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The first batch of successful team entries have now been announced, further information can be found on the official forum.

We currently have two vacancies available within Sprint Trophy. Applications will therefore be re-opened as of now, until 23:59GMT Sunday 27th February.

Additionally, information as to how to go about submitting your license acquisition fee for the 2011 season, whether you are a team owner or a driver, can now be found on the official forum.

Team applications for the 2011 are now open and will remain open until 23:59 GMT on Sunday 20th February.

You can submit your team’s application by visiting the “Team Application” page found on the GPO home page and entering all of the details, it is also linked to at the end of this message.

On Monday 21st February my fellow admins and I will scrutinise the applications in order to determine the thirteen teams (for each series) that will compete. We will inform you all of the successful applicants as soon as possible following this.

Please complete the entry form for EACH team you wish to enter. DO NOT apply for more than one team entry on a single application.

I must remind you that upon your application being successful, you will be required to submit a £5.00 fee for each team entry. Information regarding driver entry fees will be forthcoming when we publish information as to how to submit your team entry fee.

As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

APPLICATION FORM: Click Here

You can now download the GPO 2011 Regulations via the link towards the end of this message.

We have also included a seperate document detailing the Research & Development system that will be implemented for the World Championship division of GPO this coming season which you can download via the link towards the end of this message.

The regulations and R&D document are comprehensive in their content and I am confident that they will answer the questions you have asked over the past few days, however, as always, if there is something you are unsure of please feel free to ask and we will do our best to help. Please note that these documents are open to refinement and alteration as we progress through the year. The upgrades system in particular will require testing and pre-season trials to make sure it works in the way that we had envisioned.

Please read the documents thoroughly as there are a lot of topics covered.

*Please note that should there be sufficient demand, we have the capability to add a third series*

DOWNLOAD: GPO 2011 Regulations
DOWNLOAD: GPO 2011 R&D Information

It is with the greatest pleasure that we welcome you to the 2011 season here at Grand Prix Online.

After the success of our first ever season in 2010 we are proud to have researched, developed and tuned what we believe to be a far more in-depth racing experience as you will take the role of a top racing driver to compete on some of the greatest tracks on earth.

Focus for 2011

The focus throughout the league for 2011 is teamwork. Being part of a team is an essential part of any form of motorsport and it is something that we are keen to strengthen and emphasise within GPO.
Maintaining our ethos of quality rather than quantity we will be opening up thirteen team slots in each of our race series to control the introduction of teams and promote the idea of team identity and keep a unique flavour to the grids during the 2011 season.

League Format

The format for 2011 will change slightly with 2010′s GPO challenge becoming the GPO World Championship with the best drivers competing with each other for top honours and perhaps some unexpected prizes. The World Championship will be the pinnacle of GPO and should provide a goal for new drivers to aspire to – can you prove your worth and catch the eye of a team manager to get your break in the WC?

This is not to say that our second series, the GPO Sprint Trophy will be any less of a challenge as drivers from all corners of the globe will gather to compete and prove themselves. In 2010 it was this championship that proved the most competitive with four drivers taking the title fight down to the wire and the constructors championship being decided at the very last race. Again only thirteen teams will be admitted to the series at any one time so team slots will be valued highly and drivers will have to show that they have the skills to be
worthy of a top line race seat.

Both series will benefit from the introduction of a live marshalling system this year that will allow the Race Directors and their team of dedicated marshals to provide on the spot penalties for any race infraction. Joining this system will be the introduction of the safety car; driven by a veteran of GPO and sim-racing in general the safety car will be deployed when the situation arises and will provide a further dimension to the on track action.

The World Championship series will also utilise a new vehicle upgrade and engine management system that will see the teams working together to upgrade and improve their cars over the course of the season whilst also keeping an ever watchful eye on the condition of the allocated eight engines; can you out develop and out think the opposition to get you to the chequered flag first? Only time will tell.

The Mod

Many of you have been asking about the car itself for the 2011 season and we are proud to announce a new partnership with the incredible Reiza Studios. A renowned car, physics, track and overall game developer Reiza Studios will be a sensational team to work alongside in 2011. We have been sworn to secrecy for a long time now as the administration worked closely with Reiza Studios lawyers and copyright partners to ensure we could reach the agreement we all desired. This agreement will see GPO using a custom built 2010 spec Formula One car in the shape of the mighty championship winning vehicle of Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber – The Red bull RB6. Using the usual system of unique liveries for our teams, every allocated team will be issued the painting template for this car so that they can create their own work of art and have it grace the bodywork of this new vehicle. This marks a big step forward by GPO as we begin to work closely with a well-established mod group. The car itself has taken a great deal of discussion and financial commitment by GPO to secure its use for 2011. This naturally comes with various protection methods, contract agreements and a new, dedicated sim sync tool that will allow us to distribute the mod and the car to the people that deserve it, our GPO community.

Membership information

As a reflection of this, 2011 will bring in a membership application and fee process. This is not something we would do in an ideal world but if we wish to push the league to new heights, provide the leagues members with the best experience possible and also begin to offer prizes and rewards for competing in the league then this is the only way to go. The fees will be realistic and relatively small at just ten British pounds per driver and five British pounds per team (one entry one fee). We believe that we will be offering a league and experience that more than justifies this cost.

We have a staggering twenty race calendar that has already been published, a detailed new rulebook which outlines every aspect of the 2011 season and it’s on track rules, some incredible new tracks to include, new partners still yet to be announced, continued broadcasts from the 2010 season, new admin staff to welcome and some exciting new teams and drivers waiting in the wings. 2011 is building up to be a major step forward for GPO and we hope you all agree once you get a good look at it.

