PAL news, on June 26, 2007, by Karel van Duijvenboden
With the Next Level Gaming Meet in Norway a mere week away now, I bring you the PAL-side's Non NBT news of the last couple of weeks. Interestingly non of the people attending the Norway meet were active (at least in Non NBT), so it shall be interesting to see if the activity will increase in the aftermath of this event. Activity does tend to rise as a direct consequence of meets, the last Fun Cup for example sparked a fierce DP1 battle for the Non NBT WR's that lasted almost a full month.
Either way I digress now, let's start with the karters that were active. Well we're immediately stumbling upon the topic of another kart related event happening soon, namely the Belgian version of the French Championnat, to take place this summer. Mathieu Jaspard and Jean-François Schepers are both pulling out fine performances previous to this meet; in Mathieu's case to defend his #2 rank in Belgium and in JFS' case to claim that position back (Mathieu is actually Belgium's #1 for this site, but Peter Toch is the national champ on the Players' Site and all Peter's times are actually of a Non NBT nature). Mathieu grabbed four Belgian Records and interestingly they were all 5-lap times. On BC2 he did it with a 1'45 and on GV3 with a solid 1'17"62. Furthermore an inside the last corner puddle race (I presume) on CI1 resulted in a fine 1'01 chrono and he remained in the Choco business to bring he CI2 Country Record at 1'14"60 as well. On the other hand we had JFS who has initiated a full scale comeback after what sort of looked like a break that lasted a couple of weeks. He too played on BC2 and things went crescendo as he broke the 21 barrier for flap there. Though he didn't beat Mathieu at BC2, he did managed to out-race his compatriot on CI1 for a CR there with a solid 11"98 barrier breaking flap, which must be inside the puddle! JFS extended his PR streak by getting new times on the likes of KB1, VL1 and MC4 and is giving Mathieu a good run for his money as a result! Both of them passed retired Chris Clark (and they weren't the only ones as we will later see) and they rank #31 and #32 respectively now.
May's MVK David Bonne has been a regular customer to the Non NBT competition as of late, which may actually surprise a few people as he wrote in the email that initiated his comeback that he might not be active again until next year! Thankfully he caught the SMK bug for a bit longer though, hence his inclusion in this update. Firsly, David had fun on the curvey MC3, obtaining a Legend level PR pair of 1'33"35 and 18"47. He also persevered long enough to land a few platform-jumps at GV2, which is of course, rock hard to do. His resulting 12"32 flap is another Legend time, though according to the man himself that's not very fulfilling as it's one of the easier Legend times to get (that is, if you actually do manage to land a platform-jump of course!). Finally he played around on VL2 and had a nice little remark about the coursemap resembling a Triceratops head. I wonder if the next edition of Jurassic Park will be shot on this icey SMK track now. Either way though, VL2 is a tricky, challenging track to play, but like David stated, it is actually fun and therefore it's bearable (for some). His new 54"70 is in fact the only race he finished without a crash, whereas his 10"53 flap is still not looking like the flap that he had in mind. Can I conclude from that bit of info that he's not finished with VL2 yet? Perhaps a BC-like campaign is in order to really gain some spectacular times here David. ;-)
Rising Stars Rivalry leader Oleguer Limona has been battling in NBT competition lately, however still brought in two Non NBT PR's on GV2 in order to complete his activity streak. Oleguer missed last week's update and his record (for the PAL side) of being active for the most consecutive weeks therefore remained at an impressive 24 weeks! The last PR's of his streak were a 1'03"69 on GV2 and a 12"34 platform-jump flap on the same course.
Another karter that sent in his final few PR's for a while is Aussie John Kenny. On the 6th of June he sent in his last message and it contained four Non NBT PR's; a double on BC1 (1'31"52 - 18"03) and a double on good old RR (1'29"58 - 17"69). When will he be back in action?
