07/14/2008: "Back to normal"

As the media circus of the last while dissipated to background noise, the main karting action continued this week with renewed vigor

What goes up..
What goes up, tends to stay there. At least for a while. To avoid dropping AF points, everyone in the 30-50 range should aim to improve 0.500 per day to break even and counteract those passing you. That increases to nearly 1 full point per day when you drop down near the 100 mark, but only around 0.300 near the top. The general message is that the higher up you go, the slower you fall back down. It's also why those who focus on getting really fast times on certain tracks tend to fall slower than those who try to improve only their worst times.
Anyway, all this rambling on doesn't help anyone, and I have a hot date tonight.

1-16
Alvin and Michael declared a truce this week. Alvin, because he's internetless for 3 weeks, and Michael because he's busy studying for his bar exam. The end result is that both fell towards 3rd place Tim. He's cut the gap in half between himself and Michael.
3 German players have been secretly moving up other lists (the PRSR one), Omer Dogan, Mark Schmidt, and Kristopher Will. They're now 4th,5th and 6th on that chart, and Omer moves from 9th to 6th in AF.
The real action of the week though, and of the entire month so far is that of Shaun Tanney. Starting the month at 33rd, and the week at 24th, Shaun has improved hugely to finish the week just behind his brother Paul, who has been the dominant force so far. This rivalry could be just about to begin in ernest.
Joe Sebeny closes out the top 16, climbing two places from 18th this week, and continuing his upward momentum.

People who aren't totally horrible at the game
In the mid-section this week, we have Alexandre Lorsery and Marijn Jongbloed, who both move up a place to 21st and 24th respectively. The real movement comes from Michael Tunzi and Brendan Payne. Michael passes 7 players to move from 34th to 27th, whilst Brendan inflicts trademark payne on 14 players, finishing just behind Michael in 28th spot. Both push me down a spot each, and are off my christmas card list.
Rounding out the top 50 is Sam Hoar who cuts his AF from 71 to 61, and passes 7 to finish exactly 50th.

People who would rather be under a different heading
Quite a lot of movement in the 2nd half of the top 100.
Dennis Deede moves from #69 to #57
Daniel Pascua moves from #77 to #58
Brian Fergus moves from #65 to #59 and
Lenny Andreev moves from #80 to #60
These 4 players finish the week side by side, and all hoping to break into the top 50 soon.

Leslie Wolf remains in the hunt, passing 13 players this week and up to #65. The biggest move of the rest goes to Jared Guemmer. He started the week outside the top 100 at #107, but finishes it well inside. He now sits at #89.

Site Records
Too many records were broken this week. 14 of them to be precise.
Jochem Oorschot took back his MC crs record after Alvin broke Nobou's WR here. Go team us! That time is now 1'22"517
Kevin Borne took down both DKS crs and DKJP crs records.
Michael Tunzi not only beat his WGM Site Record but also beat the World Record in the process. The time sits at 1'54"363. Another point for the player's page!
Reinier de Jonge improves his own SR on Daisy Circuit, and gets top spot on the World Rankings too. 1'31"261 is the mark, and point number 3 to us!
Meanwhile Guillaume Bertrand takes the lap away from Reiner and is the first to reach sub 29 here with a 28"996.
Vincent Schuttevaar is new to the site and takes the Peach Beach crs SR from Prashant. Omer Dogan takes Tim's YF lap from him, whilst Tim takes Mickael's GCN MC lap and Alvin's Peach Gardens crs record. We're now 1-2 on the Worldwide list here. Point 4 for us.
Emmanuel Debenest takes Shaun's BC3 lap record. Daisuke Oota beats his own N64 BC crs time, and gets #1 Worldwide. The time is 2'34"712 Point 5 for us!
Lastly, Joe Sebeny takes down both Sherbet Land records.
A great week for Site and World records from us. Keep up the excellent work!

New Players
Welcome to: Mick Whitcomb, Vincent Schuttevaar, Denat Aymeric, Adam Dahlke, Daniel Pena, Tyler Layton, Erik Daxberger, Andrey Mengliev, James Wilson, Andy Lundeen, Dennis Hennersdorf, Oskar Lindby, Joscha Behrens, Olivier Aeby, Daniel Both

Laters!
-S