HAPPY NEW YEAR!! AND LOOKING BACK AT 2002..

    Firstly I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year!! It has been yet another active year for SMK with many new members and a great increase in the WR times for both PAL and NTSC! As for the special awards, you can check them out to see who got the week 4 POW for December, and who got the 4th Quarter award for 2002. The main one to look for is the Player of the Year award for 2002, that has been decided upon and you can now check to see who it is!

    2003 has now begun, so lets once again make this another year for SMK like the others; to keep the game alive as long as possible. Recruit new members, improve on old PRs, even make new WRs. To put it in a few words... keep on karting everyone!

KARTER PHOTOS ADDED TO PHOTO GALLERY

    Some new photos have been added to the SMK Photo Gallery this week! I went to a friend's house party a few weeks ago so a new photo of myself, Sami Çetin, has been added. Another picture with myself and PAL Karter Andrew Hewlett has also been included. During the SMK U.K Karters meeting some more pics were taken; Individual Photos of PAL Karters Matthew McCarthy and Richard O'Neill have been added. Then a group pic of Richard O'Neill, Sami Çetin and Matthew McCarthy playing what looks like a 3 player match race... (how did we manage that i wonder??). The pics have been added in alphabetical order of surname, except for the group pics which should be at the top from what i remember when they were arranged, just to help you finding them on the page. Enjoy, but no laughs please! :)

AOL INSTANT MESSENGER SCREEN NAMES ADDED TO PROFILES

    A few karters requested this a while back, and I thought it was a good idea. Many of us may use the different software for chatting that have been done by msn, yahoo, or aol. I have found that the majority of the karters have turned to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). This can be downloaded from www.aol.com. For this reason I do recommend for those of you who do not use it yet to download it as it really is worth it. What has been requested is to have the karters' AIM Screen Names in their profiles. Some of you may have noticed that they have all be added this week to everyone's profiles who have an AIM Screen Name. Now you should all be able to chat more often on AIM to discuss strats and things easily.

    A small note that many of you are aware of already, I will go back to University on Sunday 6th January which is probably when you are reading this message. Sadly, AIM does not work at Uni because of the University firewall. So if there is any message you need to write to me, you will have to email it to me. I will return from University in Easter and only go back for exams. I will have more time to be on AIM if there any questions or topics that need discussion or just to chat about anything.

    That should be all on that subject, it is mainly a note for those karters who havent downloaded AIM yet, if they would like to, that would be great!

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    We had 21 active members this week, so it was very busy! Not as many new WRs this though, however a karter from France fought back with a slightly new strat to help the fastlap on CI1 a little. Julien Holmière delivered the new PAL lap WR at 0'11"58! He passed Gava for #3 position in France and #5 in the World on PAL! Michael Jongerius tried out everything to figure out the method that Julien used but it seemed he was still not doing it the correct way. Then he stumbled upon a Shortcut version on CI1 where he prepared a boost and hopped across the wall on the left where the second set of humps are. This was decided to be put down as a Shortcut (SC) because it involved jumping over a wall to cut across the course a bit. This will be added into a separate table in the top times (within the CI1 page still) and is treated like the water trick times of the water courses and the trick time on GV1. This means that it is not included in the world rankings. But Michael still has a WR lap there of 0'11"08 so we can still congratulate him for his work there! Jumping over to NTSC, we see Jamie White improving his BC1 1-lap every more down to 0'17"21!! How fast can one go here??

    NTSC had great activity this week. Martin Morissette had a lot of new times that pushed him up further on the list. He improved a lot of weaker times making them into the better Legends and hit more GOD times with CI2 and KB2. He now stands at Legend D overall standard! There was a battle in the mid/low King area this week between two karters. Hue Le had one of his best weeks so far in karting with many great improvements including two Legend F times for Rainbow Road. His aim was to pass Ryan Harrington but during this same week Ryan returned submitting his counter attack PRs. Hue managed to reach King D and is close to passing many karters above but Ryan also reached King D and left Hue behind a little more by passing those other karters including Japanese Champion Mikihiko to #25 on NTSC. Mark Sunderland, the Canadian karter who recently joined the site sent his first lot of new records in this week reaching Elite B overall standard. Ray Bergstrom spent a lot of time on MC1 as he realised he was within reach of the great barrier of 1'00"00! He tried really hard and get very close at 1'00"05 with an equally great lap record and some other improvements. These got him to King A overall standard. Two things to watch out for will be for Ray to reach the Legends soon and to possibly break 1'00" which is great for his current overall standard!

