NEW MEMBER

    We have a new member to PAL version from Germany this week. Florian Meier joins the Super Mario Kart Time Trial World Rankings at #115 in the World, #15 in Germany and with an overall standard of Pro F.

PR UPDATES

    We have a new NTSC World Champion this week! After months of hard work and constant improvements, Joe Bernier has reached #1 in the World for Super Mario Kart Time Trials! Congratulations! He hit several WRs this week; firstly his CI2 lap was previously a tie at 0'12"63* which wasn't noted, but this has been updated now. He hit some crazy records on DP2 which happened in one race with 1'23"94 and 0'16"61! After a major battle on DP3 with Chris Balch, both landed close times swapping WRs there until Joe finished 1st with 1'16"67; Joe then took KB2 5-lap WR to 0'55"49 and hit some strong times for GV3 and VL2. A second crazy battle occured between our two 6 year old karters on PAL, Tanja Huber of Germany and Leyla Hasso of U.K. To start the week, Tanja made some great progress hitting her first Newbie times on a few more courses that gained enough points to place her at Newbie G overall standard. Later in the week Leyla Hasso had been playing a lot, under the tuition of retired Karim Hasso who still hasn't lost much skill after a quick few tries on MC1 landing a 1'05" time. Sami Çetin visited and saw a drastic improvement in Leyla's skill as she destroyed her standards on every course, placing her ahead of Tanja Huber again and just below Zak White with an overall standard of Beginner F.

    Back on NTSC, in Japan, Ha Nyan made a few improvements and has almost reached Paquin. He had a battle with Hero Nake for the Record of Japan for Rainbow Road and just took the lead this week there. Hero has made a long list of improvements this week with some NBT work aswell and has landed on King A overall standard (very close to Legends now) and #44 in the World on NTSC. Brazilian Champion, Oliver Segarra Gonzalez hit 7 PRs with some good NBT work and has reached #4 in the World on NTSC. In U.S.A, Kristopher Lamp set many new records this week, reaching #100 on NTSC and a Pro A overall standard. Just ahead, Michael Hermreck also did some good work on his times landing on Master D overall standard and #93 on NTSC. Gerard Roodhorst karted on NTSC this week with some good improvements to his times; a climb to -2 SR Score and #18 was made possible with his great PRs.

   On PAL version, in France, Clement Papon made a great NBT time for Mario Circuit 3 5-lap and is getting closer to -2 SR Score barrier. William Jonas made a few PRs this week and has climbed to #13 in the World on PAL. Antoine Olivier made a few PRs and has nearly reached Legend B standard overall. In Germany, Armin Huber made a great 5-lap on Donut Plains 3 and cut a point off his SR Score.

NEW FRONT PAGE DESIGN COMING SOON

    As some of you are aware, Paul Tanney has developed a design for a new front page which has been in discussion amongst karters on the message board. He has sent me the details and I have been working on it. There were some adjustments required when I opened the file so I have been working on the HTML code. So far its development is going ok. So with any luck we may be testing this new front page on the site soon, possibly for next week's update. Stay tuned!

150CC SITE

    This week Sebastien Holmière informed us of a new link to the 150CC site if you are interested in sending in any records for that. The new link is at http://smk.gp150.free.fr

   Sebastien has also informed me that Cedric Leutwyler has done most of the designs to this new page including its functionality, so special thanks to Cedric!

NEW MEMBER

    We have a new NTSC member this week, Michael Fried who is a top Mario Kart 64 player from U.S.A. He has sent in all of his SMK times and has reached Master A overall standard and #89 in the World on NTSC.

PR UPDATES

    We had a return from Haroon Shakeel Subhani of Canada with some great improvements to his times! He has announced a retirement from SMK as he will continue to pursue his studies. He has hit a few great WRs this week, one for VL1 lap of 0'09"50! Another was a great lap on KB2 of 0'10"41!. His other times combined brought him up to #7 on NTSC, #3 in Canada and GOD -11 standard. Joe Bernier has defended his title well this week, reaching GOD -15 with a DP3 5-lap WR of 1'16"29! Chris Balch fought back with a PR that was close. Simon Laflamme hit some VL1 PRs, including a nice sub 50 second time! Jason Fraser from Canada also returned to SMK with some quick BC1 times. In Japan, Hero Nake has hit some even stronger times more into the Legend standards. He has now reached Legend E overall standard and #38 on NTSC. Ha Nyan has set a few PRs that have put him up to #13 in the World on NTSC. Gerard Roodhorst in Netherlands made a new set of NTSC improvements that landed him on -3 SR Score and #17 in the World on NTSC.

