kicked out cos they're driving in another teams colours, but if they're cool with it, great.
http://mercuryracingteam.com/skins/
I've put LX4 @ KY2r (KY2r is good fun with any car) which i think most people would enjoy as a fun car, im sure we'll swap tracks from time to time but i think we'll probably stick to a specific car/class per night rather than keep swapping around.
