Me, myself and Brunel
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
at : 3/30/2004 09:31:00 pm

Hi all. Well this might just as well be one of my last postings ... Okay okay, it's not that serious yet but let me explain how I came to this simple yet drastic conclusion. The company I work for, Brunel ICT, had made some plans for schooling it's employees (that's us) in such a matter that by the end of this year everyone would be MCSE 2003 Certified. This idea on itself is a great plan. But please wait until you hear how they were planning on doing this. For me 'getting certified' means I need to pass on no less then nine exams. Four of them are considered 'core exams', the base of an MCSE certification. Then after I pass on those four I need to do three 'electives'. The electives are also required but from four or five (I think) available exams you need to pass on at least three of them to pass for the whole MCSE deal. When these seven exams are behind me I can call myself a genuine MCSE 2000, since these are all exams for the Windows 2000 MCSE program. The next step is to get passed an upgrade exam, which in fact are two separate exams. Add them all up and we're facing nine of 'em. So far so good. It is a enormous amount of work (understatement of the year here) and that's proved by the Microsoft Certified Teaching People (I don't remember the official term, sorry), who say that for each exam you need to put in about seventy hours (!) of study. And their aim was to do one exam / block per four weeks. Yeah, right ... So let's do some of the math shall we: A week has seven days, each counting twenty four hours. That is a total of one hundred and sixty eight hours. Everybody knows you should sleep at least eight hours a day, but I'm still as stubborn as I am old (sorry mom :-) and only take six or maybe seven. Subtract that and we still have one hundred and twenty six hours left this week. Then I work six days a week. Five days at Philips lasting anywhere between ten and twelve hours, including the traveling time. Let's say it's eleven, to have an average and some easy calculations. That's another fifty five hours 'gone'. Still with me? The sixth working day is a short one: only seven hours. That brings us to a halt at sixty four hours left for this week and all we did was sleep and work :-| Then I give myself the pleasure of relaxing with one snooker night each week, I also need to do some eating, shopping, cleaning, washing, etc. You don't need to be a mathematician to see that we're going rapidly to an chronic hour shortage over here. Unless they invent a serum that will take care of the need for sleep I don't see how I'm going to be able to do this without loosing just about my entire private life. Even though that is not much yet, I would still miss it, I'm sure. And that is just the beginning. Add to these calculations that the seventy hours of study per block was needed for someone working with the material on a more or less daily basis, which I'm obviously not, and you can imagine that I need some more time to get this done. If this was for a period of let's say four or eight weeks I could get over it. It would still be one hell of a job but I would definitely be able to get passed it. But this plan was intended to last until the end of September for crying out loud. I tell you folks that this is one of the few times where I consider myself lucky not having to explain all this to a girlfriend or wife. How could we possibly get passed this? 'Sorry honey, but for the rest of the year I won't be able to participate in any of the domestic tasks and stuff at all' ... give me a break. We'll have to wait to see where all this is heading but I believe that things will be a whole less drastic when all the negotiations for peace are done :-) Next Monday I have scheduled my personal development talk with Brunel so then we'll know more. I'll keep you posted of any new information that might shine light in these dark times ... Geez (Biek reading over the written lines) that all sounds pretty sad, doesn't it? Well don't be so sad dear reader, it'll all work out fine in the end. I do have faith in this to work out fine. And please don't see this as one huge complaint because I think it's a great idea and I'm exited that I'm finaly am going to get some more education. I just need more time to get it all done. So I see you all next year ;-)

posted by Biek at 3/30/2004 09:31:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Le Mans
Monday, March 29, 2004
at : 3/29/2004 09:57:00 am

