After weeks of voting and thousands of votes cast, we can now announce the winners of the much coveted
RaceDepartment Awards 2010 on the 4th anniversary of RaceDepartment. That's right, we've been here 4 years and with more award categories than before, the quality was ever higher.
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The big one, and one that was likely to be competed by the two biggest racing games of the year -
Codemaster's F1 2010 and
Polyphony's Gran Turismo 5. And it was Codemaster's effort which got your vote in a landslide win, with well over twice as many votes than GT5. Coming a distant third, but still well ahead of the rest of the pack, was
Ferrari Virtual Academy 2010, which took commercial racing simulation to unique areas this year.
RaceDepartment's members voted the two Sebastians as Drivers of the Year, with the German Vettel, F1's youngest World Champion, coming out on top. Seven-time WRC Champion Loeb ran a strong second, while Jason Plato found a place in people's hearts this year, taking a distant third place, beating off competition such as Jimmie Johnson and Jorge Lorenzo.
Back to simracing again, and the SimRacer of the Year award. This was a very close battle throughout voting, but Canadian Keith Barrick, ranked #1 on our unique ranking system, took the narrow victory from three-time champion Gregory Degreef of Belgium, congratulations to Keith. Holland's Bono Huis outstanding season in Formula SimRacing also saw him rank strongly, taking third.
We organise many leagues here at RD, and competition for the Simracing Series of the Year award was understandably fierce. However, it was Xose Estrada and David Garcia's brainchild,
SimRacing Team Challenge, that took the laurels, with very close competition from the
RD Le Mans Series and Ryan Callan's
World Touring Masters. STC has set the standard this year with it's novel team concept, outstanding presentation and live broadcasts.
The rFactor Mod of the Year was also a fiercely contested three way battle. F1-S-R's
F1 1991 Historic Edition started strongly but faded to take third place, IPM's
FSOne 2009 came on strong late on to take second but it was the
Touring Masters mod by TCL Team & Ryan Callan which took the overall honours. Overhauling the original TCL v1.1 mod, improving and making fit for league use, Touring Masters has proved popular with RD members, regularly filling grids in the rFactor Racing Club.
The Track of the Year in rFactor saw an incredibly strong field of nominations, shown by the wide variety of voting seen. 2010 has surely been the strongest year yet in track-building. And it was com8's Salzburgring 2009 took a very narrow victory from Virtua_LM's
Fuji of 82-93. Bringing up a strong third was Riches overhaul of
Le Mans 04, just beating Vitus 09 and woochoo's Longford to the final podium position.
The Addon of the Year spanned all genres, and it was Rallyesim's
RSRBR 2010 which deservedly took the honours, taking the win from RaceDepartment's own modding team, RDDev, and their
Truelights Weather mod for F1 2010. Bringing up third was CTDP's
rFactor Dynamic HUD.
The RACE Mod of the Year saw many nominations for True2Life Racing's Guenthar Rowe and his collaborations, and they took the top two spots overall. FVRFactor's
FVRV8 2010 took the win, bringing the 2010 V8 Supercar season to the RACE Series, while the Blancpain Super Trofeo from Ultimodteam took second position. Bringing up third was AndreaFSC's
Super Touring 1998 modification.
The RACE Track of the Year saw a landslide victory for 6ecko's conversion and improvement of nferraz's
Autodromo Algarve. FVRFactor's
Surfer's Paradise took a distant second while Neel Jani's conversion of Relesy's
Saponaro took out the final podium position.
The GT Legends scene is still going strong and it was Butch's splendid
Ford Mustang Boss 302 which took the mod vote with
Bathurst 60's, a conversion from philrob, taking the track win.
The Super GT mod from Team BB took the GTR2 Mod of the Year award, with a strong win from DTM Classics and alless' R15. The Super GT mod simulates the Japanese Super GT championship and it's many iterations have won the hearts of the GTR2 community.
Finally, just a word to congratulate all nominations for the RD awards, to be nominated means you are very special indeed and thanks again to all those who voted and contributed to this occasion.