UNIVERSITY, NETWORK CONNECTION AND UPDATES NEWS

    This week after confirming that my network card needed a network driver, things felt hopeless. In one last desperate attempt I looked through some sites which had network drivers for dell computers. I found one on just one site which dowloaded. After sorting it out my problems with the connection seemed to go one by one. So now I finally have network connection from my study bedroom at Univesity!!

    Although this means that weekly updates can continue as normal, I must let you all know now that there will be no update next Sunday. We have to wait another 2 weeks. This is simply because it is my 20th Birthday on this Tuesday 8th October. I will have some time together with friends at Uni that day. Then on the weekend starting Friday 11th October till Sunday 13th October I will be back in London to spend some time with friends there and see my family. At least then I can have two birthday celebrations that will involve near enough all of my friends. Therefore as I mentioned there is no update on Sunday 13th October, but there will be on Sunday 20th October.

NEW PHOTO ADDED TO PHOTO GALLERY

    This week we had an e-mail from PAL Karter, Michael Pölzl in Austria. He e-mailed us a photograph of himself which has been added to the SMK photo gallery. To those who havent sent pics in but would like to, you are welcome to send them in!

NEW PAL MEMBERS

    The PAL list is growing longer with new members, and we have two new karters joining us this week.

    The first new member is from the U.K. His name is Russell Shaw and he has driven some fantastic times for some of the courses including MC1. He still has plenty of potential on other courses so we will definitely see him destroy a lot of his times soon and climb further up the list. He has told us that he will start his work on a tape soon when he knows how it is made. His overall standard is King D and he has a PAL World Ranking of #29, he is also #4 in the U.K just below Neil Rowntree. Expect him to be #3 in U.K by next update!

    The second new member also e-mailed us all his times this week. He is a karter from the Netherlands and his name is Marco Olyslager. He hasn't karterd as seriously before but now that he has seen the site and the World Records he said he is ready to improve his times greatly. His overall standard is Pro B and he is #67 in the PAL Players' List.

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    It has been Sami Çetin's week where the new World Records on PAL were set. Some fantastic attempts were made on the DP courses with new DP1 PAL WRs of 1'15"28 and 0'14"80! Then new DP2 records at 1'27"81 and 0'17"27!! Vanilla Lake 1 5-lap was up next and the WR was taken from gava to 0'55"32! A small improvement on BC3 1-lap WR was made to counter attack Clementy's times with 0'18"03 and finally after some hard work a new GV3 5-lap WR was made at 1'15"58!! The DP1 lap was really great as it was first try and was eye-witnessed by a friend (the actual run, not replay). There were some small corrections needed to the WRs of Michael Jongerius from last week. For Choco Island 2 he has PAL WRs of 1'11"95 and a new lap of 0'14"19!! Very fast indeed!! Lastly on NTSC, Simon Laflamme also went to CI2 to try the lap and suddenly hit avery perfect looking run that was an NTSC WR tie with Jamie White at 0'13"26*!

    Matthew McCarthy again had a great week with many new records all solidly in the Kings except for one Elite and one Legend time. He is showing to get much faster with the GV1 lap using the jump to the platform. He passed some karters this week including being closer to Neil Rowntree in the U.K and our new entry Russell Shaw. His overall standard is now King D and his PAL World Ranking is #30. Nicolas Clementy last week regained his #1 position in France. His latest objective is to reach GOD standard overall on PAL. His new BC1 PRs were looking great but his best was on BC3 where he came very close to the lap WR! Matthieu Cruypenninck returned to SMK this week! He set 6 new records cutting some points off and making it to #24 on PAL. Cedric Leutwyler had a great time with VL1 cutting several points off and he also made to good Legend times on GV2. He climbed to #34 on the PAL Players' List and reached King E! Jérôme Gava announced that he will be unable to kart for quite a while now, but he left us with a small present from GV2 lap cutting a bit off his SR.