One karter present to defend the Dutch glory and that karter is young apprentice Alvin van Asselt. He got a 1'23 5-lap on MC2 which ranks just inside the top 50 of this coursechart and alongside it he also sent in a 12"84 GV2 flap, ranking in the Elite's. A double PR on VL2 is the last we've heard of him a couple of weeks ago, so like with John Kenny, we can only wonder when he'll be back to the wonderful world of SMK.
This update has one clear star and I left him to appear last for this update. Mister Sean Billingsley has struck gold this time; he has done it, the crowning achievement on his SMK career...he has passed the President of awesomeness, one of the world's leading Mario Kart authorities, non other than Watford-fan Chris Clark! So..err...yeah, he has indeed claimed that UK #3 spot and can therefore be considered god's gift to kart (according to the aforementioned Watford fan ;-)). Kidding aside, Sean has made a lot of progress and is shaping up to be the main contender for this month's MVK so far. Highlights of his PR-ing reel are his new BC1 time of 1'30"60, a mid 1'03 GV2 race coupled with a 12"48 flap and the fact he needed an average of two messages to specify which PR's were Non NBT. :-) Sean is now placed at #30 and racing towards a score in the 6 territory. May the force be with you!
That's it for the Non NBT news, where even our lamest jokes are smarter than Terrence Fenner.
Players' lists update, on June 25, 2007, by Simon Laflamme
The PAL and NTSC players' lists have been updated to reflect players' improvements since June 17. (Yahoo groups post #10780 to #10809) 10 players were active this week, amounting to a combined total score gain of +0,545.
NTSC News, on June 24, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
It's the update we've all been waiting for. Twenty-five weeks ago an old guy made a non-NBT pr and didn't stop karting all year. That man is none other than David Smith. With his new times on the epic Rainbow Road, he becomes the record holder for the most consecutive weeks active. This earns him a much needed break from SMK, and a well-deserved Gold Star! The reason he gets the prestigious award is because he started at such a high level and kept improving over several months. I'm not taking anything away from Oleguer, Emeric, or anyone else who have gone on giant streaks this year, but Dave started at a King D and has still hit new records every week. Most of those weeks had multiple pr submissions, too. It was only the last few weeks where he's kind of struggled to beat his old times. So congrats, Dave, your RR times of 1'27"01 and 17"21 finish off a golden age of non-NBT (that's assuming that you really are taking a break from the game), and now the torch can be passed to guys like Emeric, Oleguer, Sébastien, JFS, and Benoit, along with the many others who still stop in from time to time to entertain the non-NBT news team.
Three more karters were active this week, including one angry North Carolinian.
Emeric Gosselin found a little time to pr this week. His five prs allowed him to move up one rank to #34 and pull away from rival Sébastien. Just when we thought Emeric was done with one-second cuts, he busted out two 5-laps that came pretty close! At GV2 he nailed times of 1'03"16 and 12"40 (non-PJ), then KB1 saw big cuts down to 56"95 and 10"82. For good measure, he threw in a 5-lap at MC3 of 1'34"55.
After hearing that his record was broken, Tyler Worley raced MC1 and drove times of 1'00"04 and 11"88. These prs are sort of a statement to Dave that it will take more than 25 weeks of prs to pass him.
Finally is Benoit Boudreau. Benoit focused on Special Cup tracks this week, all of them except DP3 (good choice), plus a couple from Mushroom Cup. Benoit did away with his SMK Fan times with all of his prs, and now only has one Pro time left. At BC1 he drove times of 1'36"06 and 18"29, then MC2 fell to 1'20"27 and 15"85, both of which are 7-8 second cuts from the 5-lap. The domination continues at KB2-- 1'05"02 and 12"78, GV3-- 1'20"94 and 15"62 (looks like he's using the platform), VL2-- 58"73 and 11"05 (his first sub-minute 5-lap!), and RR-- 1'31"49. The biggest reduction in there was the GV3 5-lap, which fell over 25 seconds! And even though VL sucks big balls in hell, he was able to hit a very nice time. These huge cuts result in Benoit passing Jonathan Bennett and taking over 49th overall position.