    Back on PAL Richard O'Neill made a return this week with some big improvements on courses like GV3 and VL1 lap. He improved some of his weaker times including DP1 which will go under 1'20" soon after some more karting. He climbed to King D overall standard passing a few karters and landing just behind two other U.K karters, Russell Shaw and Neil Rowntree. If he can pass them after some more PRs he will be able to make it to #4 in the U.K! At the moment he is still #6 in the U.K and his PAL World Ranking is #33. Matthew McCarthy also had his biggest moment yet by making it to Legend G with 5 new records. VL2 finally went sub 1'00" so he may be able to pick up more speed there soon. His other PRs also look promising. On top of this he also scraped ahead of German Champion Florian Stern to be #16 in the World on PAL! The two karters from Switzerland joined in with the action setting 7 PRs each. Paolo Galasso worked his way through King F standard a bit further and is now #38 on PAL. Raphael Braun set 4 GOD times including a better lap under 14 seconds on CI2 and some other great times on the Mario Circuits. It was enough for him to reach Legend C and pass Gerard Roodhorst for #10 on the PAL Players' List.

    Pierre L'Hoëst set 6 great new times on the DP1, MC2 and MC3 courses. His MC2 lap is really great! This got him to Legend A overall standard and he is catching up with Kalle Videkull at great speed! Kalle improved only one PR on VL1 5-lap, this PR was meant to have been added last week but it is going in now, perhaps it got lost somewhere. This PR cut off a few more points off his SR. Sébastien Holmière hit new GOD time on two races including an improvement of MC1 lap nearing the sub 12 second barrier. This cut some more points off his SR score to put him closer to Legend B. Archibald Lefevre made his way a bit closer to #1 in France with some great times on GV2, the 5-lap being very consistent. His MC3 times were also fast! Franck Mazières played GV2 only this week in an attempt to take the French lap record from Clementy. He succeeded with a very fast 12"37 lap!

    Back on NTSC, Jonathan Bennett played a little more by improving 6 of his times cutting off more SR points. He managed to climb a standard to Master D. His PRs are going more into the Elites as he karts more. Patrick Burke also made his return and is hoping to kart more. His CI1 improvements were looking solid as he climbed to Elite D with them. The Laflamme brothers made a PR each. The lap of Simon Laflamme was on GV2 with the use of the platform jump he is getting really tight now by landing just ahead of Thomas Harrington's time and very near the WR. Gabriel Laflamme improved his VL1 5-lap cutting off a few points off his SR.

NEW MEMBER

    We have a new member joining the PAL list this week. His name is Jan-Philipp Lux from Kiel in Germany and he has entered the PAL Players' List at #73 with an overall standard of Pro E.

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    This week has been the most active week in the history of the site, in terms of the number of karters sending in PRs. We had a great 25 players setting new times, which is now the new record so far, a great way to start 2003! So I will try to keep it simple here and not waffle too much. A lot of exciting news as far as WRs go and the return of quite a few karters who were inactive for a while. To start off the week on PAL, Sami Çetin finally broke the 6 year long standing 5-lap WR on GV1 of Edwin Peeters! This was done to 1'05"53 with a 2/5 jump and tight cornering. However it didn't finish there as Dutch Champion, Michael Jongerius stepped in and after about 1 hour and 40 mins of karting he hit a 3/5 jump and reached the unreachable!; 1'04"81 was his new WR time! Congratulations there Michael!! Michael also hit a few other fast PRs and a WR on GV2 5-lap of 1'02"30* which was later tied by Sami Çetin. Sami continued to set new records on other courses after perfecting some strats even more; namely in Choco Island 1 with new times of 0'59"26 and a lap of 0'11"46! An MC2 lap of 0'14"58 was also hit. After spending some time again with the boosting on Mario Circuit 1, Sami finally lowered his time by a greater amount to 1'00"63! On NTSC, Jamie White took KB2 beyond crazyness with a sub 59" time! He even cut a little more off the lap. His new times stand at 0'58"81 and 0'11"22! Stanley Jeram made a quick return this week to tie the fastlap WR with Harrington on GV1 1-lap with 0'11"98*!