    On PAL version, in the U.K, Leyla Hasso has been hitting more PRs and improving her standards. She has played a lot of GP this week but made some decent Time Trial records after improving driving technique. She has now passed Zak White for #158 on PAL and reached Apprentice E overall standard. In Australia, Nick Moncrieff-Hill said he will be working on trying to reach Ademir for #1 in Australia. He made a good set of PRs this week that placed him on Elite B overall standard, #77 in the World on PAL and #2 in Australia. In Netherlands, Karel van Duijvenboden set a new VL1 5-lap PR. In Switzerland, Raphael Braun reached #1 on PAL after a long boost lap on MC2. Just ahead, in France, William Jonas has made his latest PRs placing him at -4 SR Score and #13 in the World on PAL. Antoine Olivier just reached Legend B with 3 PRs this week. Guillaume Leviach made a great set of PRs including some Legend times; he is now Legend G overall standard, #32 on PAL and #16 in France. Harold Christensen set 7 new PRs, some of which were done with NBT. He is getting closer to -4 SR. Geoffrey Label attacked more of his courses this week, cutting his weaker times down to reach his potential. So far he has made it to #47 on PAL, #23 in France and with a King C overall standard. There was a lot of activity in Germany; Florian Meier made his first new set of improvements since joining and hsi making good progress so far with a climb to Master F overall standard, #112 on PAL and #14 in Germany. Daniel Caterbow set 2 PRs for BC2. David Schiering returned showing that he has a lot of potential as he sets many PRs and reaches Elite F overall standard, #93 on PAL and #11 in Germany. Tanja Huber improves her MC2 lap this week and Armin Huber sets a very fast NBT BC1 5-lap time.

Launch of New Page Design!

      After a long time we have finally launched the new page design, special thanks go to Paul Tanney for putting this together and everyone else for supporting these ideas. The page looks cool now with links to the left and news updates on the right. There have been some problems with different browsers displaying the page differently, but i have worked on the HTML code for a while, i am hoping it all looks ok now. I will investigate things for next week's update if there are further problems. In any case, everyone should be able to read this news update ok, but please inform me if there are any noticable errors, not just with the page or tables looking out of place but also for any broken links.

      In regards to the previous news updates, I have excluded them from this new page so we can start with a fresh page, and Simon Laflamme has archived the news updates from January up until last week, so those can be viewed there. We will arrange another archiving at the end of the year, then at the end of each year following that like before. Thanks also go to Simon for helping out with the archives. Anyhow enjoy this new page, keep on karting and we'l move on to what news we had this week!

New Photo added to Photo Gallery!

      I dug out a photo from a year ago (i think summer 2004) which shows Leyla Hasso and Sami Çetin playing SMK. It looks like Sami is demonstrating here while Leyla's attention went to the camera. This picture has been added to the PAL Group Photos page on the SMK Photo Gallery. Probably update with a better and more up to date pic of us karting some day..

New Member

      We welcome Emmanuel Debenest from France who joins Super Mario Kart Time Trials! He enters the PAL World Rankings at #159 with a Beginner B overall standard.

PR Updates

      Some more crazy WRs have been hit this week! Joe Bernier has been doing straight boosts like never done before on BC1 as he hits new WRs of 1'26"33 and wait for this... 0'16"98 for fastlap!! Amazing work there Joe! Joe has been competing well this week with news that Karel will soon be joining the NTSC Rankings aswell. Joe's extra records which he fought back with were a 0'10"61 lap for CI1 and a tie on KB2 lap of 0'10"41*. Simon Laflamme hit a few PRs including a WR for MC4 lap which was a tie in the end with Oliver Segarra Gonzalez's lap record of 0'18"15*; both now share this WR lap. Oliver also took the MC4 5-lap WR to 1'33"29! Gerard Roodhorst hit a WR tie on GV3 lap for NTSC with 0'14"47*.