That's all for now. Keep karting everyone, we may not have Dave around every week to keep me busy.
NTSC News, on June 17, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
Well, I wrote the news a little later this time, so everyone should be included. Four players drove some new records this week.
We'll start with a new rising star, Benoit Boudreau. As Simon mentioned last week, Benoit rewrote his entire Flower Cup records. Simon already mentioned his DP2 1'32"11, but I'd like to point out some times I thought were pretty solid as well. A couple of 5-laps at CI1 and BC2 of 1'01"86 and 1'48"96 show his increasing potential. This week he worked mainly on Star Cup tracks, and made some gigantanormous cuts yet again (it's been a while since I've used that word). Some of his new times that stand out are CI2 1'15"59 and VL1 1'01"30 (he says VL sucks big balls in hell). His big cuts came at BC3 and MC4. He dropped his BC3 5-lap to 1'38"75, a cut of almost 18 seconds! Then his MC4 time fell to 1'47"80, which is a reduction of nearly 20 seconds! The final time of his 13 prs I'll mention is a RR f-lap that shatters the 18-second barrier at 17"92. These times move Benoit up two spots to #50.
Next is David Smith (who could have guessed he'd be active this week?). Dave ties Oleguer and Tyler now with 24 weeks active. He kept his streak going on DP3. Why DP3? I'll never know. Anyway, he drove times of 1'20"21 and 15"78, which are both Legend times. Dave is now King A overall.
Third is another very active player, Emeric Gosselin, but he mentioned that he may be taking some time off after this week. Emeric has been trying to keep Sebastien from passing him, and he extends his lead a little this week with six new times. Some of his best new prs came at MC4 and GV3. At MC4 he made another one-second cut and reached a time of 1'43"51, plus a nice lap time of 20"05. At GV3 he accomplished the platform jump all five laps and reduced the 5-lap to 1'18"75. His other three prs include f-laps at BC2 (20"83) and CI1 (11"94), and a 5-lap at VL1 of 57"38. Emeric claims that the era of him sending in one-second cuts is coming to an end, but I am confident that he'll be able to further crush his times and maybe even move into the six point range when he returns.
Finally we have Craig Lubbers, who has come storming back on the SMK scene with a ton of new NBT times. He had two non-NBT times thrown in with his prs. Those were a GV2 f-lap of 11"75, and a BC3 5-lap of 1'32"59. He doesn't move up any ranks here, but he has passed our own non-NBT stud for fifth in the USA on the Players' Site. By the way, Craig, boo the Green Bay Packers.
That's all for now. Join me next week, and please remember that non-NBT racing is not as tedious as it's made out to be.
Players' lists update, on June 17, 2007, by Simon Laflamme
The PAL and NTSC players' lists have been updated to reflect players' improvements since June 10. (Yahoo groups post #10747 to #10779) 8 players were active this week, amounting to a combined total score gain of +0,640.
Chris Clark, the experienced PAL talker, submits a GV1 F-lap that puts him on the NTSC Non-NBT map (although he submitted a full list of NTSC times months ago, he didn't label them as NBT or Non-NBT). Clark qualifies his GV1 F-lap chrono of 12"05 as his best Non-NBT achievement ever, and I will admit that it is very quick (only 0"06 behind the WR!). We're eager to catch more of Clark's NTSC Non-NBT might, though that might be asking for too much at the moment (will depend on peer pressure I guess).
NTSC News, on June 10, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
As summer starts to heat up, so do some nice non-NBT rivalries. (Well, it's summer for most of us, not the Aussies :-P). A really good match-up is going on between two of our up and coming stars. Five players active this week.