Release Schedule

As for when this will happen; the team and driver application process along with fee payments will open on the 16th February. Once a team’s application is processed the official car template will be sent directly to each team ready for painting. On the 1st March we will take delivery of the actual car from the Reiza factory and the remainder of the 2011 mod will be finalised and released through the SimSync tool to our drivers. After that we will be opening our new server with the Jerez test track for a week’s worth of car shakedowns and test runs. After this first week the server will move to our first official 2011 event, the Bahrain Grand Prix, Round 1 of the 2011 Grand Prix Online Championships. We hope you will all join us for the action beginning on the 12th March.

The warmest of welcomes and the very best of luck to you all.

It is with great pleasure that I announce GPO’s new partnership with Machinima.

As some of you may know, Machinima is the premier online gaming network, receiving over 108 million video views each month across the Machinima network. Videos will also be uploaded onto the Machinima YouTube channels which hold well over 1 million subscribers.

The deal will see Grand Prix Online having exclusive sole rights within the sim-racing community to upload race highlights, reviews and track guides to the Machinima network that will ultimately see GPO gain huge exposure with the online gaming community.

This partnership is a great coup not only for GPO, but for the teams of GPO both now and in the future, both league and team sponsors can look forward to huge exposure via this newly formed partnership.

We will begin submitting videos to Machinima shortly. We look forward to seeing you at the Spanish GP held on 8th/9th May in order to give us some great new footage to use.

As usual, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact either myself or one of my fellow admins.

Check out Episode 3 of CrashcastFM over at CockpitFM.net. This episode features an interview with Keith Barrick, league owner of the American Touring Car Championship.

Simon Smith and Maurice Zondag pose the questions and bring you more news from the world of sim-racing.

At GPO we are constantly searching for new ways to improve the service we can provide, thanks to one of the latest applications developed for the iPhone by Oscar Martin we are now able to provide live timing direct to your iPhone.

To access the new service you must go to the App Store on your device and search for “LiveFactor”. The App costs just £0.59, all proceeds go to the developer in order to fund the LiveFactor servers.

Once you have the application installed on your device simply open the application. In the search bar at the top, input “Grand Prix Online”. Our server is the only one on the list at this time, simply select our server and you will be presented with a box asking for a password, unfortunately we are required to use a password so we have set it as “gpo”; something that is easy to remember for everyone. The application will then connect and you can enjoy GPO live timing on your iPhone.

The application provides session data, driver names and split times aswell as a lot of other information as you can see in the screenshots attached to this post. The best part about this application is that it means the live timing can be accessed anywhere, even when you are out and about.

Check out Episode 2 of CrashcastFM over at CockpitFM.net. This episode features an interview with GPO’s very own Creative Director and race driver Stuart Fields.

Simon Smith and Maurice Zondag pose the questions and bring you more news from the world of sim-racing.

Round 01 of Grand Prix Online kicks off this weekend in the desert with two races around the Sakhir Circuit in Bahrain.

GPO Challenge kicks off on Saturday evening with a 49 lap event followed by the GPO Sprint Series on Sunday morning with a 25 lap race.

Grand Prix Online has managed to secure the rights to run the 2010 F1 configuration of Bahrain so be sure to tune into PSRTV on Saturday evening for the opening race of the 2010 Season.

Following the creation of GPO back in January we never considered the option of having live broadcasts of our races so early on in our existence.

Fortunately, everything we have done so far has gone ahead incredibly smoothly. Everything has turned out to be much better than we expected, however the biggest coup is that we have managed to gain access to the PSRTV beta program.

This fantastic opportunity to participate in this beta program enables us to be able to broadcast the opening round of the GPO Challenge Championship in Bahrain Live on PSRTV next Saturday. At this point in time the Bahrain event is the only confirmed broadcast but we are busy in negotiations with PSRTV in order to extend this to a whole season of racing.

Following this great news, we have worked towards gaining a team of commentators to provide an enjoyable commentary. We have been fortunate enough to have secured the services of three of the best commentators in the sim-racing community.

You will all be familiar with Michael Lam; he is one of the most experienced sim-racing commentators around. Michael has commentated on a number of series including FSR, GRC, SSCA and the Simtona 500. More recently Michael has been focusing his commentary skills on the many iRacing events that PSRTV cover.

Phil Roberts will be working alongside Michael in the booth, Phil began his commentary career as a pit reporter during the FSR 2009 season, he made the move into the booth at the Spanish Grand Prix when he was promoted to work alongside Michael. As with Michael, Phil has commentated on GRC events in the past and has taken a leading role on many occasions.

Finally, we have secured the services of Nick Rowland. Nick is the most experienced racer of the trio and will bring a racers view to the booth. Nick, as with Michael and Phil, commentated on FSR 2009. He was the lead commentator in a number of the broadcasts as well as working alongside Michael and Phil on a number of occasions.

We are all raring to go at Bahrain for the first round of the Championship in just under a week. With a high quality broadcast alongside a trio of the best commentators in sim-racing we are all in for a treat.

Make sure you tune into PSRTV next Saturday to catch the opening round of the GPO Challenge 2010 Championship.

In order to view the scheduled dates for each event, please click the “Calendar” button at the top of this page.

With under two weeks until the official launch of Grand Prix Online signups for the 2010 season have opened.

In order to participate in the championship, team owners and drivers must first register and apply for membership on the official forums in order to gain a free participation license.

When you have been granted your participation license, you will be able to proceed to the GPCOS system and either register your team, or sign yourself up with an existing team.

We already have 18 entrants for the 2010 Championship; with teams beginning to launch their 2010 contenders, the tension is building for the season opener in Bahrain on March 13th.