Privacy Policy

974 E-Sports Team (974, we, us) is an independently operated sim-racing team based in Qatar. We are not a registered company; the website is run by the team's admins on the team's behalf. We run this website and the services available through it: accounts, team applications, driver profiles, race results, events and the driver dashboard, coaching discovery and bookings, and partnership enquiries (the Services).

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who sees it and what choices you have. It applies wherever you use the Services from. Questions and requests go to [email protected].

We collect only what each Service needs. Depending on how you use the website, that is the following.

Visiting the website

• Standard technical information handled by our hosting and security providers: your IP address, browser and device type, the pages requested and timestamps, in server and proxy logs used for security and to keep the website running.
• Country flags on the website are loaded from an external image service, which receives the usual request details, such as your IP address, when a flag is shown.

Creating an account

• first name, last name, email address and country;
• your password, stored only as a secure hash, never in plain text;
• the one-time code used to verify your email address, stored hashed and valid for 10 minutes, and a proof that verification succeeded, valid for 30 minutes;
• account status, roles (for example member, driver, race engineer, coach, coaching client or admin), when the email was verified, and sign-in sessions;
• notifications sent to you inside the dashboard.

Signing in, resetting a password, requesting codes

• records of attempts, keyed by email address and network address, used only to limit repeated attempts and lock out abuse, and removed after a day;
• password-reset links, stored as hashes, valid for a limited time and cleared after use;
• the result of the Cloudflare Turnstile check that protects these forms (see Section 10).

Applying to join the team

• the name and country on your account, and your age;
• Discord username, Steam profile or friend code, and iRacing customer ID where relevant to the programme;
• racing experience and statistics such as iRating, safety rating, licence class, races, DNFs and pace information, your availability, a portfolio or links for team roles, and your answers to the application questions;
• the outcome of the review and any note the reviewer leaves for you.

Driver profiles

• for approved members who submit a profile: name, country, driver number, biography, photo, the simulators you race and your statistics in each (races, wins, podiums, podium rate, ratings and licence class);
• the submission itself, its status and any admin feedback, kept with the profile.

Events and the driver dashboard

• event registrations, the class and car you choose, your availability for race slots, and the lineups you are placed in;
• race debriefs you write; private teammate feedback you send or receive, the replies in those conversations, and when each was written, edited, withdrawn, hidden or restored;
• engineer notes written about your driving by the team's engineers. These are private to the engineers and admins; you only see a note when the engineer explicitly shares it with you as post-race feedback, and the engineer or a team admin can withdraw that sharing again, after which the note stays with the engineer and is no longer shown to you;
• lap times you record in the personal-best log, with simulator, track, car and conditions. The fuel calculator does not store the figures you enter.

Coaching

• for coaching clients: a coaching profile (country, Discord, simulator, main class, cars and tracks, experience level, iRacing customer ID, iRating, safety rating, licence class, Steam profile and timezone; unless you set a timezone yourself, the website reads it from your browser and updates it when your browser reports another one), the sessions you book, goals, notes and session reports that your coach writes, and your assignment to a coach;
• for coaches: the public coach profile you write (name, headline, biography, experience, country, languages, timezone, images, services and prices), your availability and the sessions you run;
• for coaches who choose to: a Discord username and Discord user ID. These are shown on your public coaching page only while you switch on public Discord enquiries. Whether or not that switch is on, clients whose payment to you has been verified can see them in their dashboard, so they can contact you about the coaching they paid for. The profile link is built from the user ID; nothing else is stored.

Coaching payments are made by you directly to the coach's PayPal account, outside the website, so we never see your card or bank details. The website does keep a record of each purchase: the package or session, the price and currency, the payment reference, your “payment sent” report, the coach's or an admin's confirmation with the PayPal transaction ID, and any cancellation or refund the coach reports. Anything else you share with a coach when paying is handled by the coach under their own arrangements.

Partnership enquiries

• contact name, company or organisation, email address, country, website, the type of partnership, subject and your message;
• a one-way hash of the sending network address, used only to limit repeated submissions, from which the address cannot be recovered.

Race results and event coverage

Results published by admins may name drivers and contributors, with their role, car, positions and the event, together with photos or recordings from the event's coverage, as part of the team's record. Streams and recordings of races may show your name, driver number, car and in-simulator driving.

What we do not collect

We do not run analytics or advertising trackers, we do not sell merchandise or take payments in this version, and we do not collect telemetry or automatic lap data. If any of these change, we will update this Policy first.

