F-ZERO CENTRAL SITE LINK

    I was speaking to Dave Crawford (NTSC) this week, perhaps trying to recruit some players to the SMK site. Dave is the webmaster of the huge F-Zero Central site which holds WR times and lists of players for F-Zero on the SNES, F-Zero X on the N64, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity on the GBA and also a place for the new Gamecube version of F-Zero coming soon! We decided to exchange site links so that we can have a chance of more people being aware of each others sites, this may help us find more new members! The link has been added to the SMK links section.

THIS WEEK'S PR UPDATES

    Many new WRs were made and some major targets were reached by some karters over these two weeks. PAL World Champion, Sami Çetin hit a goal that he has been after for many years. Following the new strat on GV1, Edwin Peeters had lost his GV1 record, and Sami was after the 5/5 jump with this and tight cornering to go with it. After these past weeks he finally made it with a superb new PAL WR of 1'02"70!! He went on to Mario Circuit 2 and using normal driving with no boost hit a 1'15"87 WR! Ghost Valley 2 also came quickly with 1'02"26. Donut Plains 2 was a tough one to get but he reached PAL WRs at 1'27"42 and 0'17"24! Sami experimented on CI2 driving around the lake an as many laps as he could but couldnt keep the kart steady for a clean race, but he managed to lower the PAL WR to 1'11"65. Vanilla Lake 1 came easier than before with new records of 0'54"38 and a lap of 0'10"11! After a close battle with Raphael Braun on KB2, Sami took the lead on KB2 5-lap with a new 1'03"06 PAL WR! All of these WRs brought Sami to having 40/40 PAL WRs and also 40/40 GOD times for the first time!! On NTSC, Jamie White set one of his greatest WRs ever with a sub 1'25" on Rainbow Road at 1'24"99!! He didn't stop there as like Sami he did MC2 without any boost and made a fantastic 1'13"85 NTSC WR! He also took Laflamme's MC3 WR which is now 1'29"73 and came very close to the lap. He also hit a very fast GV3 1-lap of 0'14"51! Simon Laflamme fought back by taking BC3 1-lap from Jamie with a 0'17"48 lap, he also hit some fast BC1 times and some tricks for VL2.

    Some great times were set over in France this week with Sébastien Holmière really destroying his records left, right and centre. He worked on a lot of the boosting techniques to help lower his times and laps and came close to Archibald's GV1 5-lap record. He also improved his GV2 lap with the platform jump. Altogether, most of his records were in the GOD standards. His SR score was the most impressive part however as he climbed  into the GODs past his brother and passing more karters till he reached #2 in France and #4 in the World on PAL!! Pierre L'Hoëst also hit many records this week starting tomake more use of the boosts to improve his times and laps. His BC1 5-lap was very solid which if im right is a record of France. Pierre also made it into the GOD standard overall and climbed to #8 on PAL. Dutch Karter, Arno van der Barselaar who recently joined the site has been working on most of his courses and made some quite big PRs this week that helped him to reach Semi-Pro D overall standard and #82 on PAL.

    Kalle Videkull was also making progress on BC1 with some solid times and he is getting more dangerous with KB1 as his fastlap lowers a little more. He cut off some SR points and made it to #6 on PAL! German Champion, Florian Stern was getting to work with the high speed KB1 strategy and some other races like CI2 and VL2. He was really going for SR point cuts here as he made it to Legend D overall standard. This week saw the return of the 2nd fastest Dutch karter, Gerard Roodhorst. Gerard worked on his favourite BC3 and also DP2 making some great times, we are hoping to hear more from him soon as he reaches Legend C overall and lands right behind Raphael Braun. Michael Jongerius improved two PRs this week, for BC1 lap and Rainbow Road lap. He stated that he is giving MK64 a try now and he is making great progress there so far I have read.

    Over on NTSC, Colombian Champion, Juan Sebastián Arévalo improved most of his records bringing many into the Legends, and his GV2 lap is now a GOD time. He may go on to work on some of his weaker courses next, he has great potential! Juan has reached Legend G overall standard with a #17 NTSC World Ranking. Martin Morissette set 14 fast new records, getting closer to a sub 1'00" on MC1 and improveing some of his weaker times like MC4. Martin climbed to Legend C overall standard this week and passed two karters to become #7 on NTSC! Yves Daniel chipped off little bits of 6 of his records and gained some more points from the Special cup times. His Rainbow Road reached a 1'25" which is looking great! Yves climbed to Legend D overall standard. Mark Sunderland hit a 2/5 jump on GV1 setting an NTSC 1'05" time and brought many of his records into the Kings with a lap record in the Legends. Mark climbed to King F and #34 on NTSC.

