Hi all. What did you do in the first days of the new year? Well my racing friend Bas and me decided it was only appropriate to begin this freshly started year two thousand and five with a race weekend. After all we had the entire weekend at our disposal so why not, eh? We started with a practice and race with Grand Prix Legends on the circuit of Mosport, because our next S.NL competition race is held there. The qualifying went okay I guess, Bas took pole I was in fourth place. Trouble with racing AI is that their starting technique is far better than ours so before we knew it he was in fourth and I was in ninth position, even before we had driven a entire lap. Numerous laps, a couple of crashes and truckloads of frustration later we finished it with the both of us way lower on the charts than we had expected judging the starting order. Looking at it that way racing human opponents is easier. Mainly because they can be forced into making small mistakes whereas the AI drivers usually won't bother with what you do and simply keep their line, sometimes even knocking you off the track or leaving too little room to maneuver. We'll just hope it goes better with the real opponents next Thursday. And next to GPL we also did quite a number of laps with GTR, the new racing sim in town. Both armed to the teeth with a nicely setup Saleen S7 we charged the tracks and made kilometer after kilometer having lot's of fun. These things are not even that far apart from the way we have to race the GPL cars, which makes them quite a hand full to keep between the white lines. The sound of that seven liter V8 engine in the back makes up for all the hard work we have to put in. Just mash the throttle and you'll be smiling in no time :-) Roaring thunder is what first jumps to mind. Very cool. We have been seriously thinking about entering the 24 hours of Spa race, that will be held anytime soon after the world wide release of GTR. This means lots and lots (and then some more ;-) of training on that circuit to get a balanced setup that's no too slow but still reasonably controllable. A faster car is normally quite nervous to drive so you don't have to do a whole lot wrong to end up on the side of the track. So currently we're in the process of building the setup just right for the both of us to drive with. Whish us luck because we sure are going to need it :-)