Hi all. Yes that's right Le Mans, and we're talking the whole twenty four hours of it :-) But not yet, not this time. Yesterday I ran a testing session lasting a couple of hours with my newly acquired Peugeot 905 Evo and let me tell you this: it ran well. Very well even. Ultra well is more like it, hehe. In Holland the commercials say 'you feel better in a Peugeot' and now I finally know where that line came from :-) After I 'accidentally' (oh my god, it's full of stars ... :-) lost both front and rear wing the darn thing did 380 km/h easily on the Le Mans straight, right up to my braking point, just before the chicane. I did made the turn but don't ask me how ... Anyway the thing was a 'little' damaged already anyway so :-) With the wings on it still does a mere 350 km/h so that ain't so bad either. After getting a new one (yes, they have plenty of those stacked away for me) the party really started. Geez, this thing is fast. With the Sportscar MOD I had been using mainly the Audi's and Panoz' but I think this one outruns even those beasts. Very cool. Even though I need to get used to seeing the Evo, it is after all a car that was designed in the nineties (to the Batmobile ;-), the cockpit looks nice and clean and the sound is awesome. Maybe even the best part is two 'brand new' I have now: Rouen and the Nordschleife! Can you even imagine running a 750 kilograms weighing car with about 780 bhp on a track like the Nordschleife? I tell you it flies! With GPL I have managed (after trying really, really hard) to get a 8.25 on the Ring but with my new Peugeot I did a nice 6.35 without having to try that hard. And I'm going to try really hard the nest few days, trust me. Just don't use the brakes! Misa likes downforce, yes misa does :-) Use the force wisely,

posted by Biek at 3/29/2004 09:57:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

Becoming a Grand Prix Legend
Saturday, March 27, 2004
at : 3/27/2004 12:00:00 pm

Hi all. Well last night I found out that it can be nice to drive on certain difficult circuits after all. Usually when I go to circuits like Silverstone or Monaco mainly the last one costs me more in spare Lotus parts than I make up for with fast laps. But last night it was the other way around. Check it out: Biek on pole position in Monaco! Yeah well, I wouldn't believe me also but lucky for me I do have the screen shots to prove it :-) Then I went to Silverstone. I was not expecting too much but I just thought I'd drive along with the others and try and find out where I was loosing the time. I threw away all my previous setups and used a slightly modified default setup again. This helps sometimes so why not this time, right? Time to meet the AI runners ... The only 'problem' with AI is that they run a very slow out lap and when they pass the start/finish line they quickly vanish in the distance, directly running laps at race speed. Only not this time. I was trailing Jack Brabham and when he started his first timed lap I could still chase him and keep up with his speed. This surprised me a bit since I have major problems on Silverstone usually. Nonetheless I stuck in there chasing him for a couple of laps before making a little mistake and parking a perfectly good Lotus in the wall somewhere. I accept bids from twelve thousand pounds and up ... When checking out my time there I was even more surprised: another track had been classified negative in Biek's profile! Now I still need to find some extra speed to even the score with Bas' time but I was happy with this one anyway as you can imagine. It may take some time but I'm getting there one step at a time. For some reason I seem to be able to control the car better every time I drive it. And this helps me enormously putting in solid lap times of course. My GPL Ranking is a plus nine something already and I keep driving little bits of seconds off it. Going for negative,

posted by Biek at 3/27/2004 12:00:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Finally we did it
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
at : 3/24/2004 03:58:00 pm

Hi all. We played one of our 'doomed' snooker games last night. Yes, did it! And with doomed I mean that we've been trying to get a date for this game since October last year! So yesterday finally was the day, Nijmegen was the place and Zevenaar 4 were our opponents. The snooker part was not that bad although we lost 6 to 3. I guess it was just one of these days were you can't quite get into your normal quality of game. We all lacked the strength and precision this game needs to have success. There will be other days so we're not that worried yet :-) And we're going over there to play the visiting part of the game (but not until the 26th of April so we have some time to get over this ;-) so maybe we'll be able to take some points back home with us, you never know. We'll keep you posted. On to the next one,

posted by Biek at 3/24/2004 03:58:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Snooker vs Airmiles - Part II
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
at : 3/23/2004 11:02:00 am