    We had a return from the Shortcut man himself, David Wonn! He started work on many of Lefevre's Glitch times setting many records. A reminder to all that the Glitch times will only be displayed in the profiles, i decided to not include them in any other tables because it is pointless in ranking. The Trick times (water trick, GV lap skips) will however have their own tables, as do GV1, KB1 and VL2. However these as with the Glitch times are still not included in the World Ranking in any way, they are just extras if karters would like to try them out for a laugh. David Wonn even succeeded a lap skip trick in Rainbow Road, although a little harder than the others to do. Kevin Booth heard of these Glitches and he returned to give some of them a go, setting some decent records. We hope to see these two karters return to the Normal Non-Shortcut racing soon, they still have plenty of potential left.

    We had all the karters from Switzerland active this week, starting with Serge Ludescher improving a lot of his times. He tried to rid of all of his Elite times and is now approaching to Legends as he hits King B overall standard and #25 on the PAL Players' List! Paolo Galasso karted equally well with many improvements across the boards and a Legend time on KB2 fastlap! He gained places up to #35 on the PAL List and is a King E overall standard karter. Swiss Champion, Raphael Braun worked on a few courses, GV1 in the low 1'07"s and then he was at VL2. He will soon be able to hit a full speed record, as his lap is very good but kept failing to keep it going after a few laps. His King B and GOD standard records are looking great so far though.

    Many other karters suprised us, such as Cedric Leutwyler making massive cuts on a lot of his times. Quite a lot of them are reaching into the Legend standards! He even set a GOD time on BC3 1-lap! Cedric climbed to #27 on PAL with a King B overall standard! Sébastien Holmière really went for it early on this week with 15 new PRs, using a lot of the boost strategies to improve his laps. He even managed a 1'05" time with a 2/5 jump on GV1! His work got him to Legend B overall standard. German Champion, Florian Stern made a serious return this week, also working on some of the new strategies with boosts and he cut quite a lot off his SR score. The DP2 & KB2 laps were really great! He climbed to Legend F overall and is within reach of passing Steven Zwartjes soon. Belgian Champion, Peter Toch not too far ahead of Stern was making great progress on the VL courses. A real suprise time came out with VL1 5-lap. He is working on VL2 for speed as with Raphael Braun, and will get there soon. He passed Steven Zwartjes for #13 on PAL and is close to becoming Legend E overall. We had a return from Sébastien Pereda this week! He has been inactive for a very long time. He put together some fast times, including good Legend times on some courses. These helped him to reach the Legends at Legend G. He passed Matthew McCarthy for #17 on PAL.

    On NTSC we had a lot more activity aswell. Mark Sunderland has continued his improvements to gain more ranks. His times ranged between the Elite and King standards. He is also starting to learn the boost which may improve his times a little further. He reached Elite A overall standard and #35 on NTSC. Thomas Harrington sent in a lot of new improvements which included some scary Legend and GOD times that are closing in more towards the WR times. Thomas managed to reach the -2 SR score, and is within close range of reaching Stanley Jeram for #3 on NTSC. Will Stanley return to defend his 3rd place or will it go to Harrington soon? We'll see... Yves Daniel returned with a lot of small PRs that helped him to pass Andrew Livingston for #11 on NTSC. Most of these PRs were improvements on his weaker times which did help. Martin Morissette sent in a load of Legend times and a GOD time, he has passed Kelly Malo for #9 on NTSC and will work his way towards getting rid of his King times to climb higher.

    Patrick Burke made a great improvement on Rainbow Road cutting about 6 seconds of his 5-lap time and hitting a few other PRs that cut off some of his SR Score. He now ranks at #47 on the NTSC Players' List. Darcy White made a return and frightened some of us with his VL1 lap that is following in the footsteps of Jamie. His VL2 lap was also very well driven and he made a pair of great times for CI1. We hope to see more times from Darcy soon as he definitely has the potential for a great Legend karter. He ranks now at #24 on the NTSC Players' List. Ray Bergstrom improved his MC1 lap to a GOD time, perhaps we will see him take that GOD time for the 5-lap soon too. Hue Le worked on his favorite course, GV2. Without the use of the platform jump he managed a GOD time, which is a great achievement for his overall standard.

