NEXT WEEK - MAYBE NO UPDATE

    Next weekend I should be travelling back home for my birthday and to see family. I am not sure yet on the duration of my time away but it looks like there will be no update of the site next Sunday, but keep sending your PRs in cos the POW will still be awarded for next week's karting and the following next update will be on 17th October. I will write an e-mail to supermariokart@yahoogroups.com and maybe on the message board if anything changes.

NEW MEMBERS

    Two new PAL karters have joined!

    Firstly we have Cristina Nguyen Esteban, a female karter who lives in France. Cristina has some very fast times and enters the PAL World Rankings with a King A Overall standard and #27 PAL World Rank. She is also ranked at #12 in France and is currently the fastest female karter in the World on the site!

    Our next new member is Walter Gur from Germany who enters the PAL World Rankings at #88 with a #10 ranking in Germany. Walter Gur has a Master C overall standard.

    Welcome to the site!

NEW VIDEOS ADDED

    This week, PAL British Champion, Sami Çetin has some new video files of a few times driven in the summer. Some of you may have seen these already. The link can be found at http://paultanney.free.fr/ and it is also on the SMK Video Files page. One of the files is the famous PAL Version 1'00"99 Non-NBT WR on Mario Circuit 1.

    Special thanks to Paul Tanney for helping to host these videos on his page.

NEW PHOTOS ADDED TO GALLERY

    Two new photos have been added to the SMK photo gallery, of Matthias Boucher and Clement Papon both from France. They can be found in the France photo link in the photo gallery main page.

PR UPDATES

    On PAL, Karel van Duijvenboden has been hitting several PRs this week, both in the NBT and Non-NBT driving. He has also hit a fantastic PAL WR Lap on BC3 with 0'17"83! Karel has passed both Sébastien and Sami on the PAL rankings and is now #2 in the World on PAL! Also in Netherlands, Arno van den Barselaar continued his improvements on various courses and climbed to Master C overall standard and #87 on PAL. Gerard Roodhorst has had a correction made to his DP3 time which is 1'20"69, this got him the point to put him in a tie with Jérôme Gava. Gerard won the matchup and takes #11 on PAL. In France, we had some strong karters playing; David Bonne in the higher Kings, worked on most of his courses and made many new PRs this week. He has climbed to King A overall standard, #28 in the World on PAL and #13 in France. Clement Papon made a big suprise with his PRs. He climbed all the way through the Elites this week with many great new records and now he stands at King F overall standard, #55 in the World on PAL and #25 in France. Matthias Boucher set some PRs on MC2 and KB1 cutting down some points. In the U.K, Tom Gaffikin made a big return to SMK with PRs on nearly every course and lap! He is picking up the pace again as he sets some strong times on courseslike GV2 and RR. He has passed Gary Flint on the way to become #10 in the U.K and he is ranked at #61 in the World on PAL with an overall standard of King G! We look forward to seeing more of his improvements soon! Jamie Stirzaker has also been setting a few PRs this week, some of which were very strong, like his DP2 times. Jamie has climbed to King D overall standard and is now #47 in the World on PAL and #7 in the U.K. In Germany, Armin Huber got a WR on BC3 flap before it was beaten by Karel, and he also set some more very strong GOD NBT times. Danijel Danilovic who joined the site last week has been setting lots of PRs and is now Elite F overall standard. Danijel is ranked at #76 in the World on PAL and #8 in Germany.

    On NTSC, in Japan, Toshi Miura set some good NBT times for DP1, and long boost times for MC2 that look great. His Non-NBT records on BC3 are very consistent also. Toshi has cut off quite a lot of SR points with his records this week! Kazutaka Yamauchi continued some more improvements from the previous week and has cut down quite a few points, he is now closer to Legend F standard, and should reach it very soon. In Brazil, Oliver Segarra Gonzalez does some no boost times on MC2 that are very fast, along with some nice PRs on MC4 and DP3. He has passed Thomas Harrington and is now #8 on NTSC. In Canada, the battle for #4 still continues, Martin Morissette makes a long boost PR on MC2 that helps him to pass Chris Balch again. Chris made a few small PRs this week to keep just a few points from Martin. Canadian Champion, Simon Laflamme makes a small PR on his MC2 record.

NEW MEMBERS

    Two new members to the site this week:

    Alasdair Morrison of Scotland in the U.K sends in all of his records and enters the PAL World Rankings at #99 with an overall standard of Pro A.

    Our second new member is Colin Deyman from U.S.A who has driven all of his records and made it to Pro B overall standard on NTSC and enters the NTSC World Rankings at #73.