Hi all. This season is without a doubt my worst as a captain of our snooker team. For some reason I can't get my rhythm going. But I'll do better next year, I promise. What's been going wrong for instance is the rescheduling of a couple of games. And specifically the ones vs a team from Zevenaar. We're just not getting it sorted out. I think we can easily change our team name to Murphy's Law next year because we have been playing with his set of rules anyway ;-) Yesterday we for the second time had driven to Zevenaar to find a pretty empty snooker hall and again it seems that I have mixed up some dates or e-mails or something. Anyway, the good news is that the probability of us driving the wrong way to their snooker club has reduced to a minimal percentage. Tonight they are coming to Nijmegen to play our home game against them and then we'll sort things out. I hope ... Right. Bas and I drove back home together, Jaap was coming to Zevenaar separately, and we decided to watch a movie since it was still early. Bas had gotten the new 4-in-a-box DvD ... euhm ... box ... so we picked one of them to watch. When you are like me a big fan of scary/thriller/horror movies this is definitely one for you: Below. Since a while now Bas like me also has a nice home theater set with DTS so we are spoiled with good if not perfect sound and picture quality. Man did that movie shake us up from our chairs time to time. I'm not going to tell you what it's about apart from the fact that it's situated in a submarine and that things go wrong ;-) When we were done and our heartbeat had gone down to a acceptable level again I drove home to get some sleep again. Problem was that when I got home I sat down behind my computer for 'just a little while' and found myself playing Vicecity again for a little longer than is good for me. Some things never change. I'll learn to live with that I'm sure. Scary stuff, those subs,

posted by Biek at 3/23/2004 11:02:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

Sleepy :-|
Sunday, March 21, 2004
at : 3/21/2004 11:19:00 am

Hi all. Before you start telling me I look a little pale: you're right. I am. And that's not the worst part. I even feel a little pale too :-) And it's not that I don't have a clue on a reason, this time I do. All I need to do is read back my Blog a little bit and there it is. But still ... Right. I think the only remedy is to get some rest soon, before I break down completely at work tomorrow. And getting rest is exactly what I'm going to do right now. So I'll see you in a couple of hours. By the way. The race was a joy to watch. It was a bit of a shame that the rain didn't come through as that always gives just that little something extra but apart from that it was a good one again. I'm glad I got up for it this morning. Congrats to Jensen, allthough I doubt he'll be reading this *grin* Goodnight,

posted by Biek at 3/21/2004 11:19:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

LOTR Survival

at : 3/21/2004 01:09:00 am

Hi all. After spending the last 12 hours or so in the theater watching all three of the Lord of the Rings movies in a row I can tell you that this is the ultimate way of seeing trilogies. Wow, this is so cool. It was a very long run all together but it was worth it. I'm off to bed now as my alarm clock is going to do it's thing again at about five o clock. We're going to watch the Formula One live again so we have to get up this early. Yes I know, that's in a couple of hours already. Wish me luck :-)

posted by Biek at 3/21/2004 01:09:00 am | Permalink |

Too long
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
at : 3/17/2004 10:47:00 pm

Hi all. Tonight we had a meeting from the company I work for. On one hand I don't mind these meetings as it is nice to see colleagues away from work every now and then. However on the other hand they are way too long and take up an entire evening. This week is my early shift week and when I want to be there at seven in the morning I need to be in my car at six. So my alarm clock starts to make these really annoying noises at about a quarter past five. When I was back in my car from that meeting it was about a quarter to ten ... and the drive home was still one hour so these are long days as you can imagine. Off to bed,

posted by Biek at 3/17/2004 10:47:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Wok restaurant adventure
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
at : 3/16/2004 03:30:00 pm