For the third week in a row, we start with Nathan Stinson. Nathan has been nicely improving his times over the last few weeks, which is neat because most of his old prs were from around 2001. His two biggest improvements came at GV1 and GV2. His new GV1 5-lap of 1'01"90 puts him in a tie for 11th on the chart and is his highest ranked time on the site! On GV2, he utilized the platform three times and hit a pr of 1'02"39, which could have been better if it weren't for a bad fourth lap. Nate also improved his MC4 times, which fall to 1'41"32 and 20"15. Three other small prs on MC2, DP1, and DP2 round out the week for Nathan.
David Smith drove a single pr this week. It was a KB2 f-lap of 11"58. It may not be much, but it keeps his active streak alive, against the wishes of Tyler Worley.
Now we come to the intense rivalry between Sebastien Cormier and Emeric Gosselin. These two have pushed each other to new heights over the last two months, and now they are neck and neck on both the non-NBT and Players' Sites. This week, Sebastien hit 11 new prs on six tracks, and Emeric made 12 prs on ten tracks (Emeric's were mostly f-laps).
At DP1, Sebastien made a big cut and took a win away from Emeric, with a 5-lap of 1'17"72, but Emeric pulled away on the f-lap with a time of 15"24. Emeric went on to steal a couple of f-laps at GV1, his new times stand at 12"23 and 17"88. He finished out Mushroom Cup with a full-second cut on MC2 5-lap, his time is now 1'18"88. Sebastien's time to shine mostly came on Flower Cup. He cut a half-second to reach 1'01"20 at CI1 5-lap, and a 12"03 f-lap, which are both just behind Emeric. He took some wins at GV2 and DP2. Sebastien's GV2 times are now 1'03"42 and 12"42, and his DP2 5-lap stands at 1'29"40. Emeric pulled away a little on MC3 f-lap with a time of 18"50 to finish up Flower Cup. On Star Cup, Emeric made a small pr on CI2 (13"95), and VL1 (10"72). They both played MC4, Sebastien took the 5-lap with a time of 1'44"56, but Emeric's 5-lap of 1'44"82 isn't too shabby either. The only Special Cup race was played by Emeric; he extended his lead at KB2 with times of 1'03"62 and 12"18. They both moved up one spot overall. Emeric lands at 35th with 5.095 points, and Sebastien is now 36th, and also moves into the 5's at 5.062.
This paragraph is from Simon. I do not wish to make it a habit to sneak into other people's news without their consent, but I thought I should mention Benoit Boudreau's new PR's, which got in just a tiny bit too late to be included into Dan's summary. With his latest submission, Benoit made it obvious that last week's attempts were essentially just a warm up. He did not improve on an awful lot of tracks this week (the Flower Cup mainly), but all of his improvements are enormous, taking him more often than not something like halfway closer to the WR's (which at any level represents an impressive feat!). With chronos such as a low 1'32 5-lap on DP2, we know that Benoit's climb will be a vigorous one. He could in fact be in a position to rival Emeric and his own tutor Sébastien as soon as he's renewed his entire set of times. For now, he effortlessly reaches the 3's and moves in front of Kusser Ryo for the 52nd position.
That's all for the NTSC news. Join me next week at the non-NBT site, where the news writers get yelled at by Simon and Emeric for not specifying non-NBT in their pr submissions (and also for writing the news too early to be sure that everyone active is included ;-)).
Players' lists update, on June 10, 2007, by Simon Laflamme
The PAL and NTSC players' lists have been updated to reflect players' improvements since June 3. (Yahoo groups post #10716 to #10746) 10 players were active this week, amounting to a combined total score gain of +0,953.
NTSC News, on June 3, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
Believe it or not, I have been writing the NTSC news for six months now! Time flies when guys like Dave, Emeric and Martin are constantly pr-ing and keeping me busy. Appropriately enough, six people were active for my six month anniversary.