NEW VIDEO FILES AND PAGES

    New video files and pages have been added to the SMK Video Files Page. Sébastien Holmière uploads his CI2 video, and Julien Holmière has a new RR lap vid link up. On the Dutch proof page, a new MC3 video of Karel van Duijvenboden has been added. New proof pages of Hue Le and Oliver Segarra Gonzalez have also been added. Check them all out to see some great new video files!

PR UPDATES

    Karel van Duijvenboden made a great new BC3 flap on PAL of 0'17"79! It is very solid and looks unbeatable! He also made a few other PRs on RR. Gerard Roodhorst has been working on a few PRs aswell including BC2 5-lap where he took Sami's PAL WR down to 1'42"52! On NTSC, Martin Morrissette made a new WR on BC1 5-lap with 1'26"70, taking Jamie White's time down a little.

    On NTSC in Brazil, Oliver Segarra Gonzalez had 12 new PRs including some good cuts down off KB1. He has passed Toshi and Christophe on the NTSC Rankings, and is now ranked at #6 in the World on NTSC! Carlos André Salles has also been making good progress with many new records including some good results from GV3. Carlos has reached his main target of King G and will continue his improvements. He is also ranked at #52 on NTSC. In Canada, Chris Williams drove PRs on a lot of courses and has now reached Legend G overall standard and #30 on NTSC. Antonio Abdo set 8 PRs and climbed to Legend E overall standard and #22 on NTSC. Simon Laflamme worked on BC1 and MC2 with nice results and a few points cut down off his SR Score.

   On the PAL side, in Germany, Sebastian Stellmacher, Danijel Danilovic and Walter Gur have been karting a lot and have made some great results! Sebastian made some superb times on VL2 and a NBT lap on DP1 along with other great PRs. He has beaten a lot of his weaker times and is now King E overall standard, #52 in the World on PAL and #5 in Germany! Danijel Danilovic has been working on some NBT driving a bit already alongside destroying his weaker times. He has hit a lap with the MC2 longboost and some NBT DP1 and MC1 aswell. Danijel's overall standard is now King G and he is ranked at #62 in the World on PAL and #6 in Germany. Walter made a good set of times and fought his way into the Elites at Elite F overall standard, and he climbed up to #77 on PAL and #9 in Germany. All three karters here have great potential and should be climbing many more ranks on PAL in the coming weeks!

    In France, PAL World Champion Pierre L'Hoëst set a small PR on BC1 5-lap. David Bonne reached Legend G overall standard, #27 in the World on PAL and #12 in France with 7 solid Legend PRs. Axel Descamps sets two PRs, one for MC3 lap and the other for RR lap. Antoine Olivier submitted 15 PRs which have helped him up to King C overall standard, #41 in the World on PAL and #19 in France. Franck Mazières has returned to SMK! Franck has made some general improvements on courses from different cups, some of the standards he is setting are very good. He is now ranked at #17 in the World on PAL and #8 in France. Clement Papon has also been busy with PRs again this week and hitting many strong King times and some in the Legends. He is now King D overall standard, #51 on PAL and #22 in France.

    In the U.K, Jamie Stirzaker worked on DP1, BC2 and BC3 and has climbed to #44 in the World on PAL and #5 in the U.K. Tom Gaffikin has been hitting some new records including his first jump on GV1 platform. He has cut some points down off his SR Score and is getting closer to more karters just above on the rankings. In Sweden, Christofer Svensson has worked hard to cut time down on all the cups and has reached Elite G overall standard and #83 on PAL. Not far behind Christofer, in the Netherlands we had Arno van den Barselaar continuing his quest to reach the Elites. He has cut down quite a few points with some nice records and is now Master A overall standard, #88 in the World on PAL and #12 in the Netherlands.

NEW MEMBER

    A new PAL member has entered the site this week. Graeme Macdonald from Edinburgh in the U.K has found our SMK Time Trial World Records site and is entering all of his records. So far he has reached an Elite A overall standard and is ranked at #64 in the World on PAL and #11 in the U.K.

    Welcome to the site!

PR UPDATES

    We saw a return from Cedric Leutwyler of France this week on PAL! Cedric destroyed his VL2 times and made other strong records helping to to reach Legend G overall standard and climb to #28 on PAL and #13 in France. Just ahead of Cedric, David Bonne has been karting on the DP courses with some good results. He has climbed to #25 on PAL and #11 in France. In Germany, Armin Huber has worked on the MC2 long boost and has cut soem points down. He has passed Michael Jongerius for #5 on PAL. Danijel Danilovic has also been hitting the MC2 long boost with a few points off his SR Score and a climb to #61 on PAL. In the Netherlands, Dutch Champion Karel van Duijvenboden improves MC3 and KB slightly. Arno van den Barselaar made many new PRs and is now very close to reaching the Elites. He has passed some players on the PAL Rankings to #87 on PAL and #11 in the Netherlands. We also had a return from Swedish champion, Kalle Videkull as he worked on some Non-NBT times and a NBT lap on RR. He is hitting some strong times so far and has cut his SR Score down a few points. In the U.K, Tom Gaffikin made some small cuts off a few times, his Rainbow Road sub 1'30" barrier looks great so far, he has a lot of potential left on other courses so expect more from him soon.