Hi all. I'm not sure weather you heard from wok cooking or not but that is what I did last night. And before you start thinking stuff like 'poor guy, he's never seen a wok before' it is not the first time I was wok cooking! Especially since I got a wok for my birthday last year. In fact I got two but that is a whole different story :-) However this time I was with friends at a genuine wok restaurant. First you seek out a plate with all kinds of items you'd like the cook to ... euhm ... cook and bake for you. Then, when you're finished composing (thanks Dave :-) your meal you hand it over to the cook who cooks (man this is getting confusing, even for me :-) and bakes it for you in a sauce selected by you. So the first plate I choose was filled with all kinds of fishies, some vegetables (mushrooms, onions, paprika's, that sort of stuff) and a couple more things I didn't know the name of but looked nice anyway :-) Then I had to choose the sauce. Again I didn't know what the names meant so a little advice from my friend was in place. The sauces are divided into categories of how strong they are. Behind the names there are symbols of pepper. The more peppers, the hotter the sauce. So it was pretty simple. Lucky me :-) My first sauce was a good old 'two pepper' one which was very nice. The plate I composed (thanks again Dave) was nice also, very nice even. I just love this kind of food. I think that maybe I only like pizza better and directly after comes this food type. Chinese, Indian, Greek, etc. Then of course the pasta's ... Yum yum. My second run was again with some other fishies and stuff and then I choose the 4 pepper sauce ... I can still taste some of that in my mouth, geez that was spicy! Water, water! Aahh! But since I like spicy food this was very nice as well. I should definitely go back there or to a similar restaurant some time. And so should you. Let the cook cook ... euhm ... your diner,

posted by Biek at 3/16/2004 03:30:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Biek (h)is back
Sunday, March 14, 2004
at : 3/14/2004 06:35:00 pm

Hi all. Although the weekend itself was kind of nice, the overall nuisance of my back aching wasn't nice to say the least. The Sunday was the worst day so far and I was glad I didn't drive to the north of Holland as planned. Even though I like going there very much it just would have been hell getting out of the car. Seat bad remember? It's just over 220 kilometers (and the way back home is just as long of course) so it's not that I'm there after a fifteen minute drive or so, which I would have survived I'm sure :-) Of course on the Saturday I worked again so I had the chance to catch up with my dad and girlfriend to talk a bit about their holiday. The short version: it was nice, warm and way to short :-) but that is the main ingredient of a good holiday I guess. I usually feel that way about most of the weekends apart from the 'warm' bit which isn't my thing really. But I'm sure the insiders among you knew that already ;-) Eighteen to twenty degrees centigrade is more than hot enough for me. And the Saturday itself was not that bad, back wise, but then I made the crucial mistake of accepting a snooker invitation from Bas ... I know, I know, we all make mistakes but unfortunately for me this was a slightly bigger one :S About the snooker bit I can be very short: I lost all but one frame and Bas played some great snooker. If I wasn't feeling so busted I might have enjoyed watching it even more because it's always nice to see someone playing good snooker. Then there was the Sunday. Woke up at around 7.30 not knowing why exactly. My alarm clock shouldn't try to wake me before 8.30 so there really wasn't any reason for me to wake up that early. Oh well, early starts give you a bit more margin at turn one and nice long days so at that point I 'thought' things could be worse. Well they were. As soon as I tried to get up my back made me realize why it had been much better if I had not been playing snooker the night before. About 10 minutes later I was still sitting on the edge of my bed and wondering if I shouldn't roll back into bed. I didn't but it took me some time to get moving. Slightly better news with all this is that my computer chair (itself not even being remotely the best chair in the world) was the only one where I can sit really straight up so with a cup of coffee I crash landed behind my computer. Right. I'm there. Some things could have been somewhat worse I guess. That felt good as long as I wasn't moving too much and after reading some emails (and deleting 3 dozen more ...) I decided to do some racing. Driving driving :-) For quite some time since we all began racing Grand Prix Legends I held the fastest lap set on the circuit of Nurburgring. Then during the JMF Trophy race with the Dutch Simracing Zone Bas destroyed my laptime which by itself was not even that bad. Hey, the when he's faster he's faster, so who am I to argue. The reason why it hurt me so much was that he did it in a Eagle using more or less the default setup ... I cried for hours when nobody was looking ... :| I didn't start that race due to steering problems so I watched my two fellow GPRT drivers on their adventure in Germany. And I have to admit: it simply was a good lap :-) With my pole on Zandvoort the other week still fresh in my mind I thought I might as well use my Zandvoort setup on the Ring as it is almost the same sort of track, only a 'bit' longer :-) To cut a long story short: it worked! I once saw a advert for a Porsche 911 Turbo and the headline read 'Sticks like peanut butter on the roof of your mouth'. My Lotus was sticking like peanut butter on a fly catcher strip. Man it felt nice. The car was like glue. Really? Really. After talking about the new GPRT track record to my bro Stefan we came to the conclusion that my Lotus_Zandy setup from now on had to be called Lotus_Default ;-) It's just that good. So now the new track record reads 8:25.920 which means I smashed my own previous record 8:32.380 with more than 6 seconds! That this effort made me quite happy shouldn't be much of a surprise I hope. Using this happy happy joy joy feeling I immediately went to Kyalami where I had some 'business' to take care of also. Bas had been faster there for some time now also and I thought I might as well use my good mood to take the record back. This took me quite a few more laps than I had thought (I admit it was two practice sessions of an hour ...) but in the end I did it :-) I improved my own record with only 0.7 seconds but it was just enough to take the track back. Sorry maestro ;-) Now I 'only' need to go a bit faster on Mexico and Silverstone to get completely 'green' again ... We'll keep you informed ;-) However I'm sure Bas' won't keep us waiting too long and take back some records LoL Be careful when you break records, it might hurt,

