Never Last Racing

**Never Last Racing,** or **NLR Esports,** is an Esports organization which currently operates on the PlayStation platform. Their main focus lies on league racing on the Formula 1 videogame series by Codemasters.

The team has achieved multiple championship victories in its time, and has stated its ambitions to keep growing its reputation within the league racing space, particularly with the Crossplay feature being added to the Formula 1 game.

## Origins and beginnings

The team was originally created in late 2020, as Vital Panthers Motorsport Team or **VSMT**. Some of their original drivers and managers still remain in place, with team owner **HarleyJL18** still at the wheel for the team.

The rebranding to NLR as such took place in March 2021, bringing onboard some relatively inexperienced drivers, the target being to make a name for themselves in team events to come.

## Structure and organization

The team consists of two main groups within their community.

### **Admin**

These members oversee the general activities of the team and are responsible for signing new drivers, granting the team entry into championship events as well as encourage activity within the community. Currently, NLR splits the Admin role into five different categories.

* **Owner** - This role is accredited to **HarleyJL18**, who took over the original VSMT team and rebranded it into Never Last Racing, therefore also being the **Team Founder** as such.
* **Co-Owner** - This role can be seen as the assistant to the owner and is currently taken up by **Felixone**, who, besides fulfilling a lot of Admin duties, also races for the team in a host of events.
* **Co-Founder** - This role belongs to **Bowers2413**, who founded the team together with HarleyJL18, and while his participations remain relatively limited due to his commitments, he is still an integral part of the NLR family.
* **Head Admin** - This role is one step above the regular Admin role, and delves into further management activities, such as being eligible to represent the team as a Manager in different league events. Currently, this role is accredited to **Absi**, who also races for the team.
* **Admin** - This role fulfills the most basic Admin duties, hence its name being simple in this way. While also being eligible to represent the team as a manager in team events, it is simply a difference of colour on the team's own Discord server, and does not bode down as much of a difference to the Head Admin role. It is also the most stacked role in regards to members, with these being **AlexTheG**, **Axelinho**, **DeanPhelan**, **Dylan**, **Kadd** and **Jav**. The first three members also take part in races as drivers. **Kadd** is in charge of the graphics side for NLR's appearance, driver icons and banners, while **Dylan** races occasionally outside of the NLR space. **Jav** focuses solely on Admin activity within the team.

### F1 Team

The other group of members is part of the F1 Team, which is divided into a further three groups. It is important to note here that at the beginning of the team's existence, it was almost anybody's pick to drive as well, before drivers eventually got to join and could get the Admin Team focusing on their internal activities.

Members are chosen by the Admin Team via the **Race Check-In** to represent the team in their selected events.

* **Sim Drivers** - These drivers are in the uppermost category of the driver roster, as they do not use any of the driving aids the Formula 1 game makes available for them. Therefore, they can take part in some of the most high-profile events for the team's level. The drivers representing NLR in this category are **Axelinho**, **Ruffy**, **Kartrcer22**, **Geroffu74**, **Deboezelare**, **Liam21**, **AlexTheG**, **OliOlaf**, **ItsCoolMan** and **Jeremy**.
* **Racing Line Drivers** - As the title already suggests, the drivers from this category only use the dynamic racing line provided by the Formula 1 game. A lot of high-profile team events can still be contested with this assists set, and it remains NLR's largest driver category. The drivers representing the team on this level are **Felixone**, **Perillo**, **Mcloud007**, **Probohne**, **Absi**, **SevLaFlare**, **DeanPhelan**, **Marko**, **Abood**, **Frankis**, **Petukka** and **Optic**.
* **ABS Drivers** - The smallest roster of the NLR driver structure is the ABS roster, which currently only consists of two drivers. The drivers in this roster use the ABS assist alongside the racing line, shall they need it, and can only take part in a limited amount of events as a result. Representing NLR are **Linus** and **V1p3R**.

### Other Roles

Other, smaller groups within the team include the **NLR Event Steward** Team, who are in charge of the stewarding decisions made for NLR Esports League, the team's own championship which races on non-F1 Sundays. The aforementioned members of the Admin Team fulfill this role for the event.

Another smaller role within the team is the **Commentator** role, which, at the moment, is accredited to **AlexTheG**. Their task is to bring commentated livestreams of NLR event races to a channel of their choice, preferrably the NLR YouTube channel. Other members, such as **Felixone** or **Bowers2413,** take up the role as stand-ins, but do not officially possess the role as such.

Lastly, the **Engineer** role can be interpreted in two different ways. One way of being an engineer is to give qualified setup tips to other team members, effectively becoming their setup engineer. The other interpretation of this can be the race engineer, where drivers link up with another member of the team in a voice chat and are being guided by said race engineer on what is happening around them in their respective races. This role is currently being taken by **Axelinho**, **AlexTheG**, **Emell**, **Immortal** and **Kadd**.

## Racing activity

The team events side of NLR Esports has consisted of various different championships, in which they have achieved a lot of success overall. Their early VSMT days were accompanied with victory in **VSRL Pro Tier**, a predecessor of the current **IKR leagues**. Their arguably biggest achievement comes in the form of dominant victory in **EML League 2** on the F1 2021 game, with the team winning the championship with two rounds still to go after having won eight out of the championship's ten races.

Other achievements comprise championship glory in **IKR Group 2** on F1 2021, a second-place finish in the **IRT Esports Cup**, **The Crown E-League** as well as finishing in P3 for both the **IKR Challengers** and **Regional** **Divisions**, **DRA Challenger Series** and P3 in their own team event, **NLR Esports League**.

Their current racing endeavours see them rank in second place of **NLR Esports League**. In addition to this, they are ranking in 9th place of **IKR Premier Division** and currently sit 5th in **IKR Future Stars Division**. Most importantly for the team, they have managed to take the lead of the **IKR Pro Division**, **EML Premier 1** , as well as **Competitive Team Championship** standings.

Future events include the new **FGRS Event**, scheduled to start Oct 1, 2022.

## Trivia

After the start of the new F1 22 game, NLR has attempted to focus on expanding the "No Assists" side of the roster further, by trying to bring in new drivers from outside of the team to drive for them. Along with this, multiple drivers are motivated to complete the transition from "Line only" to "No Assists". This explains the fluctuation on the "ABS" side of things for the team.

The NLR team prides itself with its "family" environment, with owner **HarleyJL18** stating that it must be the number 1 priority of the team to create good chemistry between the drivers. This harmony within the team warrants that the drivers stay motivated and that no inter-team rivalries arise, which could endanger the clean standards that NLR are used to from their drivers. It has generally been received in a positive way, and NLR wish to continue this in the future. To back this up, there have only been five driver departures from NLR, which in effect becomes four, seeing as **Axelinho** left the team for a period of time, but returned to the team after only a short time spent in other teams.

NLR has comically picked up on the comments from other teams, who state that it is "just a German team". While 12 of the 24 drivers in the current roster are in fact from Germany, **HarleyJL18** has publicly denied this, but has always taken it humourously, and sees no issues in having this many drivers from one country.

## Social media presence

Despite having a reputation as a relatively small Esports team, NLR can show off a very decent follower base on Twitter, reaching levels of some of the big teams of the platform. Their Twitter account can be found here.

In addition to this, many of the team's drivers also use Twitter accounts with the team's own branding, and are receiving a lot of reposts from the team itself too.

Streams to their NLR Esports League Event can be found on their YouTube channel, which can be found here.