    Patrick Burke set 10 PRs this week that are helping him to move into the higher Elites, if he keeps working on it he can reach the Kings soon. So far he is Elite B and close to Elite A. He ranks at #38 on NTSC. Gabriel Laflamme improved some of his records with Mario, cutting some more points off and climbing to Expert F overall. Jason Fraser is gaining higher positions now as he improved a few PRs by quite a large amount; even setting a few GOD times along the way. Jason made it to King B overall and passed Antonio Abdo for #6 in Canada and #20 in the World on NTSC. It seems that retired Kelly Malo may not be returning to SMK, however, Simon Laflamme was able to recover some of his PRs that were not sent in and these helped improve his SR score to a faster Legend D than before. We hope to hear from Kelly again. Ray Bergstrom should be able to hit that annoying sub 1'00" on MC1 soon as he is stuck on 1'00"02. He also hit some more Legend times and improved a little off his weaker MC4 time.

    Back on PAL, the three karters from Switzerland worked on KB2 to see how far they could go. Raphael Braun came very close to keeping a WR there with a 1'03"08. He also set other PRs on KB1 and VL2 that cut enough SR down to keep ahead of Roodhorst. Serge Ludescher's results on KB2 were also scary as he made a high 1'03" time with a good lap to go with it. Paolo Galasso hit a pair of Legend times for his Koopa Beach 2 racing this week.

THIS WEEK'S PR UPDATES

    Jamie White hit hard with his NTSC WRs this week as he attacked some of Simon's remaining records. He lowered his lap to a great new time of 0'14"33! However he still struggled to get his MC3 lap down further but managed to push it into a tie with Laflamme at 0'17"79*.  The BC3 lap he done was simply amazing with 0'17"41, it doesnt look like this can be beaten. He went to CI2 and drove the 5-lap using the old strategy and lowered his WR breaking the barrier to 1'06"83! He then went around the lake for a lap time and now he managed to reach 0'13"03! GV3 was great as we thought Laflamme's WR couldn't be lowered but Jamie got there slightly with a new WR of 1'13"42! A great week for Jamie White! Sami Çetin slowed down a little after last week but still hit 3 new PAL WRs; These were for GV1 lap where he used the normal method to land the jump in order to make a faster lap and went as tight as possible finishing with a 0'12"24 lap. KB2 had more room left (as Sami and Raphael had discovered with some crazy middle laps) so Sami took his WRs there down to 1'02"60 and 0'11"96!

    Jérôme Gava returned after a break and suprised us all with a great set of PRs including the use of some of the new strategies being used in the past months. As he was already GOD standard, this did him good because he lowered his SR enough to pass a lot of karters including Clementy to become #1 in France once again and #3 in the World on PAL! Other activity in France included that of Pierre L'Hoëst, who worked on some boosting strats to come up with some crazy records on MC3 lap and MC4 lap, plus a sub 1'40"00 for MC4. His DP3 and GV3 times were also good. He managed to climb to #6 on PAL with his results. Sébastien Holmière also karted a little with a new PR on MC1 5-lap. In the Netherlands, Gerard Roodhorst some more on his BC courses (namely BC1 and BC2) that cut off some points to help him pass Raphael Braun on the list. Gerard is now #10 on PAL. Arno van der Barselaar also karted in the hope of passing a karter with his 8 new PRs. He passed 2 infact, Marcus Round and Raihaan Mughal putting him at #80 on PAl, and he also moved up a standard to Semi-Pro C, well done!

    German champion Florian Stern is really making progress now on both his weaker and stronger courses. He finally takes VL1 down under a minute with a great lap record and has driven some fantastic times for KB2, the lap being in the top 3 on PAL! He cut off a lot of points and is headed for Legend C, he may reach there next week! British Legend karter, Matthew McCarthy has slowed down a little to let Richard O'Neill catch up, but he has been trying out the GV1 jumps with the use of the boost. He had a bit of difficulty so far but is getting there with a new PR already and a pair of Legend F times on Rainbow Road. Swedish Champion, Kalle Videkull worked on BC2 to cut some points down. He made a good lap but is still working on a better 5-lap time.