posted by Biek at 3/14/2004 06:35:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

GPRT.net
Thursday, March 11, 2004
at : 3/11/2004 02:43:00 pm

Hi all. With a little luck I'll be able to present the GPRT.net website in the near future. I've finished just about all the pages and am now working on the layout and graphical bits and bytes. This should not take that long, maybe a month or so, but not much longer. Check it out regularly to be one of the first to see the goodies! Lord of WebmasteRing,

posted by Biek at 3/11/2004 02:43:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Stand up

at : 3/11/2004 12:35:00 am

Hi all. Pssst, don't tell anyone I was up this late (again?) as I tell everyone that I am trying to get a grip on the amount of sleep I get at night. This time however I have a good excuse: I it was my bartender shift and I just can't kick everyone out at ten because poor old Biek needs his sleep, now can I? Al and al I was back home about 10 minutes ago which I think is not that bad. It's been much later some times trust me. The only thing is that I, just like I did the last time (how about that for a flat learning curve ... duh!), forgot to grab a chair or something to sit on. Again I have been on my feet the entire evening and right now my back is killing me. Geez, you should have seen me crawl out of the cellar this evening. Also when I had to reach for drinks in the fridge I almost died. Hopefully I can sleep some of it off, the last time I was a wreck for about a week. Recoverings-R-us,

posted by Biek at 3/11/2004 12:35:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

Snooker & life
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
at : 3/10/2004 01:23:00 am

Hi all. Tonight I both won and lost. First the good news: we won our competition snooker game tonight. Seven to two was the end score with seven being our part of the deal of course. Unfortunately one of the two lost frames was on my behalf but I have to admit I deserved to loose that one. Big time! In Holland, or at least within our snooker team, we have a saying: gelijk een krant … Although I don't know exactly how to translate this into good English imagine this: I missed even the simplest of pots by just about half a table length, and of which I'm sure my sister could have potted blindfolded. Truly sad to see. The 'funny' part was that my opponent missed the same caliber of pots also so in the end it was a black ball frame decider. A worthy ending of a very crappy frame :-) The bad news was the 'life' part of the title. Remember the 'wuss' topic from the 23rd of February? That's resolved now. Unfortunately the outcome was not as I had hoped, though I was suspecting something like this was bound to happen. Bugger! Even though I guess I'll get over it in time I really am happy we talked about it and sorted things out. The whole thing was almost literally eating me up inside and now that we have things cleared up I'll try and get back to my old life and get back into my old rhythm. Another thing is that somehow it’s also some sort of relief, strange as that may sound. I'm not sure how that all works but I think it’s good to now where I stand now. Biek is back,

posted by Biek at 3/10/2004 01:23:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

