There is a sad and inescapable truth petrol heads must face: 99 percent of us will never own our dream cars. Cars are important, we build our cities around them, shape our civilization around them,  grow cultures dedicated to them, global tribes of men and women who love not just cars as an idea, but specific types of cars, brands and models, legacies, histories, mythologies.

we love cars, obsess over them, they become members of the family, and sometimes they inspire us. Car lovers are astounded by the beauty of the Ferrari 458 Italia, the power of the Mercedes McLaren SLR, and the grace of the Porsche 911 GT2, but most of us will never get to sit in one, they are dreams made real in metal and oil.

Video games are the greatest friend of the petrolhead, all these intangible dreams at our fingertips, ready to be driven, fawned over, painted, upgraded, tested to their limit, and money is no object.

Forza Motorsport 3 is our game of choice, every Thursday we bring our love of cars together, we share jokes and anecdotes, often about the cars we love and own. We speak casually about our dream machines as we que up to put them to the test in our grand fantasy world of burning rubber, scorched pavement and glossed metal. We are brothers in speed. We are race night.

Race night isn’t about who wins or loses, it’s not about who’s got the best tune setup on the best car, the best win record or the cleanest line, it’s about the moments when we slam our 2,000,000 dollar hypercar into a guard rail, and laugh hysterically at ourselves. It’s about smashing your opponent into the speed trap, and politely apologizing and letting him pass you. It’s about coming in dead hard last, and not caring one bit. This philosophy of fun and friendship over competition has given the Giant Bomb race night a startling longevity. Racers have come and gone, but the spirit has never changed. Laz will always come up with a race that is more focused on creating chaos and comedy than some arbitrary notion of “balanced racing.” I will always have something brash and silly to say as I come in last, not to be bitter or adversarial, but to make my friends laugh loudly into their headphones, and Keval, well, Keval is and always has been our benchmark. He’s our Stig, the immensely skilled anonymous master of our giddy fantasy land.

Our cast of characters is ever growing and ever changing, like car culture itself, we have our histories, our legends, our mythologies, our customs. We endure for the same reasons that any tribe of car enthusiasts endure: because as much as we celebrate the victories of our lore, they don’t matter. Our proud traditions endure not because we cast out the slow in favor of the fast, we endure because we love what we’re about, we believe in our community, and everyone is welcome.

That’s why we race night.