NEW MEMBERS

    We have some new members to the site this week!

    Firstly, a great suprise from Sweden. We received an e-mail from a Kalle Videkull who sent in all of his PAL times which were amazingly fast for a newcomer!! He entered in at Legend G overall and #11 on the PAL Players' List!! This also meant that he passed Joakim Alderborn making him the new Super Mario Kart Time Trial Champion of Sweden!! Well done and Welcome to the site!!

    Secondly, we have a new karter to NTSC from U.S.A, David Rogers. He has set times using all round characters like Bowers, Koopa, Toad and D.K.Jr. He is working on his skills and hopes to improve soon. He has entered the NTSC Players' List at #73 and is Expert C overall standard.

    Lastly, Thomas Harrington (2nd fastest U.S Karter) recruited a new member also from the U.S.A this week. His name is Chris Zueger and he has entered the NTSC Players' List at #69 and is Semi-Pro G overall.

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    It has been popular amongst the NTSC Karters this week as we have more participants. The WRs this week were mainly set by Sami Çetin who has taken POM for October! Mario Circuit 2 had room left and he set a solid WR at 1'16"17. Bowser Castle 3 has always given everyone trouble when doing the 5-lap, but this time Sami has set something very consistent that was near to the fastest potential at 1'30"72!! He also experimented with some boosts on MC4 setting a very fast lap at 0'19"60 and with normal strategy except for 1 boost that helped a little out of the first corner, a new 5-lap PAL WR of 1'39"36. Simon Laflamme also had a go at BC3 on NTSC making a new WR of 1'29"09!! This was also a fantastic time, he was aiming for a sub 1'29" and should reach it soon. He has also reached the -6 on the SR! Jamie White played BC2 this week improving the lap WR by 0.01 to 0'19"67 and getting close to a sub 1'40" on the 5-lap!

    Ray Bergstrom joined the SMK site recently and has been hitting PRs left, right and centre since then. He has destroyed many of his times (VL2 is looking great)! We definitely look forward to hearing of his progress in the next weeks because he climbed from Elite G to Elite C this week and is #36 on the NTSC Players' List!. Martin Morisette is also doing great as he is reaching the higher ranks now. His improvements this week got him to King B overall and #16 on NTSC! It looks like he is going straight for Legend! Doug Warren is not too far behind hiting PRs. He said that he is going to work on a few courses at a time and really try to bring his times down a lot. He managed to scrape through to King D on NTSC and #26! Thomas Harrington has a target of reaching -1 SR soon so he is working on his weaker courses like CI1, DP2 and RR. So far he has hit some nice PRs there and cut some more points down. Yves Daniel also returned with some GOD and Legend time improvements. He cut some SR points down and is getting that bit closer to the next standard.

    On the PAL side, Marco Olyslager made a long list of new records that helped his SR quite a bit. He is on the way to reaching the Elites and at the rate he is going, will be there very soon. He climbed to Master C overall and will gain some more ranks soon. It was a busy karting week for William Jonas aswell as he attempted to gain as many ranks as possible this week. He is hitting more Legend times now and some are getting fast, it has to be said. He certainly can be seen as a Legend sometime in the near future. He made it to King C overall standard and #30 on the PAL Players' List. Nicolas Clementy cut some points off with a great pair of Rainbow Road times at Legend C and Legend A standards respectively.

NO UPDATE NEXT WEEK

    I will be going back to London for the weekend next Friday 15th November until Sunday 17th November. This means that there is no update next week, but there will be on Sunday 24th November. Meanwhile keep those times coming in!

MORE PROOF LINKS ADDED

    Some of the tapes that have gone in to France over the past month and before that have had new proof pages made. These are for Michael Jongerius, Jérôme Gava and Franck Mazières' own proof page. Go check out the links from the SMK proof page!

NEW MEMBER

    We have one new member to NTSC this week. His name is Jonathan Bennett and is from the U.S.A. Is is currently working on a new website at http://www.Mario-Kart.net and has just sent us all of his NTSC times which put him in the NTSC list at #61 with a Master E overall standard.

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    Two World Record improvements were set this week. For Jamie White on NTSC, he wanted BC2 5-lap to 1'39" and in the end broke Simon's WR there with a new 1'39"94!! Sami Çetin on PAL also improved BC3 lap a bit further, it was very tough but he got there in the end with 0'17"95 that cut another point off. POW this week went to Ray Bergstrom who has made constant PRs to try to gain ranks. He has been successful in climbing to King G overall standard and #32 on the NTSC Players' List! Well done!