Monday again
Monday, March 08, 2004
at : 3/08/2004 12:57:00 pm

Hi all. The weekend is gone again, but instead of the usual 'geez where did it go?' kind of Monday morning feeling it's more of a 'whoohoo, another two days off' mood I'm in. That's right 2 more free days! And it's not that I don't like my job or anything, au contraire baby (use your favorite Austin Powers accent here), but to have a couple of extra days of is always nice. Especially after an pretty exhausting weekend. By the way, in case you're wondering: yes I just got up ;-) Buh ... so sleepy … Right now I'm just relaxing the time away with a nice Senseo Dark Roast® and reading up on some of the emails I got. Not the 125 junk mails (in just two days!!) but the ones that do matter. This has to be one of the biggest irritations in my life: spam! This afternoon I'm going to visit my sister again (which is always nice of course) because we need to go over a few papers (the boring kind, yes indeed, but it has to be done) and then we had planned to watch a movie. That’s the good part. I think I'll take Equilibrium with me. Very nice movie and I think she hasn't seen it yet. I’m not sure yet if my bro-inlaw :-) Stevie will be home for the movie also, but we’ll see. My sister promised to cook corn for diner. She better keep this one, hehe :-) It’s been a really long time since I had fresh cooked corn and it’s just so jummy! Whoohoo, I can hardly wait! Signing off day one,

posted by Biek at 3/08/2004 12:57:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

I'm still here
Saturday, March 06, 2004
at : 3/06/2004 01:07:00 pm

Hi all. Sorry for the lack of updates during the past couple of days. Frankly I have been too busy to do anything else than work and sleep. And in the spare few moments that I did have some time for myself I've been laying on the couch passed out of half asleep. Overall I'm just a little tired. For example I had planned to watch the qualifying live on TV tonight and slept right through them. And this is something I really wanted to see so I must have been extremely asleep to miss this. Lucky for me the rerun starts in about half an hour, but watching it live has just a little more excitement to it. Thursday I spend the evening trying to get my Mac up and running, in which I eventually succeeded. Man that OS X looks good. If only I could make my Windows desktop look like this. Yum yum. Yesterday of course I also had my dads shop to look after (same as today) and when I got home I didn't do much more than just read my emails and watched some TV. The Formula One Season 2004 has finally begun so there was a seasons preview about it on TV. After that I think I went straight to bed. This weekend I'll be racing again and we'll be watching the race on Sunday of course. The only down(under)side of it all it that the first race is in Australia which means we need to ready in front of the TV at about 3.00 am. The good news is that after the Formula One race has finished we have a pretty long day for ourselves. We'll see how that goes after a short night ;-) Try to get some sleep,

posted by Biek at 3/06/2004 01:07:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments

Different times
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
at : 3/03/2004 12:21:00 am

Hi all. Man, I feel terrible now. Just watched a the taped show from Ned3 tonight. It was about the 1973 Formula One race on Zandvoort and a crash that went terribly wrong during that race. Somewhere around lap 17 a driver named Roger Williamsen crashed his race car and burned alive. One other driver, a good friend of the crashed driver, stopped and tried to help him but was unable to get him out of the car as it was upside down. He was the only one trying to help the guy at first. Then a marshal came to help him and someone with a small fire extinguisher. This is just about the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. My stomach turned over watching these images. Truly sad but on the other hand in those days of racing these things did happen. Other than that I think the timing of broadcasting this is a bit awkward. This weekend is the start of a brand new Formula One season and because people who don't follow the sport have some sort of prejudice against it, remembering only the crashes, this will not do any good to the overall name of the sport, even though the last person who died was Ayrton Senna in 1994. The sport is so much safer today then it ever was and keeps on improving almost race by race. Keep it in memory,

posted by Biek at 3/03/2004 12:21:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

Snooker vs Airmiles
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
at : 3/02/2004 10:20:00 am

