Happy Holidays

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas and has a safe new year, posting the picture above of myself and Rayne at our house, Haven Manor, which will be celebrating its 1 year birthday since we moved in . We have a nice plot of land there and just added the woodland you can see over to the right, will post a pictorial on just the house and property soon .

Other things in news.... is Les Whites holiday Time trials we did on december 21st, a large group of racers traveled across SL track to track , trying different vehicles in 3 laps to see who got the fastest times, it was a great tour of SLs race tracks, including , Mooz, Racer's island, Kokopelli raceway, Silver Mountain (SMC), Otway raceway, Amber raceway , Misp..all in all it lasted 6 hours and was lots of fun for all, in the end Jafo Tendaze won the event by just 1 point over Ram Pharoah.

This last sunday the 28th , was test race #4 for the Rfactor league, a good showing of 6 drivers this time. Was a few technical problems , but all in all a good race, especialy the last 3 laps where i chased Ratta Raymaker very close, shown in pic below, Rattra prevailed. So far tenatively setting opening day for the season for wednesday January 14th .

I wont be making the next MotoSL race, which is round #9 at Mooz, will be out of town celebrating christmas wiht my family who lives all over the place and hard to get together somethimes, i wish all riders luck, go Archer =)

Group1 GP Racing league holds another test....

Wednesday we held another test race , this time at the Nuerburg sprint layout. The test was a little bumpy, and had to be restarted one time, but otherwise was alot of fun . This was our first test using what will more than likely be the official class cars of the league , LMP 675 prototype Sportscars.

These speedy cars require discipline on the twisty road tracks , a slight mistep and you will be involved in a costly spin out. In the test race , Jafo and myself seemed to have the steadiest hand and drove a close race for almost the first half . But alas my fellow test racers made a few costly pit stop miscalculations ( or no calculations as it were) and i won with Jafo only 10 seconds behind despite his error.

The Group1 GP league will be for any SL based racing enthusiasts willing to come out and particpate. We will be racing a 10 race season over hopefully 10 to 12 weeks time . With cash prizes for each race and end of season . We will be racing on full sized real world simmed tracks. Most tracks are 3 to 4 and half miles in length. With lap times around 1:30 to 2 minutes each .

Official races and tests are held at 5pm SLT on wednesdays , and maybe bumped up to 5:30 pm to accomodate some drivers RL schedules. We have also been racing on other days if we feel like it , infact in this pre-season mode anyone participating can request a test for anytime and we will see what we can do about getting some drivers on the track .

Race format includes a open practice, a open qualify, then the race itself, which.. although we are racing Le Mans style cars, will be short, 30 to 35 minutes , which is approx 15 to 25 laps on these full size courses.

Races will include pit stops , spin outs and crashes , full computer regulated rules and penalties, including yellow flags , blue flags and black flags for naughty drivers . Computer doals out penalties automaticly for such infractions as.... jumping the start , cutting the track , speeding in pits , disobeying blue flags . Penalties include... drive thru, stop and go and of course the black flag, which means disqualified.

Only 4 drivers this test , but we expect to grow after the hollidays from 5 current drivers testing to 7 or 8, and hope to have 10 to 15 when we begin the official Season. We will continue to run our test races to get new drivers used to how the show runs and the nuances involved, so hopefully no one is beffuddled about any aspect when the green drops on opening day of the season . If this interests you , contact me in game about details , and hurry up and join our tests before Jafo T. gets much more practice out there =)

MotoSL Season #4- Snowpeach GP 2

Annie Gufler takes her 5th top step of season

This round of the MotoSL season takes us back to classic Snowpeach for the 2nd time, which is fine with me cause i like this track alot =) . This synergy seemed to pay off , when i managed to qualify 3rd despite a very laggy qualify round for me , and my seeming inability get off the proverbial "Schnide" as far as qualifying .

Annie was hot , grabbing her 2nd straight pole with a lap nearly a half second faster than Yuriko in 2nd, Jafo landed on 4 and TFox Tammas 5th , for a all Archer/ AM Pro top 5 .

This showdown would have to wait though , as Just Catteneo made a bid to join the Group A party. Just qualified 16th , which means he was on pole for the opening D race, which he won decisively .This race also saw some good racing from Nella Boccara 2nd, Hakuna Albatross 3rd and track owner Count Bayliss 4th...these 3 put on some good racing as Just ran away with it.

With the group D win Just advances to 6th on grid for Group C, which had league favorite chimpanzee... Ford Roffo on pole. But to be honest im not even sure what happened to poor Ford, slingshot-fast-starting-pro Ram Pharoah got a great start from the 3rd spot and sped away into lead after the 1st turn , with Just Catteneo close behind all the way from the back .

Just got by Ram on lap 2 , Holden fell back by lap 4 , the remainder of the race was Just in the lead and Ram in hot pursuit but unable to overtake . Just , Ram , Suzy Cuddihy, Holden , Rattra Raymaker and Ford was the finish order.