    Over in France the Holmière brothers have yet again done a lot of damage to their PRs!! They have submitted a long list of improvements that are looking faster each time! Sébastien Holmière had a lot of great times including some strong VL1 GOD times and many more going to Legend. His hard work has paid off for sure as he reaches Legend G overall standard and #15 on the PAL Players' List, just ahead of German champion, Florian Stern. Julien Holmière also hit some fast records on quite a few courses and made an important climb to Legend D standard overall. He managed to pass Raphael Braun, the Champion of Switzerland to be #8 on PAL! Franck Mazières set 2 PRs on KB2 taking down some SR points.

    Matthew McCarthy is definitely doing well in the U.K rankings! He has had a great week with many new records and is almost there to passing Dan Hooper and becoming the 2nd fastest karter in the U.K (also living in the same part of London as Sami Çetin!). He will without doubt go for the Legends aswell. So far he has scraped through to King B overall standard and is now #26 on the PAL Players' List! Champion of Sweden, Kalle Videkull has already started to take part in the PRing after his entry last week! His improvements took him to a high position at Legend F past Steven Zwartjes for #10 in the World on PAL! Marco Olyslager sent some more improvements in which got him up to Master B overall standard, he still remains in the same position on the rankings for now.

    Martin Morissette has been continuing his journey towards the Legends and is almost there. With some nice PRs this week he is at King A with only a few points to go to reach Legend G! Thomas Harrington made two fast GOD times on DP2, there is still plenty of room left but he is doing great there, and GV1 lap was also cut down to much lower 12"s, and he will work on that some more for a GOD lap. Doug Warren worked on his MC2 after figuring out the bumper cut across the last corner and made some solid times, he may even cut them down more soon! He is #23 on the NTSC Players' List. David Rogers set 9 PRs this week and cut off some SR points, he will reach the next standard soon.

ANDREW KENT

    Some of Andrew Kent's times were doubted by many players over the past months and as a result, a tape was requested from him. After a few e-mails Andrew Kent had decided not to participate anymore in SMK, and therefore not to make a tape. He then agreed with his removal from the site as he is not providing any up to date validation of his times. All of his times have been removed from the site.

   Ademir Cortes has now once again taken the place as SMK Time Trial Champion of Australia.

THIS WEEK'S UPDATE

    Although it is an update over 2 weeks as I was away last weekend, it has certainly been one of the most active karting weeks yet! We have a total of 22 active members this week! The two fastest karters on each system have been hitting new WRs once again. Firstly on NTSC, Jamie White is still taking SMK to the sky and beyond with a great improvement on DP2 5-lap with 1'25"57! He had some close attempts on GV3 and also went to MC3 where he was a little behind. He is closing in on the sub 1'30" and Simon's record but he managed to take the lap WR to 0'17"86! BC3 1-lap also went under 17"50 with 0'17"49! His greatest moment was yet to come when he perfected his VL1 strategy to hit less blocks somehow and kep the speed going and he broke the big barrier with a historical WR of 0'49"88!!! It was also a great week for Simon Laflamme as he made close attempts to the KB2 WRs, but missed them by close amounts. He turned to his favourite at GV3 and drove an unbelievable new lap at 0'14"54!! He then went on to the course time and secured his 5-lap WR for quite a long time with a fantastic 1'13"47 WR!! This included a 0'14"54 lap tie and the race was taped!! on PAL, Michael Jongerius returned hitting some fast WRs. He wanted to take DP2 back and did so with a very fast and solid 1'27"50 and took the lap by 0.01 to 0'17"26!! He also improved over his already great CI2 WR to 1'11"79!! Sami Çetin played some BC2 over the past 2 weeks improving the 5-lap to 1'42"62 and eventually after a battle with Nicolas Clementy securing the 1-lap WR to 0'20"18!!