Hi all. Yesterday evening we were supposed to play a game of snooker for our regional competition in a town called Zevenaar. As usual I first picked up Bas, then we drove on to Nijmegen where Jaap would meet us at Matchroom, our snooker center. We all dived into Jaap his V40 (a very nice automobile by the way) and got underway to Zevenaar. We got there nicely in time (which is something of a small miracle for us sometimes :-) but when we wanted to get in the normal door seemed to be shut. Then we tried the door next to it and that one was open. As soon as we got in we suspected something was not completely right. They we having a big renovation going on! So no snooker tables, no snooker team, etc. No nothing ;-) Right. Off we went again, back to Nijmegen. I guess this one of our earliest returns of the season, but obviously I would have liked to play this match rather than being home early. We'll figure out what went wrong on this one and plan it for another date. Airmiles and snooker go well together,

posted by Biek at 3/02/2004 10:20:00 am | Permalink | 0 comments

Zandvoort negative
Monday, March 01, 2004
at : 3/01/2004 01:11:00 pm

Warning: Anyone who doesn't like Race Sims, please skip this post ;-) Hi racefans, thank you for staying :-) Zandvoort never was one of my greatest favorites. I really liked the layout of this track and it's really not that hard to remember but I was never able to go really fast there. Somehow the car always seemed slippery all over the track. Must be the sea climate or something, I don't know. However this Sunday Bas and I decided that Zandvoort was the track we needed to get some practice on. The benchmark on this track for GPL Ranking was a 1:26.848 but we were not able to get much closer to it than about 2 seconds. So off we went, driving a number of practice laps and then dived straight into the race. We did two races on intermediate long modus which meant we had to do 27 laps for each race. The first one I started 6th only I made a extremely stupid beginners mistake (the trusted we-want-to-go-too-fast-on-too-cold-tires-maneuver) and returned to the race running 11th. The good old shift-r thing is nice, but not at the start of the race when almost the entire pack of cars needs to get passed you before the 'track is clear' ... Anyway. This race I finished 6th again after running a great catch-up race. When the final results came through it showed I set the fastest lap of that race! A 1:26.738 was my lap, which meant that I also nailed the benchmark time with a whopping 0.110 seconds! I know I know, that doesn't seem like much but when you realize that this lap time was almost two seconds faster that my previous record which is a huge improvement. You can imagine I was pretty happy with it. Right. We then wanted to do another race on Zandvoort. Partly because Bas had more or less crashed out in the first one (he had very bad starting grid hick ups) and for me it was a test if I could get pole position, because my just collected fastest lap was faster than the pole for the last race, and also faster than anyone who had driven the track on my machine. (a new track record, indeedy ... :-) Well I won't keep you waiting for long: the pole was mine with a 0.6 second margin on the number two. This was the first time I had a pole position in a race where we had AI running also. A really cool feeling and a huge motivation boost, it felt good. But then the race began. One of the things I really like doing when competing with others is trying to force them into making mistakes. The ideal position for this is when you're very close behind your opponent and you're keeping your car in both of his mirrors. Every time he checks either one of his mirrors, you're there. Lots of people can't handle that kind of pressure and try to go faster then they are capable of, resulting in a mistake or crash. And that is the moment where you strike and move on a spot. When this succeeds it's great fun, believe me. Usually when this works I think something like 'this would never happen to me' Yeah, sure, right ... My pole-happiness was not for that long because when the flagger guy dropped the green on us I saw Jack Brabham shooting past me on my left. When we came to turn one I managed to keep my head and didn't try to out brake him there. Instead I quickly switched to pursuit modus and stuck behind Brabham. In the back of my head I knew I was faster than him (You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are - Morpheus, the Matrix) so it should only be a matter of time when I could pass him. That moment came 3 laps after the start when I out braked Brabham at the end of the start/finish straight and I was back in the lead! Yeah! Only then I was the victim of Brabhams pursuit modus and I will never grin at anyone losing their car again. Man it's though to get chased, trust me. About six or seven laps later the theory I like so much went active and I parked my brand new Lotus in the fence when coming up on the straight again. Aargh!! First time I'm leading a race, I'm capable of winning it too and I crash out! I will spare you the details of my comeback tour but in the end I came in sixth again, just like the first race. I did set the fastest lap but it was a small comfort ... I want to win this race and I will do so too! Keep pushing,

posted by Biek at 3/01/2004 01:11:00 pm | Permalink | 0 comments