An Important Announcement About the Driver Group Game for 2025
After seven incredible seasons, I've made the difficult decision not to run the Driver Group Game for the upcoming 2025 NASCAR season. This choice wasn't made lightly, and I want to share the reasons behind it.
When Yahoo! ended their Fantasy Auto Racing game before the 2018 season, I built a working version of the game in just six weeks to keep the game alive for the passionate community that had played together for nearly two decades. I've rebuilt it a couple more times since then, and it's been a journey filled with excitement, challenges, moments of discouragement, and deep fulfillment.
Running this game has been a labor of love. Many might not realize that Driver Group Game is entirely a one-person operation—from coding and maintaining the site, to managing user support and everything in between. Picture a 57-year-old dude, a laptop and an additional monitor sitting at a modest home office. There is your tour of Onebadwheel, LLC.
I never set out for this project to become a source of income; it was always about preserving the joy and camaraderie that this game brought to so many fans across the U.S. and beyond. That is why you've not seen ads on the site. It's always been about the player experience.
Over the past year, I've been deeply focused on retooling my NASCAR statistics site, FRCS.pro. This marks the site's 20th season, and I believe the work I've been doing represents my greatest online accomplishment yet. For those who've enjoyed the Driver Group Game, your continued support of FRCS.pro would mean so much to me as I work to make it the best it's ever been.
I can't believe how long it's taken - and continues to take - to bring the updated version to life. FRCS has always been my online priority and will remain so, even during the challenging journey my wife and I are on.
Only a handful of players know that over the past two years my wife has been bravely battling esophageal cancer.
Her fight continues, and the weight of numerous appointments, procedures, and the constant emotional strain has made it increasingly difficult for me to manage the game's weekly administrative needs. Ensuring that entries lock at the posted times, addressing scoring corrections, trying to answer an ungodly amount of emails and still keeping everything running smoothly is a tough schedule to maintain over the course of a 36-race season. (Damn you NASCAR! Why is it so long?)
Right now, my time and focus need to be on supporting her, being present, and managing life's uncertainties as best I can while keeping my attention on one primary web project - FRCS (Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet).
Thank You for Seven Amazing Seasons
To those who have supported the game over the years, whether through donations, kind words, or simply showing up and enjoying the competition - I cannot thank you enough. Looking back it has definitely been the friends - old and new - that have made this project worth every long night and challenging moment.
If you are so moved and able to make a final donation our family will be grateful. But more than money, if you're someone who prays, believes in the power of positive thoughts, or simply wants to send a bit of encouragement our way - it would mean the world to us during this time.
Will the game return in the future? I honestly don't know. But for now, it's time for me to step back, refocus, and take care of my family and myself.
- Darren Fauth
Don't ignore chronic acid reflux!
Melinda dealt with chronic acid reflux aka GERD for many years. When I would wake up, not finding her in bed, I'd know that she spent the night trying to sleep on the recliner. "You have acid last night?" "Yes."
We didn't know that if you just try to 'deal with it' as an inconvenience you were risking the chances of Barrett's Esophagus.
Fall 2022 she started to have trouble swallowing her food. She scheduled an appointment for a fairly simple and short procedure called an endoscopy. The result - she had Barrett's. Biopsies were taken, and we found out January 4, 2023 that she had a malignant tumor in her esophagus. Life changed. She had 6-weeks of daily radiation and chemotherapy preparing her for an esophagectomy in May 2023. It is a major surgery with life changing complications that have significantly lowered her quality of life.
She started immunotherapy (another type of infusion like chemotherapy) in 2024, that was supposed to knock the 30% recurrence down to 15%. When she completed that it was time for a PET scan to see if she was still in the clear. That's when they found another malignant tumor just above the resection of her previous one.
Go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. FUCK CANCER
Please! Please! If you - or someone you know - has an issue with chronic acid reflux, don't just 'deal with it'. Get checked out. I wouldn't wish this journey on anyone.