Frequently Asked Questions

The Rockford Racing League (RRL) is a competitive racing championship played in GTA Online.

No. The RRL is an independently organized league with no official relationship to Rockstar Games — there is no partnership, license, or contractual affiliation of any kind. It's run entirely by its own organizers, simply using GTA Online as the platform it races on.

The RRL held its first season in 2017 and has run once a year since, usually somewhere between fall and spring. The league is currently in Season 10.

The RRL races in GTA Online on PlayStation 5.

Yes — participation in the RRL is free.

Yes. The Commission is responsible for everything regulatory and organizational in the RRL — it writes the rules, defines the vehicle classes, decides which tracks are added to the track catalogue, and evaluates any conduct that may be penalizable, deciding on penalty points where necessary.

There are two ways in: sign up as a regular (starter) driver before a season starts, racing as part of a team, or join as a substitute driver, which is possible at any point during a season. All sign-ups happen through the official Discord server.

There are no formal tryouts. Join the Discord server, sign up for the next race, and you'll get your first shot straightaway.

Anyone who feels ready to drive a clean, fair contact race is welcome to try out. You should already have some contact racing experience going in — the RRL isn't the place to have your first-ever contact race, so if you've never raced with contact before, we'd recommend building up some experience first and coming back once you feel confident. You don't need to be fast, but you do need to be clean: an occasional accident happens to everyone and won't get you removed. But if it becomes clear a driver can't handle wheel-to-wheel racing safely, or causes repeated incidents in a single race, they won't get another shot that same season — the recommendation in that case is to gain more experience and try again starting with the next season.

To take part at all, you need to be able to handle contact racing, follow the basic principles of the sport, and agree to abide by the rules. You'll also need a Discord account, since that's where races are announced, where you sign up, and where all news and announcements about the league are posted. Regular (starter) drivers additionally need to be able to complete at least 10 of the season's 15 races to keep their seat.

Yes. You need to own at least one vehicle in every class being raced — if you don't own a vehicle in a class that's being used for a given race, you won't be able to take part in it.

Yes, as a substitute driver. You can sign up for the next race at any point during a season through Discord, and spots are allocated first-come, first-served based on signup time. Active substitutes can also move up into a regular team seat later in the season if one becomes available — for example when a regular driver drops out, is removed, or quits voluntarily.

If you already know in advance that you can't make a race, you can withdraw ahead of time. Otherwise, races are announced during the week before, and you can withdraw up until the same day — but you need to let us know so a substitute driver can be assigned your spot.

It depends on whether you withdrew in advance or not. If you properly withdraw, you can do so up to five times before you're likely to lose your regular spot. If you miss a race without withdrawing, you can lose your spot as early as the third unexcused absence. The safest approach is always to withdraw ahead of time.

Every RRL season consists of 15 races.

Races always take place on Sundays, starting at 7:30 PM German time (that's our fixed internal schedule — your own local start time is shown automatically on the Schedule page) — normally every Sunday for all 15 weeks of the season in a row. Races are skipped only on rare occasions, such as a public holiday (e.g. Christmas) or a major event like a World Cup final or the Super Bowl.

Race and qualifying times are shown in your own local time zone throughout the site (Season page, race calendar) — your device's clock handles the conversion automatically, no manual lookup needed. Internally, everything runs to a fixed German-time schedule (19:45 CEST/CET for qualifying) — that's the anchor time our team and Discord announcements use — but you don't need to know or convert that yourself to show up on time.

Plan for roughly two hours. The livestream starts at 7:15 PM German time, the vehicle class for that race day is announced at 7:30 PM, and drivers are invited to qualifying at 7:45 PM. The main race itself starts by 8:15 PM at the latest (the exact time depends on how long qualifying and scoring take) and runs for about an hour, so the event normally wraps up around 9:15 PM. On rare occasions it can run a little later, to around 9:30 PM. (All times here are German time, matching our internal schedule — your own local start time is shown automatically on the Schedule page.)

A Cup is a special standalone RRL event held during the off-season, between regular championships — usually built around a theme, such as a specific category of off-road or specialty vehicles (it could be something like vans, or in principle even motorcycles). Cups have no bearing on the championship standings. No Cup events are currently running, but the format still exists and could return at any time.

The number and selection of vehicle classes isn't fixed — it can change from season to season. The current, always up-to-date list is on the Vehicle Classes page.

Classes are balanced through repeated testing by multiple test drivers, across multiple tracks and a range of conditions, until only vehicles that genuinely perform on the same level remain grouped together. For example, the sports car category isn't a single class — testing splits it into several sub-classes (such as Sport 1, Sport 2, Sport 3, Sport 4), each containing only the vehicles that were matched to each other through this process.