We kick off the party with Nathan Stinson. Nathan has been working his way back into the top-50 on the Players' Site and has been doing a good job so far, with seven new prs. At MC2 he fell into the 1'16 range for the 5-lap, finding his way to 1'16"95. He also included an odd f-lap of 18"28, but I'm guessing he meant MC3 on that one ;-). Continuing with the MCs, he drove a near-barrier 1'42"04 on MC4 and a solid 20"26 f-lap. He then went on to two of the more difficult courses, DP3 and BC3. At DP3 he cut his time down to 1'21"17, and at BC3 he made two new prs of 1'32"26 and 18"23. I kind of figured that Nathan would be racing this week when I was driving on Stinson Boulevard in St. Paul.
Martin Morissette drove a 9"86 f-lap on VL1 this week. Then he capped off his 11th consecutive active week with a God time at DP3. His 5-lap landed at 1'17"77, and he also improved his f-lap to 15"40, which moves to #3 on the chart.
Next is David Smith, who is just two weeks away from tying the consecutive weeks record (even though Oleguer is a week ahead of him on the PAL side). Dave made a half-second cut to his BC2 5-lap with a time of 1'41"45. He also cut his GV1 f-lap to 12"13. The biggest cut this week came at KB1, where he made another half-second cut to reach a time of 52"68.
Sebastien Cormier was active again this week with his patented long list of prs, twelve in all. He's been eating a lot of donuts, apparently, as he hit prs on every DP. At DP2 he drove times of 1'29"70 and 17"63. DP3 saw improvements to 1'25"90 and 16"67. DP1 only contained a pr on the f-lap, 15"36. The five other courses he raced were MC1, GV1, GV2, MC3, and VL1. The most impressive of these prs were his f-lap at GV1 (12"25), and 5-laps at MC3 (1'36"31) and VL1 (57"95), both of which were about one-second cuts. These times move him up two spots overall, falling just behind Emeric Gosselin.
Tyler Worley continues to stay active by driving one course at a time. He cut the 5-lap at his beloved KB1 to 49"83, which he says should have been much better.
Lastly, we have Emeric Gosselin. Emeric has now reached 16 active weeks with his three new prs. A couple modest cuts came at BC1 and GV2. He achieved a 1'04"07 5-lap on GV2, and a 18"12 f-lap on BC1. GV3 contained a rather interesting new time. Without using the platform, Emeric improved his old 2/5 time by 0"40, then went on to drive a time of 1'20"84 with three platform jumps! He promises that one day he'll do a 5/5 race, and when that happens, we can expect times in the mid-1'18 to low-1'19 range.
May's MVK is Emeric Gosselin! He was active every week of May and made about twenty new prs, which brought his overall score into the 5's. He has been steadily improving his times throughout 2007, and has slightly stood out from his competitors this month. Congratulations Emeric.
That's all for the news. Join me next week at the non-NBT site, where we have the greatest awards around!
PAL news, on June 4, 2007, by Karel van Duijvenboden
Not a lot of drastic changes in the world of Non NBT SMK since my last update, the top karters are still collectively unactive and even the portion below that is starting to get less active. That's not to say that there aren't any spectacular achievements to mention though, as you'll find out.
Starting with Bowser Castle's very own gatekeeper, David Bonne, who found the key to let him in BC3 and spent all his karting time there this time around. When he started SMK again at BC2 a couple of weeks ago, he got his best ranks ever on that course. He then followed up on BC1 after that, improving on his BC2 performance and delivering his career's best results there. Did he do the same for BC3 to complete his trilogy? You can bet your ass that he did! After hours of play and a series of improvements, he exceeded himself once more by delivering two top ten entries! His 17"99 flap may be more symbolical for the fact it's a barrier breaker, however his 5-lap of 1'31"48 is his highest rank ever for this site at #9. Moreover, it's a Legend B pair, which also happens to be a standard he hasn't reached on any other course before. Perhaps this is a good moment to say goodbye to all that burning lava and test his newly acquired skills elsewhere, but perhaps the lava isn't ready to let go of him just yet...