    NTSC Karters from Canada are also gaining more ranks, with Jason Fraser making several new records this week in the Legends and the GODs. His GV2 lap time is looking greater now with the jump being made. Jason cut off a lot of points and climbed to Legend G overall standard passing Colombian Champion, Arévalo for #17 on NTSC! Martin Morissette played a lot of MC3 to see what potential it gave him and he has been successful so far. He is going for the GOD times there now as they are within reach. He is likely to reach Legend B soon. Mark Sunderland sent a few PRs early this week for DP3 and Rainbow Road cutting off a few points. In the U.S.A, Patrick Burke experimented on GV1 with the platform jump and hit a 3/5 playing it safely and made a decent time of 1'05" with some MC2 times to go in aswell. He has climbed to Elite A overall standard and #37 on NTSC. Ray Bergstrom set 3 PRs including a nice GOD time on CI2 lap.

NO UPDATE NEXT WEEK

    Just a note to say that i will again go back to London for the weekend meaning that I will not be around to do the update on Sunday 2nd March. The next update will be on Sunday 9th March. Sorry for any inconvenience.

NEW PAL MEMBER

    We have a new British karter enter the PAL rankings this week. Gavin Ward has sent in all of his times, and has made a majority of Elite records including some nice times for Rainbow Road! His overall standard is Elite D, he is #51 in the World on PAL and #8 in the U.K! Welcome to the site Gavin!

THIS WEEK'S PR UPDATES

    Sami Çetin once again kept on top of things with the PAL WRs. CI2 improved a little again to 1'11"58, then MC4 had more room with the boosts. Sami decided to use the boosts on the first location (second corner only) as the last corner was giving problems now and again. Still a 1'38"42 PAL WR seemed good for now. KB2 lap also went down a little more by suprise as it already looked perfect before, it now stands at 0'11"94. Lastly, Sami managed to lower his VL2 lap time to 0'09"59 after some luck with the island jump again and a bigger cut across the last big stretch of water. VL2 5-lap improved a bit with consistency to 0'51"68! Jamie White also hit some great times this week for NTSC. MC1 5-lap went down to 0'59"59 after he kept tighter with the boosting and hop jumping strategies combined. There is still some more room left but the NTSC WR looks great now! He chopped a little off MC2 lap to 0'14"31 and then headed off to DP2. Without much time trying he managed to pull out a new NTSC WR there of 1'25"42! He also chopped a hundredth off CI2 lap to 0'13"02. Prior to Sami breaking the MC4 record to 1'38"42, Pierre L'Hoëst had the WR at 1'38"46 for a few days which is a great achievement, well done! We should be able to see a video of his lap soon here. Pierre also knocked CI2 lap down and climbed past some karters to #5 in the World on PAL and #3 in France!

    Colombian champion, Juan Sebastián Arévalo has had a great week! He worked on some of his weaker courses and really pushed them down. CI1 is at GOD and Legend A, he went straight into the GODs for CI2 and he is getting tighter on Rainbow Road. MC4 and KB1 still have plenty of room, so we are sure to see him improve those soon. Juan climbed to Legend F overall standard and reached #14 in the World on NTSC after passing 4 karters! Martin Morissette had a similarly profitable week as he set just as many PRs and cut off some SR points. He reached his 14th GOD time after karting more courses where he was Legend at and hit a pair of MC1 times that are getting him closer to the big 1'00"00 barrier. Jason Fraser worked on a few boosts on courses like MC4 and he also set some nice times for MC1 and VL2. Stanley Jeram made a return to SMk this week! He is the 2nd fastest karter on Canada, and is already improving some of his strongest times. He was very successful in the past with KB1 and is lowering those times a bit. He also cut a bit off VL2 1-lap, altogether cutting off some SR points. Patrick Burke improved KB2 this week cutting down a few points.

    Back over on PAL we have some very fast driving from Swedish champion, Kalle Videkull where he pushes BC3 to his limits. His 5-lap and 1-lap time are looking great indeed! German Champion, Florian Stern improved his DP3 lap and also used some boosting to cut off his MC4 lap and hit a great lap so far. His SR cut helped him to reach Legend C overall standard! Gerard Roodhorst suprised us with a nice GOD time for VL1 5-lap and a great lap also for BC2. Sébastien Holmière improved MC2 lap slightly cutting a point off.