    On NTSC, Canadian Champion Simon Laflamme drove a sub 50 second time on VL2 this week which has been his goal for a long time. His lap also made it under 9"50. He cut off some SR points with these two PRs. Chris Williams set 4 PRs, including a strong GV1 time after landing the platform more.

GHOST VALLEY BLOCK BREAKING

    Just a note this week about the Ghost Valley block breaking situation. Some years ago we had a discussion whether or not to allow karters to break blocks on the corners of Ghost Valley for doing fastlaps. We agreed that it would not be a good idea because it changes the shape of the course and thus it loses its original technicality. So for now we are keeping to the same rule. Of course we have a similar situation with Vanilla Lake blocks, but the reason we decided to allow breaking them is because most of them are all over the middle of the track and therefore we will run into them even if we don't want to.

    So we will keep to not breaking any blocks on the Ghost Valley tracks. Ghost Valley 1 has been done by the Japanese with boosting on each corner which is an extremely difficult strategy to pull off, but if done it can help to probably achieve similar or potentially faster times than breaking the blocks and hopping over them. So we still have fast strategies that we can start working on from now.

NEW VIDEO FILES

    This week Chris Balch has updated us with some new video files that can be seen on his new link at http://www.timeofdeath.net/smkvideos.html.

NEW MEMBER

We have a new NTSC player joining the site today:

    Nicholas St-Louis from Canada sends us all of his times driven with Bowser and enters the NTSC World Ranking at #52 with a #15 position in Canada. Nicholas's overal standard is King G.

    Welcome to the site

PR UPDATES

    PAL Champion, Pierre L'Hoëst has been destroying his MC2 long boost records this week with great new times at 1'11"69 and 0'13"55! He has a new DP2 1-lap WR that is now down to 0'17"17! On NTSC, Chris Balch has managed to take down Brian Gallo's long-standing GV1 5-lap WR. He also improved the lap with some good NBT driving. The records now stand at 1'00"45 and 0'11"90! Also in Canada, Chris Williams improved 7 of his PRs and made a climb to #29 on NTSC. Canadian Champion, Simon Laflamme improved VL2 lap slightly. In Brazil, Carlos André Salles has been working on quite a few PRs with some good cuts and a climb to King F overall standard and #50 on NTSC. Oliver Segarra Gonzalez sets some strong times for GV1 and BC2 and cuts down some points off his SR Score.

    Back on PAL, in Germany, Danijel Danilovic has made a very large climb after trying many times with some NBT driving. He has made it all the way up to King B overall standard, near King A and with a #34 ranking on PAL and #4 in Germany! In Sweden, Kalle Videkull made some strong times including a pair of GOD times for GV1 and long boost records for MC2. He has climbed up to #7 on PAL! Christofer Svensson climbed to Elite F and #80 on PAL with some good PRs. In the Netherlands, Karel van Duijvenboden made a long boost lap PR for MC2 and some othr PRs that have cut quite a bit of SR down. Arno van den Barselaar has finally reached his target of Elite G after more hard work on BC2, VL1 and RR. He has also made it to #85 on PAL and #10 in the Netherlands. Gerard Roodhorst has worked on DP2 and DP3 with some good results.

    In the U.K, Tom Gaffikin made some small cuts to MC1 and a few other PRs that have cut a few SR points down putting him even closer to the rest of the King G karters. Alasdair Morrison has worked on several PRs that have helped him reach Master E overall standard, #93 on PAL and #18 in the U.K. Matthew McCarthy has improved his weaker BC3 times and is getting closer to the GOD records for 5-lap. He also hit a NBT lap on MC2 and a solid RR lap PR. In France, Matthias Boucher worked on some Star Cup times and has cut quite a few points down. He is getting closer to Julien on the PAL rankings. Antoine Olivier reached #41 on PAL and #18 in France with 6 new PRs this week. Clement Papon improved a few of his weaker times and has climbed to King C overall standard, #42 on PAL and #19 in France. David Bonne has hit quite a few Legend times and is now Legend F overall standard and #24 on PAL.