    Champion of Sweden, Kalle Videkull drove some amazing new records this week, so he has been busy at SMK! VL2 is going really fast now as he perfects the strategy for the fastlap and keeps consistent for the 1-lap. CI2 has also reached double GOD and many other times are in the strong Legends. He cut down many points and reached Legend D overall, passing Champion of Switzerland, Raphael Braun, for #9 on the PAL Players' List! Matthew McCarthy has reached an important goal this week, that was to pass Dan Hooper to become the second fastest karter in the U.K!! He worked on many of his weaker courses, like MC1 and is getting close to reaching the 1'01"s, keep at it and a 1'01" time will be yours! A lot of the weaker times are going to stronger Kings which is looking good and he had a great GV1 1-lap time aswell. He cut his way through to King A ahead of Dan Hooper (who was King B) and Matthew is now #20 on PAL!! The determination of the Holmière brothers continues! Sébastien Holmière drove several PRs on many courses again, moving more of his times into the Legends and a few more up to the GODs! Some times are looking great indeed! He has also pressed hard on his VL2 times to bring them down as much as possible. Julien Holmière has had the best moment with VL1 and VL2 this week. VL1 went down to the 57"s with a great lap in the 10s, but VL2 he worked hard to make solid French records and landed a low 53" second time with a 0'10"25 lap!! The fastest driven without the island jump was 0'10"15 by Sami Çetin, Michael Jongerius had around 0'10"21 or 0'10"23 if I remember. So Julien has driven some scary stuff to watch out for!!

    Champion of Belgium, Peter Toch, has imrpoved his position into the King A standard this week after setting some new Legend times on DP2, BC2, DP3 and GV3 along with osme other King times on some other courses. He is well on the way to reaching the Legend standards for sure, and is now closely followed behind by the U.Ks second fastest Karter, Matthew McCarthy! Archibald Lefevre struck back with a set of improvements, Legend and GOD standard times for quite a few courses and some trick/glitch improvements. His PRs got him past Pierre L'Hoëst for #5 position in the World on PAL and #3 in France! He is also on good course for reaching Legend A overall standard, keep at it Archibald! Nicolas Clementy worked on BC2 for the first part of this 2 week period and came in very close to the 5-lap WR. He also hit the 1-lap WR at 20"22 which was a tie with Sami at the time, the both infact hit this time on the same night, we tried to calculate the time of the evening we both hit it, and it is possible that Nicolas actually held the WR there for a little while before Sami improved from 20"26 to 20"22. Very interesting battle! He lost the tie in the end but 0'20"22 is indeed a very fast record of France that will stand strong for a while it seems! Nicolas also hit some other records including an MC1 5-lap PR and new French records on MC3 and a great improvement on GV3! Franck Mazières hit 5 new PRs including a nice GOD time for KB1 1-lap! He cut down some points and is getting closer to passing Steven Zwartjes, but has close competition of Sébastien Holmière just behind him! Jérôme Gava played more DP2 and BC2 this week. BC2 he tried to follow Nicolas and made some good progress with a nice 1'43" time and a 0'20"35 lap that was pretty solid. He also cut off some points off DP2 with a pair of GOD times there also. Jérôme is getting close now to reaching GOD standard overall! Cedric Leutwyler returned this week to set two CI2 improvements! Both of which were very good at Legend G and King A respectively. He gained a position to #33 on PAL! Marco Olyslager is still making his attempt at reaching the Elites, and he wil be there soon. This week he submitted a longer list of new records, some of which are really picking up the pace. He has reached Master A overall standard and passed U.K Karter Brendan McLoughlin for #64 on PAL!

    Our recent entry Chris Zueger who was recruited by Thomas Harrington has improved his complete set of PRs after seriously starting to kart competitively. Chris's PRs were more around the Expert standard before but now many of them fall into the Master and Elites, and one or two went to the Kings even! He certainly has potential, so look out for this guy! He has reached Elite G overall and is #56 on the PAL Players' List! Ray Bergstrom continues to PR and gain more ranks again. He has worked on his weaker time to push them into the Kings more, and it is working well. He definitely looks as though he can go for the Legends sometime in the near future. He is now King E overall standard and #29 on PAL. Martin Morissette is making great progress as he sends in a long list of records holding many Legend times! They were of help as he passed into the Legends straight through to Legend F overall standard!

    Also on NTSC, we had Thomas Harrington who made some big SR cuts this week, his best times were at MC1 with a near sub 1'00"00 time, go for it! A crazy 0'11"84 lap was also driven which he was very happy with. He also set some other great times at GOD standard, GV1 lap of which was very fast, and close to the WR! He is getting closer to Stanley Jeram, it is unsure when he will pass him but he is well on the way there. Doug Warren has also made some great progress in SMK with many new PRs, a few going into the Legend times now, like Rainbow Road and CI2! Doug is at King C overall standard and #20 on the NTSC Players' List. Darcy White has returned to SMK and set 4 new records, all King times, DP3 was a weaker course but it is getting better now! He has climbed to #24 on the NTSC Players List! Simon Laflamme got Gabriel Laflamme to kart some more and with Mario, Gabriel improved some of his records. He set his first Master time on Rainbow Road 1-lap and climbed to Expert G overall standard!

Continue to December 2002