Providing Bad Driving Since 2010
The Formula Rejects Alternate Series are a sports RPG consisting of virtual racing series held on the Grand Prix Rejects
forums. Grand Prix Rejects is a continuation of F1 Rejects, a website dedicated to bad Formula One drivers and teams, where the game was started. Players in the games usually control the fate of fictional drivers and teams in different racing series. being simulated with the AI-only mode of various racing games such as RFactor.
The games started out as a single game, the Formula 1 Reject World Race Series: a breakaway series from Formula One, since then renamed to AutoRejects World Series. After four well-received seasons, the game was expanded with the creation of two feeder series: the Formula 2 Reject World Race Series and Formula 3 Reject World Race Series. Soon enough, the games became part of an Expanded Universe, also hosting versions of Formula One and IndyCar, as well as many series quite similar to other real-life racing series.
In addition to above-mentioned canon, there is also a subforum for games not part of the above-mentioned expanded universe, mostly various Formula One games.
While they are two different universes, the fact that F1 Rejects and the TM Universe share a significant amount of their user base lead to characters appearing in both universes, although it has not quite reached the level of Canon Invasion yet.
The entire game can be found here. A wiki to provide more exposition is available as well.
This webgame provides examples of the following:
- All There in the Manual: The wiki is this.
- Badass Family: There are a number of racing families, ranging from fathers and sons racing up to dynasties ranging back to the very earliest days of motor racing.
- Burn Baby Burn: Drivers Robert Anderson and Frank Zimmer are infamous for both setting their cars on fire - Anderson after he found out that he was disqualified from the 1997 F1RGP2C Belgian Grand Prix, which led him to be kicked out from the Tyrrell-Gauthier team, and Zimmer in the 2008 F1 Brazilian Grand Prix for unknown reasons. Both Anderson and Zimmer have been banned from entering Belgium and Brazil respectively, with Anderson's name further disgraced with a drug scandal following.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Subverted in the 2010 Formula One season, where Stefan Grand Prix were successfully able to use rule-bending devices to increase the performance of their cars.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Dan BH disappeared after the 2010 F1RWRS season after being the only American to win in the series, and hasn't been seen or heard from since.
- Cool Old Guy: Only a few games have actual age limits or methods of preventing older drivers from succeeding, so this trope can and does occur often. Crowning example would be Leonhard von Gottorp, who drove competitively even in his 70s before faking his own demise.
- Crossover: As mentioned above, the TM Universe and the Formula One Rejects Alternate Series share some personnel and teams.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Many driver names are obviously inspired by real-life racing drivers as well, despite an unwritten rule forbidding fictional drivers from being directly related to real-life drivers.
- Joke Character: Since the original website was dedicated to what basically amounts to Formula One JokeCharacters, this trope is all over the place.
- Lethal Joke Character: Since there are many of them, this can happen easily, especially when they move to racing series more suited to their skills. Achieving this is arguably the greatest success you can pull off in the games.
- Killed Off for Real: Occasionally, drivers are killed off as consequence of racing incidents for a number of reasons, ranging from a desire to avert No One Should Survive That! to a desire to get rid of the character for a number of reasons
- Multinational Team: Most drivers are part of a junior program funding their careers. Those programs are rarely limited to drivers from only one nation or region.
- Punny Name: Very common, ranging from obvious to insider jokes.
- Post-Game Retaliation: Less common nowadays, but in the early days of the AutoRejects World Series, brawls between displeased drivers and team owners were not uncommon.
- Official Couple: There are a number of characters in active relationships, some existing solely for roleplaying purposes with others existing to create or retroactively complete a family tree of a racing family.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: As common in online role-playing games, Real Life events can influence the roles of characters and sometimes even remove them from the story altogether.
- Retcon: With the Expanded Universe being a work in progress and things developing quite quickly, this becomes necessary some times.
- Secret Identity: Zsolt Baumgartner is known to all as "HWNSNBM" (he whose name shall never be mentioned). A Running Gag in the forums and the podcast is that saying his real name is illegal and punishable by being hit by a flaming papaya. Daniel Moreno (not to be confused with the Spanish cyclist) also took part in the 2015 F1RWRS as The Stig. After faking his own death for reasons not yet explained, Leonhard von Gottorp now races as Russian Jaropolk Petrovich.
- Sudden Name Change: The Mantis family, which includes racing drivers Psycho and Screamingnote , were forced to change their family name to Madunochev due to objections on the forum. Psycho and Screaming now race under the names Pjotr and Sergej. This also happens with other characters whose names are rejected for various reasons.
- Spell My Name With An A: Japanese driver Yuka Katayama often suffers with this, with her first name. This went to the levels that she is referred as Yuko during majority of the 2014 F2RWRS season until another driver, Dave Anderson, noticed the oversight. The same thing happens to Deanna McMahon whose surname is often misspelled McMohan.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The current year of the canonical series is 2019.
- The Rival: Given as the characters in the game are either Hot-Blooded, choleric and/or arrogant beyond belief, intense rivalries are par for the course.
- 13 Is Unlucky: Averted. The F1 Rejects userbase mostly doesn't believe in the #13 curse and many drivers use the number in numerous series. The first driver to race with #13 was Dave Simpson in the 2010 F1RWRS and he won more races than anyone else that year. To further avoid this trope, Salvatore Miccoli and Antonio Didac Puerta have won outright titles with #13. In contrast, this trope is played straight in the alternate version of Formula 1 along with a handful of other Number Tropes, such as Four Is Death-
- UnCancelled: Rejects of LFS started out as F1 Rejects LFS Cup, won by Shinobu Katayama in 2011. Then the series was renamed to IRDU Rejects Cup in 2012 seasonnote , only to have the management arrested after unable to repay a loannote . The series was taken over by another user, redubbed Rejects of LFS. It caused much concern because of drivers' lack of safety (recurrent crashes, slow drivers) which lead to drivers frequently got injured and banned. The climax reached at the 2015 Kyoto Ring round when Nobushige Fukuda, a Japanese driver driving for Melrose Racing Team, was killed in a horrific accident.
- You Go, Girl!: Due to the increased success and presence of female drivers in the Alternate Series, almost every racing series has seen a woman win a race, not to mention a championship. Shinobu Katayama took the honours of being the first female champion when she won the 2011 F1Rejects LFS Cup, whereas Tomo Kazama became the first woman to win (F3WRS, 2014 and F2RWRS, 2015). Pippa Mann also won the F1RWRS in 2012. Logically, this completely and deliberately averts the Women Drivers trope.
- Wacky Racing: The Rejectful Eastern European Car Series is this, using Eastern European alleged cars. Generally, having one or two wacky races a season is generally expected from anyone running a game on the site.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: As mentioned above, sometimes real life or the lack of interest lead to plots getting abandoned and characters disappearing from the face of the Earth, such as in the case with Dan BH who started the BH Curse, which results in American drivers' failure to win a race.
