NEW MEMBER

    This week a new PAL member, Simon Grier from the U.K joins SMK Time Trials and enters all of his times that place him at #81 on the PAL World Rankings. He has an overall standard of Semi-Pro A.

THIS WEEK'S PR UPDATES

    Jason Fraser took the lead this week in PRing with a large set of great improvements including some nice GOD times. He reached Legend D overall and passed a few karters for #11 on NTSC! Martin Morissette was please with his sub 1'20" time on DP3, and his other GOD times are looking very fast indeed, he is not too far off the BC1 WRs! Before long he will pass Harrington for another position on the NTSC list. Stanley Jeram improved MC1 1-lap which didnt cut any points but the time was still great! Simon Laflamme also cut a little off BC3 1-lap. Patrick Burke sent in two PRs for VL1 including a sub 1'00" 5-lap time that helped him to pass Dubois for #37 on NTSC. Lastly, on PAL, Arno van den Barselaar sent in some improvements that helped him pass some karters for #69 on the PAL Players' List.

THIS WEEK'S PR UPDATES

    Simon Laflamme karted again this week with a new time for BC3 5-lap! He hit a great new WR with 1'28"41 for NTSC! Other active NTSC karters were mainly those from Canada; Jason Fraser once again hiting a great number of new records and climbing to legend C as a result. He is also now ranked at #8 on NTSC. He may reach Legend B and pass Liem pretty soon! Xavier Jutras climbed to Elite D, #55 on the NTSC Players' List and #14 in Canada. Martin Morissette set some nice records for GV3 and RR that helped him to get even closer to Thomas Harrington. Thomas did fight back a little this week with some PRs for CI1 and DP2.

    On PAL, there were 4 active members. Gavin Ward from the U.K did a lot of work once again on his records bringing them up to stronger Kings and he reached King D, passing Russell Shaw along the way for #6 position in the U.K and a #35 placing on the PAL World Rankings. Matthew McCarthy improved Rainbow for a pair of Legend E times that cut a few points off. Pierre L'Hoëst fought well recently in trying to catch up and regain his position from Seb as champion of France. Pierre improved a lot of times including some of his weaker ones and is just a bit short on SR score from reaching #1 in France. Kalle Videkull made some good cuts off both MC1 and CI1 helping his point score a bit.

UPDATE?

    As I mentioned on yahoogroups, there is no PR updates this week, simply because I am loaded with revision for exams.. I have 5 this week from Monday to Friday. Introduction to Programming (should be ok), Computing for Business and Accounting (a bit hard), Computers and the WWW (should be ok), Economics (not looking forward to this one), Quantitative Methods for Business and Accounting (this is the Math's module that some of you know ive been working on, really not looking forward to this one..) in that order. Then the last one on People and Organisations (which should be ok) is on Friday May 30th.

    Basically I just need you to all pray for me this week that i will do ok with these! Im seriously that worried about them... But summer will be around soon. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish any of you who are in the middle of exams, or will have them soon, good luck aswell!

RETURN OF AN OLD FRIEND TO SMK

    PR updates are on hold this week, but I have time to mention this week's other news. I have been in talks with Dirk Wegener, from the Netherlands. Some of you may remember Dirk as he used to update an old SMK Time Trial site before this one started. We are talking 1996-1997 when there was great activity between the past champions, Edwin Peeters (former PAL champion), David Wonn (former NTSC champion), Matt Leech (former U.K champion), Martin Bowman etc. Although many of these karters are long retired, Dirk has decided to make a return to the SMK community which has since grown into very large numbers on our site. He has started work on a site of his own which after agreement will stand as an SMK site for Dutch karters, a bit like how the French and German communities have created for themselves. His site includes a forum and top times for course and lap for the Dutch karters of the site. This is useful as it may help to recruit more karters from the Netherlands. The website he has started is at http://www.supermariokart.nl, a link has been added to the links above aswell.

OTHER NEWS AND NEXT WEEK'S UPDATE

    I have managed through 5 exams so far, 4 went ok, one didn't, anyhow it is over now. One more to go at the end of the week. I am putting a note in here to let you all know that next Sunday I will be busy at Uni because I have to start clearing things up and go to visit someone regarding accomodation. So next weekend's update i have decided will be done a day earlier. By the time it is uploaded it will probably still be Sunday so it will still have Sunday's date on it (1st June). Just a note for you all so you know that I will check next week's last PRs submissions at Friday 30th May at approximately 18:00 GMT, anything submitted after that will go in the 8th June update a few week's later.

NEW MEMBERS

    Two new karters joined the SMK site this week.

    Our first new member was Christian Holz from Germany who has entered the PAL rankings at #83 with a Semi-Pro B overall standard so far. His Mushroom cup times are looking solid, so we may see him improve his other courses soon!

    Our second new member has joined the NTSC List. Shawn Stover from U.S.A has entered the NTSC World Rankings at #81 with an Expert B overall standard.

    Welcome to the site!

PR UPDATES

    Pierre L'Hoëst continued the battle this week for #1 in France and did it passing Sébastien Holmière and reaching #4 in the World on PAL. Also with the use of boosting strategies he finally nailed a PAL WR at Mario Circuit 2 5-lap with 1'15"73! Kalle Videkull defended his #3 spot with some nice records for GV2 and GV3. Matthew McCarthy attacked some of his MC courses to lower his records, MC1 is looking better and he is sure to reach Legend E soon. Arno van den Barselaar improved several records and once again made a significant climb. He is now at #68 on PAL and Master F overall standard.

    On NTSC, we had Christophe Paquin improving a full 40/40 set of his records! Amongst these were are 0'59"99 on MC1 and many other great times, even some GOD standard. He climbed to Legend D overall standard and #14 on NTSC! Chris Zueger made a return to SMK with a nice set of records, cutting off quite a few points in places. He resulted in a leap to the Kings at King F overall standard and a #36 World Ranking for NTSC. Jason Fraser again kept very active pushing his times down further. Some nice chops were made to MC2 and other courses, he hit some GOD times on some tracks aswell. His overall standard is now Legend B and he is catching Liem soon. Martin Morissette hit a load of GOD times for DP1, GV3 and RR this week along with some nice DP3 times. He landed in an SR tie with Harrington, and his matchups were also a tie with the totals very close. Thomas Harrington will still remain in the lead due to his WR tie for GV1 this time. Martin is sure to pass him with a small PR for next update.. well see!