• to create and run your account, verify your email address, sign you in and keep your account secure;
• to receive, assess and respond to team applications, and to manage membership, events, lineups and the dashboard;
• to review and publish driver profiles and race results as the team's public record, once approved;
• to run the coaching directory and bookings and pass booking details between you and your coach;
• to answer partnership enquiries;
• to send the emails the Services need: verification and email-change codes, confirmations when your email or password changes, security and account notices, application receipts and outcomes, profile decisions, coaching booking requests, confirmations, reminders, changes and cancellations, payment requests and confirmations, and enquiry acknowledgements;
• to detect and prevent fraud, abuse and security incidents;
• to comply with legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

Where the law requires a legal basis for processing, we rely on performing our agreement with you, your consent where we ask for it, our legitimate interests in running and protecting the Services, and compliance with legal obligations. We do not send marketing emails.

Public, on the website

• Approved driver profiles: first and last name, country and flag, driver number, photo, biography, the simulators you race and your statistics in each, and the published results you took part in. Nothing from a profile is public until an admin approves it. While the profile is linked to your account it is shown only while you are an active, approved team member; if your account is deleted, the profile can be kept as part of the team's record, no longer linked to you, unless you ask for it to be removed (Section 7).
• Published race results: the names of the drivers and contributors, their roles, cars and positions.
• Coach profiles: what the coach writes for their public page, their services and prices.
• Partners: the names, logos and websites of partner organisations the team chooses to display.

Your email address, password, application, dashboard content, coaching details and enquiries are never public.

Coaches

A coach can see, for the clients assigned to them only: the client's name, the coaching profile the client fills in (country, Discord, simulator, class, cars, tracks, experience level, iRacing details, Steam profile and timezone), the sessions booked with them, the goals and notes they keep for that client, and the reports they write. You, as a client, see your goals, your sessions and the reports your coach chooses to share with you; a coach's notes about you are seen only by that coach. Coaches do not see your email address through the website, your password, your application or your dashboard. Coaches are independent: what you share with a coach directly, for example when arranging payment, is handled by the coach, not by 974.

Team members

Members see the lineups they are in and the names of their teammates, the race debriefs they write, the private teammate feedback sent to them and the replies in those conversations. Engineer notes are not shown to members: a driver only sees an engineer note when the engineer explicitly shares it with them as post-race feedback. Engineers see the notes they write and the drivers they are written about.

Admins

Team admins use the admin panel to run the team: accounts, applications, driver profiles and submissions, results, events and lineups, coach profiles, services, availability, assignments and sessions, partners and enquiries. Coaching notes, goals and reports are not shown in the admin panel; they are held in the website's database, which the admins who operate the server can access when needed, for example to answer a request from you. Admins cannot see your password.

We do not sell personal information to advertisers or anyone else. We share it only as described here.

• Service providers that we use to run the website, who may process information only to provide their service to us:
  • DigitalOcean hosts the website, its database and uploaded files on a server we operate.
  • Cloudflare provides DNS, the secure connection to the website and protection against attacks, so all traffic to the website passes through it, and provides Turnstile, which checks that forms are submitted by a person.
  • Resend sends our emails; it receives your email address and the content of each message we send you.
  • flagcdn.com serves the country flag images shown on the website.
• Coaches, team members and admins, to the extent described in Section 4.
• The public, for information that is meant to be public, as described in Section 4.
• Authorities and others where legally required, for example to comply with a court order, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights, safety or property of 974, our users or others.
• A successor, if the team or the Services are passed to another organisation, in which case we will tell you and this Policy will continue to apply until it is changed with notice.

The website does not take payments itself. When you pay a coach through their PayPal.Me link you leave the website, and PayPal handles the payment under its own terms and privacy policy. The website records only the reference and the confirmation described in Section 2.

We are based in Qatar and the Services are available internationally. Your information is stored on the server we operate with DigitalOcean and handled by the providers named above, which may operate in countries other than your own, with data-protection laws different from those where you live. We choose established providers and protect the connection to the website, but we do not claim to hold any certification or to have adopted any particular legal transfer mechanism.

We keep personal information for as long as it is reasonably needed for the purpose we collected it for, and then for as long as we need it to meet legal obligations, resolve disputes and keep the Services secure. We have not set fixed periods for every category; the following describes what the website does today.