    Julien Holmiere had a fantastic week aswell with several new records being set. he managed to climb much higher by passing players as high as Franck Mazieres. This made him #5 in France, #10 in the World on PAL and have an overall standard of Legend F!! Julien wasn't the only one to create all the activity in Albi, because his brother Sébastien Holmiere also karted to gain some more ranks in the PAL Players' List. His new PRs even included some Legend times so we know that he is following in the footsteps of Julien! Sébastien has now an overall standard of King D and is #28 on the PAL Players' List. William Jonas also karted and set some interesting PRs, including a nice Legend time on GV3 and many other strong King times. William is now in close competition with Cedric Leutwyler as he is also King E overall standard and has a PAL World Ranking of #33.

    Lastly on NTSC we saw the return of Martin Morisette with a long list of new PRs. He really is trying hard now to get higher up in the ranks and he will have great results. He is even hitting some Legend times on courses here and there. He has made it to King F overall standard and is #30 on the NTSC Players' List. Doug Warren joined us last week and has already put together a good set of improvements. A climb to King E overall standard was made and Doug is now #26 on the NTSC Players' List. Yves Daniel seems to be shooting for the fastest European NTSC Karter as he is getting very fast on some courses. Some noticeable times were a sub 10 second lap on VL2 and many strong Legend times. Yves climbed to Legend E overall and #11 on the NTSC Players' List.

CHANGES TO TOP TIMES FORMAT

    You may have noticed in the past week that the format has been changed finally to the top time tables. They have been separated into individuals pages for each race. Check out the links if you haven't already done so to see what it is now like.

    The other announcement to make as far as top times are concerned is that they will be limited to Top 100s for both PAL and NTSC. The PAL is nearing the 100 mark soon, so this had to be mentioned. This does not mean that there will be only 100 members on the site. The list of members, which are on the Players' List will go to infinity if needs be. We can have as many members welcome to the site as possible, but only the top times will show the top 100s. It is a sufficient number so i hope that everyone will be happy with this arrangement.

NEW MEMBERS

    We have two new PAL members this week.

    The first new member is from France and his name is Pierre Nicolas. He has driven a decet set of times so far and lands in the PAL Players' List at #58 with an overall standard of Elite F!

    The second new member is Marcus Littlejohns from the U.K. He has played some courses a lot and made some great records, other courses he has only tried a few times, so there is plenty of potential for him to improve his weaker courses and climb amongst the fastest U.K Karters! His overall standard is Pro B and he is #69 on the PAL Players' List.

PR UPDATES SO FAR

    It has been yet another week dominated by Sami Çetin's PAL WRs!! It is great to have the top players as active as this! Koopa Beach 1 was something that needed improvement for Sami but it proved too difficult as he only just reached times near his PR. By Friday he set out to beat as many other times as possible and made some amazing new times!! Bowser Castle 1 lap had to go a bit lower and a new lap of 0'17"67 was driven; tried for 17"65 for the next SR bonus point, but it is hard to reach for now. Mario Circuit 2 went great after looking at the times Jamie White has done, this course was left untouched for a while, and now the fastlap record has dropped a great amount!! The 5-lap was messed up on the last lap sadly but was still an improvement. The new PAL WRs stand at 1'16"61 and 0'14"83!!! Choco Island 1 was hard work, but eventually the PAL WRs were pushed down to 0'59"46 and 0'11"70! Ghost Valley 2 was left for a while, and is now looking extremely tight at 1'02"34. Koopa Beach 2 was trouble for Sami previously but with the help of Raphael's video, and the hours put in, the PAL WRs were secured at 1'03"14 for the 5-lap and 0'12"02 for the 1-lap. This put Sami Çetin's SR score to -4.600, a decent cut from the last weekkk! Simon Laflamme made a great time on Choco Island 2 this week taking the NTSC WR off Jamie White by a small amount. Another 0.04 and he could have broken the big barrier, but he was satisfied with his 1'07"03 NTSC WR! Martin Morissette was the only other NTSC karter this week and made some huge cuts on many courses. These included many King and Legend times. It looks as though he is thirsty for the Legend ranks as he scrapes through to King C overall standard, #21 in the World on NTSC and #5 in Canada!