Double MVK winner Oleguer Limona has been trying some more NBT lately, but unlike some of his rivals he isn't letting his Non NBT activity suffer because of it. His harvest of the last two weeks is impressive once again: five rivalry records and two legend flaps. He attacked the first two courses of the Special Cup, DP3 and KB2. Out of the four new PR's that he got there, his 12"27 flap at the Beach course clearly stands out most. After that he had some sliding fun and lowered his KB1 times a bit to a low 59, coupled with a 10"82 flap. Oleguer has made his first two victims in the 6's now too, by passing both Serge Ludescher and Willem van Voorst to reach #27. Where will his unstoppable streak end?
Mathieu Jaspard started out as the lowest ranked karter of the Belgian tridente, but by remaining active for the longest, he now turned into their top seed. Profiting from other karter's inactivities and quite simply putting some quality karting in himself, he climbed from #36 to #30 in a couple of weeks time! He also reached the King overall standards in the process. His list of PR's was making his rivals shiver as Belgian Records were raining all over the place; he took the double on BC3 with impressive times of 1'34"42 and 18"27 and also took the CR's at BC2 flap (20"83) and DP3 (1'23"44, tie with Geoffrey Ewbank). Along with a lot of other new improvements, a 12"48 platform-jump flap on GV1 for example, he did more than enough to secure the lead that he now has on his fellow Belgian rivals. In fact Mathieu might well be the second karter from the rising stars rivalry to reach the 6 score mark soon...
Due to the crazy amount of new PR's submitted by Mathieu, Sean Billingsley did get passed by the Belgian, but that doesn't overshadow the fact that the talented English kid rose a couple of places of his own, to #32 to be precise. These past few weeks have been Sean's most active ones in a long time, perhaps even his most active ones since he joined the site; this resulted into both NBT and Non NBT PR's. There were nine Non NBT ones to note and I'd say that out of those, his MC2 1'18 chrono is easily amongst the most impressive ones. Other then that, breaking the 1'30 barrier on DP2 was nice too, especially seeing it was a long time goal of his. Add a 17"71 RR flap to that and it becomes quite clear that Sean has moved up a few levels lately. So much so in fact, that he is now a mere hairbreath away from Chris Clark's position as #3 UK karter on the Non NBT site. Just one PR left Sean, finish that Watford hooligan off!
Dutch newcomer Alvin van Asselt is still going strong, reaching as many as ten new PR's. Alvin is turning out to be a bit of a sliding prodigy, as all his highest ranked times are devided over the slide courses, KB1, VL1 and KB2. At KB2 he even reached a spectacular (for his rank) 5-lap of 1'07"46, which is nearing the King standards and his best ranked PR at #38. For VL1 he noted a 1'01 time, but I'm thinking it would be very nice if he could crack that one minute barrier there. Seeing his 11"56 flap, I have all the reason to believe that he can actually pull this off sooner than you might think! Once again, he didn't climb positions on the overall chart, but he's eating big chunks away from the lead that Alexis Gauthier has on him as every update passes. Let's see if Alvin can keep his activity up for a longer period of time.
It's already time to conclude this update, but not before I give you the PAL MVK of the month May! It was a tough decision, but it went to David Bonne this month. I'm sure he inspired us all with his hard work and detailed reports over the last couple of weeks; all this taking place at locations that aren't exactly known as the friendliest to the karting race, the Bowser Castles. He got all-time best scores on all the BC's successively, though not in completely chronological order ;-), and fended off an attack on his overall rank from fellow French karter Geoffrey Label in the process. Staying alive long enough to reach twin Legend B's on BC3 is already an achievement worthy of winning an MVK on it's own, so chapeau to the gatekeeper of Koopa's castle and keep on karting everyone!
Players' lists update, on June 3, 2007, by Simon Laflamme
The PAL and NTSC players' lists have been updated to reflect players' improvements since May 27. (Yahoo groups post #10689 to #10715) 11 players were active this week, amounting to a combined total score gain of +0,496.