    Back on PAL, Archibald Lefevre cut some more points off his SR score with some PRs for GV1 and MC3, those on MC3 being a pair of GOD times! He also hit a Trick time for Rainbow Road lap and some Glitch times for MC4. Kalle Videkull worked on CI1 mainly this week nearly breaking the 1'00" barrier and improving his GV1 lap. Nicolas Clementy made his return to defend his French title with an improvement on the fast new strategy of KB1, his lap time is now a lot faster.

NEW MEMBERS

    It has been a good time for new members as we have three new NTSC karters and one for PAL!

    Julien Patry from France recruited us a new French karter to the PAL Players' List. His name is Jérôme Simonet and he has entered the PAL list at #69 with a Master G overall stamdard. He hasn't played every course much but has some great times including MC1!

    We had an email from a Jean-Sébastien Dubois from Canada who sent in all of his times which placed mostly around the Master and Pro standards. He received a Master G overall standard and ranks at #68 on the NTSC Players List!

    A new member also to NTSC from U.S.A also joined us. Kort Everett Jackson; some of you may have heard of his success in the F-Zero series, particular in F-Zero for the SNES where he is one of the top drivers! He started Time Trialing and had only first tries on the courses so far and has sent all of his records in. He has an Intermediate G overall standard and ranks at #82 on the NTSC Players List. Kort has also sent us a picture of himself that is added to the SMK Photo Gallery, it was taken when he was 11.

    Our fourth new member this week is from Colombia in South America!! His name is Juan Sebastián Arévalo. It is the first time we have a karter from South America and he has already shown us his great talent in SMK Time Trials with many great records. He even hit 5/5 jump on GV1 for a decent GOD time and has some other times in the Legends! He is currently the SMK Champion of Colombia and so far South America! Congratulations! He has an overall standard of King E and stands at #30 on the NTSC Players' List! We look forward to any of Juan's improvements!

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    Things calmed down since last weeks amazing number of karters participating in Time Trials. As far as WRs went, Jamie White, the NTSC World Champion improved three of his records. He knew he could cut a little more off his MC1 WRs and did so to 0'59"69 and 0'11"78! He also wanted to give out his full potential on BC3, he improved to a very low 1'29" but didnt stop there and went all the way to 1'28"67! Darcy White also karted this week showing how well he can do on the VL courses as with Jamie. His improvements got him to #24 on the NTSC Players' List as he passed David Wonn.

    Back on PAL there was some interesting activity. Matthew McCarthy, the 2nd fastest karter from the U.K improved a setof his times making good progress on courses like BC1. He managed to pass Sébastien Pereda back again and also Edwin Peeters to land at #16 on the PAL Players' List. If he keeps this up he'll reach Legend F and pass Steven. German Champion, Florian Stern is really getting into SMK well now and picking up the pace with boosting strategies. He cut off a lot of SR points and reached Legend E overall passing quite a few karters and even scraping ahead of Mazières for #12 on PAL! Kalle Videkull has also been practicing more of the new strategies, mainly that on KB1, which requires no boosting but just driving over the land to keep speed. He fell a point short of reaching GOD overall standard, so we will have a new GOD standard karter in no time! The next bit of exciting new is that Lars Nouwen, the 5th fastest Dutch karter, has returned to SMK! His first aim is probbaly to reach the Legends and he has already set 5 PRs chopping down some points.

    The activity in France continued well with Nicolas Clementy showing his strength in Ghost Valley 2 with a pair of great French records. Archibald Lefevre has been testing new methods of reaching the jump easily in GV1 with the use of a boost beforehand. It is difficult to do but he succeeded in a 3/5 making 1'05"68 and hit a few more PRs getting a bit closer to Clementy on SR. Sébastien Holmière sent us 4 PRs, two of which were great GOD times for VL2. This cut off a few points for him. Pierre L'Hoëst also karted reaching a GOD time on MC1 lap with the use of a boost on the first corner and he also slightly improved his 5-lap time.

