The beginning

Founded on the 30th of march 2005 by René 'TraXXion' vd Kooij, "1ST|Racing" started off as a Dutch-only team. By then it was only TraXXion, his brother and a friend of them, of whom only TraXXion had a S1 license. So they started cruising around a bit on the famous Blackwood GP track in the demo with that lovely little GTI. After TraXXion bought his brother a license for his birthday, we even did some S1 races in OLFSL and were not unsuccessful. Soon after that, when the S2 demo was released, we picked up some (Dutch) drivers here and there and became bigger, bit by bit. As soon as Simracing.nl started organising a Dutch league, we were there, although in a completely different line-up than at the start. TraXXion's brother had already left the team to start his own Call of Duty team and their friend never even bothered to buy a S2 license. But we had some decent drivers in exchange: Tobias 'auch_enne' Douven, Laurens 'Kartboy' de Wit, Daan 'Geforcy' Schuring, Thomas 'Thommm' Arends and Jur 'Renault' Kuneman. So that together with vd Kooij was the team with which we were going to try to be successful in the Dutch LFS scene.

2005

With Kuneman and Arends we had an excellent couple to go for first place in the team standings in the Dutch league (Dutch league works with sub-teams, 2 drivers maximum). Unfortunately they didn't make it, with just a very small difference to first place Ocrana with Vince and Nukelane (unfortunately Kuneman had had to miss one race as well). During that season another three members became part of the team, Kyle 'Kylios' Schoenmakers, Wart 'Wrt' Meelker and Tom 'Battle' Notten who did some very nice results in their first races in LFS, which was very promising for the future!

Another highlight in the first year of existence was the Dutch Nationscup Team. Arends and Kuneman formed a team with Ocrana's Vince in two races in that cup!

After that (we're talking end of 2005 now), there was a pretty inactive period in the team (partly due to hardware problems, partly due to real-life issues, partly due to no running leagues at that time, and so on...). Those issues caused unhappy members and unhappy members logically leave to find happier places. Arends left the team and went to teamnic, Kuneman went to another Dutch team, MRNL.

2006

Before the start of the next season we did some professional scouting and managed to sign Casper 'kaspur' Roescher for the team. Also Albert (AppiePils) Terrahe a friend of Casper joined and formed a subteam in NL.LFS. This combined with an all new look, supplied by Teemu 'TeazR' Vedenoja (skins and some website images) and Frank 'ORION' Naggies (the Puma logo), was enough for us to forget the loss of two good drivers and start focussing on the future.

The new approach helped; with the two new members came a good team atmosphere and this indirectly resulted in a good performance for a lot of our drivers in the Dutch league.

This lead us to start thinking of more international leagues and races. Highlight during this process was the invitation for the team to the 5th race of the most prestigious LFS league at that moment; the Masters of Endurance.

After this it all went very quick. The race itself was pretty bad for multiple reasons, of which 'inexperienced' isn't the least one, but at least the team name was now settled internationally. After the race the Norwegian Christian 'Chriskart' Krognes was the first international driver to join us, after he applied to our team via the website. After him came Alexandru 'Scoop' Barbu, with next in line Thomas 'Thommm' Arends (who left the team during the inactive period) and Roy 'XRRoy' Diederen (both from teamnic that had unfortunately withdrawn from LFS as a team). Last but not least Bas 'Darkone55' Bouma who we all know as an expert when it comes to formula cars, joined the team.

With Christian and Alexandru on board, the international image of our team started to shape up. Estonian Priit 'Priitmek' Mäekivi, who had been active for the Estonian Endurance Racers in the Masters of Endurance joined in June 2006 and not long after that Hendrik 'lastpunisher' Piiriste, another ace driver from the EER team joined. Last signing of that year was Northern Irishman Keith 'B11TME' Malcomson - former team manager of ITEK Racing.

2007

The line of recruitments was continued in 2007 where we started with more signings: in february Maik 'bratwurst' Lehnert was the first to represent Germany for us, he was signed together with our first Finn: multi-talent Teemu 'teaz-R' Vedenoja. A month after that, long-time friend of the team Stephan 'fapex' Weingran decided to leave team German Motorsports in order to fight for the prizes with us! Later that year the third German signing of the year was Martin 'Maddin15' Brunzel.

With these strong reinforcements we were now looking to be a strong contender in the fight for the podium places in the Masters of Endurance. Short after the start of the 2007-2008 season we signed the extremely fast Jesse 'RamboJorGen' Nieminen from Finland and together with him we managed quite a few of those podiums. Highlight being a second place in the 24 hour race! At the end of the season we found ourselves on a third place overall! A great reward for all the hard work that has gone into the team by drivers and admins!

2008

The strong results in the 2007-2008 Masters of Endurance season were a confirmation that we were going in the right direction. At the start of 2008 we were able to strengthen our lineup with young gun André 'Rocabiliz' Roque from Portugal, who was instantly promoted into the Masters of Endurance squad and helped us finishing the 2007-2008 season on a high. And with the signing of German Patrick 'M4ver1ck' Kubinji, Flying Dutchman Rudy van Buren and right before the start of the new Masters of Endurance season Vincent 'Vince' Staal we had a stronger than ever lineup and decided to subscribe to the season with two cars: one GT1 and one GT2.

The new season started better than we could ever dream of. Our GT1 car clinched our first victory in the Masters of Endurance series and only an admin decision kept our GT2 car from making it a double win in the first race of the season; they finished second! This flying start to the season was continued with a win for our GT2 team in round 2 and many more wins and podium positions to follow. Highlight in this season was the victory in the 24h of Aston GP for our GT2 team. In the penultimate round of the season we managed to win the race in both classes, making our GT2 team class champions! Going into the last round our GT1 team had a 1 point gap to number 1 #low-racing, but only a controversial penalty for us in the final laps of the race kept us from taking the win as we took second place behind spdoRacing and clinched the GT1 title; in our third season, we became champion in both classes of the Masters of Endurance!

2009

So our fourth birthday was celebrated with more champagne than ever! But when the party was over and the dust settled, GT1 team manager Christian Krognes and Rudy van Buren announced they were going to find a new challenge elsewhere. Winning the title in the pinnacle of LFS leagues was of course the crown on all our hard work in the last 4 years, but it also caused a dip in motivation for many of our drivers. This left a gap in our lineup for the new Masters of Endurance season, which meant we weren't able to put two cars on track. Our GT2 car stayed in the garage, but with a second place in the first round, the GT1 team started the new season on a high!