    It has been once again very active in France, particularly with some of the top karters! Nicolas Clementy made quite a few nice times, including an improvement into the 1'01"5x region on MC1 and some strong BC1 times. His VL2 times also helped him reach what he wanted, to become a GOD standard overall karter!! He has even made it a few points into the minus points at -0.125! The Holmiére brothers have also been receiving a lot of attention from other karters as they climb further higher in the ranks. Julien Holmiére is now becoming a danger to the top 4 karters in France as he rapidly gains positions and standards. He is now in the Legend E overall standard at #9 on PAL having passed Steven Zwartjes! Sébastien Holmiére also had a fantastic week and is not too far behind his brother Julien. His new records were made on courses all over and he cut off many points. He had some bonus points of VL1 lap and is hitting some more Legend times. His overall standard is King B, he is #20 on PAL and #9 in France!

    Archibald Lefevre had a good week also, even though he only made two improvements. His PRs managed to catch him up to the SR score of Pierre L'Hoëst. However, he lost on the matchup but should be able to pass him when he PRs next. William Jonas has karted consistently in the past weeks and is gaining some ranks with his PRs. He drove two Legend times for CI2 and KB2. He now stands at #32 on PAL, #12 in France, and is getting closer to King D. It has been a while since Arlaud Ludwig played a lot, and now he is picking up the pace with new records including some Legend times. He climbed to King G and #42 on the PAL Players' List! Matthieu Cruypenninck made some great progress on Bowser Castle 3 with some strong times set. He reached an SR tie with Ademir Cortes but lost the matchup, so he remains in the same position till he next improves.

    Matthew McCarthy is getting faster as we speak with more work towards Legend times and his GOD lap in VL1 being lowered even further. He passed our recent entry, Russell Shaw to become #4 in the U.K once again and he is now #29 on the PAL Players' List. Marco Olyslager joined us two weeks ago at Pro B standard and he has sent us 10 PRs since, making some nice cuts and paving his way towards the Master standards. So far he has climbed to Pro A, we look forward to seeing his progress next week!

NEW MEMBER

    We have a new member for NTSC this week. Ray Bergstrom from Pasadena, California in U.S.A has joined the SMK Time Trial site after sending in all of his times to place him at Elite G overall standard. He is #56 on the NTSC Players' List.

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    We had 9 active members this week which is slightly less than we usually do, but still we had some interesting events occur with PRs. Sami Çetin slowed down a little with the WRs as he was a bit busy with Uni work, but made 3 new improvements; Ghost Valley 1 lap had soem room left, although very difficult to cut the last corner after the jump, it was done well with a solid new lap WR of 0'12"27! Following that a barrier broken on BC3 1-lap with a new PAL WR of 0'17"99! Lastly, a tiny cut off MC4 lap to 0'19"74. Raphael Braun also fought back this week with some nice PRs, and his greatest part at KB2 with a PAL WR tie of 1'03"14*.

    The Belgian Champion, Peter Toch, on PAL version returned to SMK this week and made some great results all round. A great number of PRs saw him past many ranks into the King B standard overall. He tried hard to reach King A by this week but fell short by two points. He is now ranked at #19 on the PAL Players' List just ahead of Joakim Alderborn, the Champion of Sweden. Matthew McCarthy also had a great week alongside Peter Toch. A few more of his times went into the Legends and he is hitting higher King times on many more of his times. He made it to King C overall and has passed Neil Rowntree making him the 3rd fastest Karter in the U.K! He also has a PAL World Ranking of #29!

    Marco Olyslager started hitting PRs at a faster rate, making more times in the Masters with even Elites and a King D on GV2 lap! He is definitely picking up the pace and we should see him gain more ranks very soon. He has reached Master E overall and is ranked at #65 in the World on PAL and #9 in the Netherlands. Nicolas Clementy has been chopping off more SR points with his PRs on DP2, BC2 and DP3. Two of them were Legend A times, and 3 were GOD times. They were all very solid times!

    Doug Warren recently joined us on NTSC and has sent in some records, mainly showing his work on MC1. He chopped his times down quite, check out his profile and the top times. Thomas Harrington also announced that he would try to be more active now, and maybe we will see him make his way towards Stanley Jeram. He improved one of his weakest; DP3 and also pushed CI2 into the 1'07"s! Martin Morissette submitted one new PR this week for GV3 1-lap. This helped him to gain a rank and pass David Wonn for #21 on NTSC!

Continue to November 2002