• Email verification codes expire after 10 minutes and the registration proof after 30 minutes; password-reset links expire after 30 minutes and are removed shortly afterwards; attempt records used for rate limiting are removed after a day.
• Account, application, profile, dashboard and coaching information is kept while your account exists.
• When an account is deleted (Section 9), its sessions, roles, notifications, application, event registrations, lap times, saved data and the account record itself are removed. Published race results and a published driver profile can be kept as part of the team's record, no longer linked to the account.
• Some records belong to the team or to other people, and some must be kept for accounting, disputes, security or legal obligations: coaching purchases and their payment, verification and refund history; records you verified or refunded as an admin; a coaching profile and its sessions, goals and notes; event lineups; race-result credits; engineer notes written about you; private teammate feedback and replies you sent or received, including withdrawn ones; and shop orders. An account that holds any of these cannot be deleted. When you ask for deletion, an admin checks what the account holds and tells you which records prevent it and why; where a record can be moved or unlinked (for example a result credit moved to the roster record) the admin does that first, and then the rest of the account is deleted as described above. Deleting an account removes your sign-in, roles, notifications, application, registrations, lap times and race debriefs, your coaching client profile and the account record itself; it does not erase records that stay with the team.
• Private teammate feedback and replies that you withdraw lose their text at once; a record of who wrote to whom, about which race, when it was sent and when it was withdrawn remains. Content hidden by an admin keeps its text for moderation, together with the admin's name, the reason and the time, and is shown to neither participant while hidden.
• Partnership enquiries are kept while the team is considering or following up on them and can be archived; they are not deleted automatically.
• Server and proxy logs held by our providers are kept according to their standard practice for a limited period.

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards: passwords stored only as hashes, email verification before an account is created, limits and lockouts on repeated sign-in and reset attempts, encrypted connections to the website, uploaded files stored outside the public web folder and served only through checks, access limited to the admins who need it, and backups of the database and uploaded files taken by the team. Files the team uploads for its own pages, such as circuit maps, benchmark sheets and partner logos, are published content; where such a file shows a person, it is used with their permission.

No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. If we become aware of a security incident affecting your information we will tell you and, where required, the relevant authorities, without undue delay. You can help by using a strong, unique password and telling us promptly if you suspect your account has been accessed without permission.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• ask us to delete your information, subject to records we must keep;
• object to, or ask us to restrict, certain processing;
• withdraw consent where processing is based on it;
• complain to a data-protection authority where one exists for you.

What you can do yourself. After signing in you can set your country, submit and update your driver profile (name, country, number, biography, photo and statistics, published after approval), manage your coaching profile and bookings, and keep your lap-time log. Your email address and password can be changed by resetting the password or by asking us.

Everything else. To access, correct or delete anything else, or to close your account, email [email protected] from the address on your account. An admin carries out account deletion as described in Section 7, including telling you which records, if any, prevent it. We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting, and we will respond within a reasonable time and in any case within the period required by the law that applies to you.

The website itself sets these cookies, all strictly necessary:

• session974: set when you sign in, keeps you signed in and protects your account. It lasts one day, or 60 days if you choose to stay signed in, and is removed when you log out.
• reg_verify: set during registration to carry the proof that your email code was verified; it lasts up to 30 minutes and is used once.
• 974_cart: used only by the merchandise shop, which is not open in this version; ordinary visitors do not receive it.

Services we rely on may also set cookies or use browser storage of their own:

• Cloudflare may set security cookies because the website is served through Cloudflare, and its Turnstile widget on the sign-in, registration, password-reset and enquiry forms may use cookies or browser storage to complete its check. Cloudflare's privacy policy applies to these.

We do not use analytics or advertising cookies. You can control cookies through your browser settings, but blocking the session cookie will prevent you from signing in, and blocking Cloudflare's may prevent the protected forms from working.

Team applications are open to drivers aged 16 and over, so some of our users are under the age of majority where they live. We treat their information with particular care: we collect only what the Service needs, a published profile contains only what is needed to present the driver as a member of the team, younger drivers appear in published results and race coverage in the same way as other team drivers (Section 2), and parents or guardians may contact us to review, correct or delete a younger user's information.

The website does not currently verify ages beyond the age you state in an application, and it does not collect a parent's or guardian's consent itself. Where the law of your country requires such consent before you create an account or apply, that consent must be in place before you do so, and we may ask for evidence of it. The age at which a person can agree to data processing on their own differs between countries, and we follow the rules that apply to you.

The Services link to and work with platforms we do not control, including Discord, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, iRacing and Le Mans Ultimate. When you follow a link or use one of those platforms, their privacy policies apply, not this one. For example, joining our Discord server is governed by Discord's terms and privacy policy, and your iRacing profile is handled by iRacing.

We may update this Policy as the Services change or as the law requires. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last updated. For significant changes, for example a new category of data, a new provider or a new purpose, we will give reasonable notice where practical, such as an email to account holders or a notice on the website, before the change takes effect.

For questions, requests or complaints about privacy:

• 974 E-Sports Team, an independently operated sim-racing team based in Doha, Qatar
• Email: [email protected]

Our Terms of Service set out the rest of the agreement between us.