      In U.S.A, Michael Fried has worked on all of his PRs with some massive cuts on every course and lap. He has some great skill and will be well on the way to reaching the Legend standards overall soon! He has now reached King D overall and #60 on NTSC! Kristopher Lamp has also been very active, moving up to #99 on NTSC and Master F overall standard with his PRs. Craig Lubbers hit 6 strong PRs and reached #19 on NTSC. In Japan, Hero Nake has made more successful PRs and has reached Legend D standard and #32 in the World on NTSC. Ha Nyan hit 3 lap PRs that have cut some more points down. It is now a very close battle between him and Miura for #2 in Japan.

      On PAL version, in France, Pierre L'Hoëst hit some great times on BC1 and DP2 non-nbt and cut a few points down. In the U.K, Leyla Hasso has been active again with some good PRs. She has targetted Esra Kennedy this week and has managed to pass her for #157 on PAL. Leyla's overall standard is now Apprentice B. In Germany, Daniel Caterbow made a few more PRs with Koopa and Bowser that have brought him up to #114 on PAL.

New Members

      Karel van Duijvenboden the PAL version Time Trial Champion is starting his NTSC career as he joins the Time Trial World Rankings on NTSC for the first time. So far he has hit several WRs and will be providing strong competition for NTSC's top World Ranked Karters. Karel enters the NTSC rankings at #9 in the World with a GOD -10 Standard.

      Another new member joining NTSC version is Ryan Arends from U.S.A. He has entered the NTSC Rankings at #102 with a Master F Overall Standard.

      On PAL Version, we welcome Pierre Coste from France, making his SMK Time Trials entry at #135 in the World on PAL with a Semi-Pro A overall standard.

      From the Netherlands this week we also have new member Andreas Hillenga to SMK Time Trials. Andreas joins the PAL World Rankings at #149 with an Expert F overall standard.

PR Updates

      NTSC World Champion, Joe Bernier has had an amazing week on SMK Time Trials. He has hit an amazing list of World Records to defend himself from Karel who has recently joined. His results have pushed him very close to -16 SR Score as he hits some more crazy times to a new level! Joe's WRs this week include 0'57"41 and 0'11"17 on MC1, then for DP1 5-lap a 1'10"63 time and a WR tie on the lap of 0'13"78*. Ghost Valley 1 went really crazy down to 1'00"19 and 0'11"81! MC2 long boost 5-laps with a new WR of 1'05"81. He has tied Jamie's MC3 lap to 0'17"11* and also taken CI2 lap to 0'12"45 after Simon Laflamme attacked with a great time! Joe has beaten BC3 lap down to 0'17"38 and tied the Ghost Valley 3 lap WR of 0'14"47*! All in all a great week for the NTSC World Champion! We saw some good work from Ha Nyan in Japan as he reaches -5 SR Score and lands in a tie with Toshi Miura. One more point will gain him another position on the NTSC World Rankings and 2nd place in Japan. Hero Nake has cut more time off on many courses again, with some more GOD times. He has now passed Yamauchi for #25 in the World on PAL and #4 in Japan. Hero Nake's overall standard is Legend B. In Canada, Jonathan Girard made a quick return with a couple of PRs and a cut in his SR. In U.S.A, MIchael Fried continued to destroy his standards all over the courses; he has reached Legend G status now with a great climb to #44 on NTSC! He has hit some great GOD times with NBT aswell, so expect him to reach the GOD standards soon! The latest PRs of Craig Lubbers have placed him ahead of Stanley Jeram at #19 on NTSC. Kristopher Lamp made further improvements that have brought him up to Master B overall standard and #93 on NTSC. Gerard Roodhorst improved a few more of his NTSC times cutting some more SR Score down in the process.

      On PAL version, in France there were a lot of active players. William Jonas reaches #12 on PAL with his latest PRs. Emannuel Debenest sent in his first lot of PRs that have brought him up to #160 and Apprentice A overall standard. Antoine Olivier sent in 6 PRs that cut his SR Score down to Stern's. Harold Christensen made a couple of great lap times that cut a few points down off his SR Score. In Germany, Florian Meier set some new PRs and has improved his overall standard to Master E and his PAL Ranking to #110. In the U.K, Leyla Hasso managed to have a karting session this time with long-retired Hakan Çetin. After a GP race it was a close match, but Advanced standard Hakan took the lead and won by a few points. Leyla did however hit some key records to help her improve her standards to the target she was after. Leyla Hasso is now Intermediate F overall standard and has passed a few karters including her mother Ayla Hasso.