Just stayed on his bike and on the track as he waited for the field of the group B race to roll out onto the race track . Josephina Gears was on the pole though and would not be denied, despite a valiant effort by Just who ran 2nd the whole time untill a late race fall let Stang Voom by, Stang finished 2nd , Just 3rd.

Hoping my bad luck of last several rounds might finally be behind me ...i started out well as the green fell on the group A race. I got past alot of trouble at the first turn hairpin and was in hot pursuit of Jafo who came thru the start cleanest and jumped to early lead. Annie accidentaly shut the door on a faster accelerating Yuriko and sent her crashing into the grass even before turn 1 , and Annie got the worst of the trouble at the pin , and fell back to 4th .

Lap 2 is about where my luck ran out , i was hit by some bad lag , not sure if just on my end , but hard to say as i fell from 2nd , all the way back to 5th . Annie jumped to 2nd lap 3 , and then got passed Jafo who crashed on lap 8. Yuriko had made her way up to 3rd and Joesephina Gears was running 4th .

I chased far behind untill i passed a fallen Joesephina lap 13 and was soon hot on Yurikos heels . I rather see Yuriko win the race , then be fighting over 3rd with her , but a race is a race, so all i could do was wish her luck and do my best ....unfortunately Yuriko fell lap 14 and i was by into 3rd where i finished, with Yuriko 4th , Josephina 5th, Fox Tammas 6th .

My 8th career podium at Snowpeach was bitter sweet, as AM Pro Rider Annie Gufler , after 8 races, stretched her lead to 29 points over Yuriko in 2nd, and 36 over Jafo in 3rd. Its the holliday break for MotoSL now , but will return on January 3rd for round 9 at Mooz.

Below is a screenshot introduction to a new pet project of mine, been putting together a group of SL based racers to compete online in the Rfactor racing game. So far we have a small group and it is growing, if you race rfactor or just want info , contact me in SL and i will see what i can do =)

MotoSL round #7

Annie Gufler of AM Pro takes 3rd win straight
MotoSL Season4 , Round #7 PSU2 Long track @Snowpeach sim

Finally after what seemed like the longest 2 weeks in SL ever , we reach round #7 . This round was punctuated with close hard fought racing and hard disapointment for the author, will try to focus on more of the former than the latter. Lets just say i suffered technical issues on race day , qualifying 7th and finishing 11th overall .

Annie Gufler grabbed her first pole of season , with Jafo 2nd, Yuriko Nishi 3rd, Holden Saunders 4th and Suzy Cuddihy 5th for the Group A qualifiers.

Each race today had some exciting highlights , Group D's story was first time racer Caz Freschi leading wire to wire for the win , with vets Nella Boccara and Bikey Bekkers chasing him the whole race, Nella fell and Bikey got by for 2nd .

Group C was all Bikersites.com rider Josephina Gears making a return appearance this round, but White's Bike's rider Molly Fitzgerald made the viewing box start to stir and murmur with a great 5 lap comeback, where she steadily gained each lap , from -4.4 seconds lap 5 to -1.2 seconds at the finish lap 10 , alot of riders had a steady race, Brave Ashbourne finished 3rd.

Group had Ram Pharoah on the pole.... zT Racing's Stang Voom gave him a chase the whole race, but Ram never faltered and got the win and the advance to Group A . With Sulla Looming passing TFox Tammas last lap for 3rd.

Group A started off with a nice chase , Annie Gufler in front and Yuriko Nishi close behind for the first 3 laps , then Yuriko went down . Annie motored ahead and led the race to the finish . For the rest of the field , the remaining race was a a 12 lap back and forth battle for positioning .

Jafo moved to 2nd after Yuriko fell, and stayed there 1 lap till he crashed himself... Yuriko moved back into 2nd lap 5 untill she took a big spill . From there Suzy Cuddihy took over the 2nd place position and ran a steady race. Yuriko fell to 5th , then down to 6th at lap 7, while Ram and Jafo battled over 3rd .

Lap 8 onwards Yuriko began made her move in attempt to make a comeback, passed Holden into 5th when he fell, then by Ram into 4th at lap 11. Soon she was chasing Jafo around in the closing laps of the race. The last lap of the race started with Suzy in 2nd place by a decent margin over Jafo in 3rd and Yuriko in 4th .

It didnt take long for that to change, 1st turn , Jafo goes down and Yuriko is in 3rd. Annie crosses for the win , Suzy can almost see the finish line as she comes around the last turn of the race.... 9 and almost 10 steady laps in 2nd place and Suzy has mechanical failure and she goes down mere dozen or so yards from the finish, Yuriko is past finishing 2nd, Jafo beats Suzy to line in 3rd, Suzy 4th, Ram 5th , Holden 6th .

Only a week break before the next big race at Snowpeach, Annie Gufler now has a 16 point lead over 2nd place Yuriko Nishi . Another big finish next week could be all Annie needs to coast to the championship, it is yet to be seen .