    Back on NTSC we saw some great improvements from Ryan Harrington as he decided to rid of as many of his weaker standards as possible. He sent us a lot of records and made a climb to King C overall with an NTSC World Ranking of #21. Patrick Burke also cut a lot of points off with his 6 PRs gaining the Elite C overall standard and a #42 position on the NTSC Rankings. Martin Morissette made an attempt at the GOD times on BC3 and did fairly well with some good Legend times, he is going to start work on getting rid of his remaining King times. Ray Bergstrom improved his KB1 times this week cutting off a few SR points.

NO UPDATE NEXT WEEK

    Just a quick note to let you all know that I will be going back to London for the weekend next week so there will be no update next Sunday. The next update will be on Sunday 9th February.

NEW MEMBERS

    New karters have continued to pour in! Two new NTSC karters join us and one new PAL!

    First up on NTSC from U.S.A we have Tom Koeppel Jr. who has been karting alot with Koopa and made a good set of times to put him at Expert E and #81 on the NTSC Players' List.

    An email from Jason Fraser in Canada suprised us with a list of many great records! This guy has some great potential, as he is entering the NTSC Players' List high up at #27 on NTSC and #7 in Canada! His overall standard is King D so far.

    At the end of the week, Arno van der Barselaar from the Netherlands (a PAL karter) joined the site. He has been using many different characters, mainly Luigi and produced a good set of records so far putting him at Expert B and #85 on the PAL Players' List.

THIS WEEK'S PR UPDATES

    Jamie White hit Rainbow Road hard this week with at first a tie with Laflamme's 5-lap. He then continued to lower the time slightly each day until he landed at 1'25"20!! His 1-lap came as a real suprise with an unbeatable 0'16"88 NTSC WR!! He also cut a little more off his perfect looking VL1 lap to 0'09"56! MC1 lap also went down to 0'11"77! On PAL, Archibald Lefevre was working with the boosting to help with the jump. He tried very hard for a 5/5 and in the end made it, there is still room for improvement but his new 1'04"29 PAL WR is looking nice.

    The NTSC karters really picked up the pace with our recently joined member Jean Sébastien Dubois improving almost every time on his profile really cutting off a lot of SR points and climbing to Elite F and #58 on the NTSC Players' List. Jonathan Bennett also karted very well on many courses this time making large SR cuts on courses like GV1 and DP3. His PRs reached him into the Elites at Elite F and #62 on the NTSC Players' List. Mark Sunderland sent in 12 PRs that finally brought him to King G overall standard and #35 on the NTSC Players' List.

    Patrick Burke started to work a little on the boosts across straights to help lower his times a bit on spome DPs and a few other courses. He lowered quite a few points and is now at #41 on the NTSC Players' List. Juan Sebastián Arévalo, the Champion of Colombia who joined us last week is already hard at work setting new records. He worked on Mushroom Cup this week, still plenty of room on MC1 and MC2, we will see him get further soon. His GV1 5/5 and BC1 times are looking great so far! Juan managed to climb to King D with his results this week. Martin Morissette improved 3 PRs, and cut a few points off leaving him with only 3 King times left.

    Lars Nouwen is PRing more frequently now since his return and is threatening the lower Legend karters with his PRs. His greatest achievement was the VL2 5-lap and 1-lap where he was at full speed for the whole race. He hit many other Legend times and made it to Legend G overall standard on PAL! Sébastien Holmière used some of the boosting strats and improved a lot of his records. He also cut down some of his weaker times and he has gained a standard to Legend A overall and is right behind L'Hoëst. Serge Ludescher was the only Swiss karter active this week but he wasn't that far behind Nouwen, as he provided us with 4 GOD times and some other records to make it to King A overall and #20 on PAL after passing a few karters.

    Nicolas Clementy improved his VL2 times to make them sharper. This alone helped him to cut quite a few points off. His 1-lap was really great.  Pierre L'Hoëst fought back on GV2 by snatching the record of France for the 5-lap by 0.02! His VL1 1-lap PR also came by suprise! Dutch Champion, Michael Jongerius improved Rainbow Road as it is his weakest course, and he has hit some decent records there so far. Kalle Videkull finally reached GOD overall standard after managing to keep the speed around KB1 that helped him to gain enough points.