Yes, vehicle suggestions can be submitted via Discord. Most vehicles have already been tested and classified, but in individual cases we run a retest, and

Curb boosting means deliberately driving over small curbs, kerbstones, or rumble strips. Doing so briefly compresses the suspension, and GTA sometimes responds to that compression with a short jump in engine RPM, giving the car a small extra burst of speed. Repeating the compression enough times can push a vehicle above its normal top speed. In practice, this means clipping a low curb with one side of the car (two wheels) and then bringing all four wheels back onto the road — repeating it strengthens the effect.

Brake boosting typically uses a bump, crest, or dip in the road. The key moment isn't compression but the opposite: the suspension extends and the car is briefly unloaded while the tires still have just enough contact with the ground. Pressing throttle and brake at the same time in that instant can make GTA treat it similarly to a burnout or a standing start, and when the wheels load back up, the car gets an extra forward push. In practice, this means approaching a small crest at full throttle, holding the throttle down, waiting for the car to crest the bump as the suspension extends, tapping the brake briefly in that moment, then releasing it and continuing to hold full throttle. A successful brake boost is often visible as brief tire marks and spinning wheels.

An artificial boost is a speed advantage that wasn't intentionally built into the game, but results from a physics or programming error — curb boosting and brake boosting are the two most common examples, and both are banned in the RRL. The underlying principle is that any boost that wouldn't work in real life is prohibited, provided it can actually be proven. Some boost types are very hard to prove — those are frowned upon, but only pursued when there is clear evidence someone is using them.

Curb boosting and brake boosting are both detectable. If it's proven — or there is sufficient suspicion and the driver can't clear themselves of it — the result is at least penalty points. If it's clear the boosting was deliberate, or that the driver knew it was against the rules, the consequences escalate: the race result can be annulled, the driver disqualified from that race, or handed a ban from an upcoming race. In the most serious cases, repeated deliberate boosting can lead to removal from the league.

There are two systems in place. Straightforward, recurring offenses carry fixed penalty points, all listed in the rulebook. Other situations are judged individually, based on severity — how often it happened, whether it was intentional, whether the driver could reasonably have known, and whether the rulebook even covers that specific case yet.

The exact rules for duels and contact racing are laid out in detail in the official rulebook — see the Rules page for the full text.

The exact blue flag and lapping rules are laid out in detail in the official rulebook — see the Rules page for the full text.

Submit a link to your own, self-recorded footage of the incident — Discord doesn't support uploading large video files directly, so upload your clip to a platform like YouTube or Vimeo and share the link. (If you do manage to upload a viewable file directly to Discord, that's accepted too.) Please don't send video via PSN or other private-share methods — we need a link we can open and review. See the Rules page for the full submission procedure.

Yes. Review the Rules page yourself and lay out why you believe the decision was incorrect. The Commission will take another look and weigh whether the argument holds up — if it does, a penalty can be withdrawn, or a penalty that wasn't issued can still be applied afterward.

We track every race and have been recording detailed statistics for around ten years, including various records, ratings, win percentages, and podium rates. You can browse the numbers on the Stats page.

Driver of the Day (DOTD) is awarded after every single race. At the end of the season, several further awards are each given out once: Driver of the Year (DOTY), which goes to the driver who collected the most Driver of the Day awards over the year; the Fair Play Award; Newcomer of the Year (NOTY); and the Best Substitute Driver Award. On top of these individual awards, each season also crowns a Driver Champion and a Team Championship winner based on the final standings.

Your full driver history — races, results, and more — is available in the All-Time table on the Stats page.

The RRL's sponsor teams (such as Xerogas or Atomic) stay with a roster as long as that team competes again the following season — the drivers effectively keep the right to the team. If a team's drivers move on or stop racing in the RRL, the sponsor slot becomes available again for a new roster. You can also propose an entirely new team, though this isn't guaranteed to be approved: candidates need an in-game connection to the brand (in-game liveries, a racing tie-in, and in-game merchandise such as branded clothing), and since the RRL already has a large roster of established teams with their own history, a new proposal needs to be genuinely compelling to be accepted.

See the Teams page for the full, current list of sponsor teams.

The official RRL channel is Discord — it's the only channel run by the league itself, and joining the Discord server is how you become part of the community. RRL content can also be found on Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, though none of those are dedicated RRL channels.

Yes. Races are streamed live on Twitch by a commentator — that channel isn't exclusively dedicated to the RRL, it also covers other games and content. The full race broadcasts are also uploaded afterwards to the YouTube channel (also not RRL-exclusive), where you can rewatch races going all the way back to the very first season in 2017.

A dedicated contact form is planned for the future, with selectable subject lines to route your inquiry. Until then, the best way to reach us is directly via Discord.

Not yet — but it's on the roadmap. The same planned contact form, with selectable subject lines, will also cover media and press inquiries. In the meantime, reaching out on Discord is the fastest way to get a response.

Yes — if you’re interested in joining the Commission, becoming a test driver, or contributing in another way, reach out via Discord.

The Commission page also features some influential past members who are no longer active with the RRL — they’re marked "Inactive" and can no longer be reached directly.