Introduce yourself thread [Part 2]

[Tim Ling]

My turn I guess

I live in Sarf (that's South) London on the border with Kent. I'm 41, divorced, re-married with 4 kids, though only 1 lives with me.

I started sim racing with the original Grand Prix on the Amiga 500, managing to beat it over and above the "Ace" level. I also played XJ220 Challenge and Stunt Car Racer

Switching to the PSX, I played Gran Turismo 'til I broke the controller, along with Ridge Racer/2/Rage Racer, TOCA/2 etc. Then I got a pc, then a divorce and racing games were replaced by...well Counter Strike mostly

However, I have regained my desire to race, partly due to the fact I had a stroke back in May and cant use my right hand (yet). A suggestion from a friend, a session of TrackMania and a steering wheel later and the smell of hot rubber and burnt fuel is in the air!

I would ask you all be careful passing me, as driving 1 handed sometimes gets a little hairy, especially when I'm trying to change up a gear going round a corner. I will do my best not to get in your way...yet. The day will come when I fill your mirror with the menace of a lost place!! Muhahahaha

[Mark Guy]

Hi my name is Mark Guy, I'm 36 years old have one son(16) and have never been married( (got close a few times). I live in Cape Town South africa.
I have done some Karting in my life, I raced for 4years and finished in the top 4 each year (4,3,3 and 2). Karting is a great sport and I would have continued had it not got so expensive. Anyway I have been playing racing sims for many years, if I can remeber correctly I started with Toca BTCC witch was a mind blowing game with yellow and blue Laguna's and the Ford Mondeo's. " THE NEW FORD DRIVER" the comentary was the best.
All of this racing was ofline and I only recently started online racing. My first competitive race was the Race07 Demo Race at Andersdorp and since then there has been no turning back. I am trying to get my son more into sim racing, but for now he enjoys the War games.
Ialso race RC cars (battery) for a hobby and my car is the Alain Menu Ford Mondeo.

Anyway people thanks for giving me the oppertunity to join your community and I look forward to learning a lot from you about Sim Racing.
See you all on track

[Eric Kaczmarek]

Hello,

I live in Portland, Oregon (US West cost), but it wasn't always that way. I was born and raised in Paris France then after high school went to college in California (UCLA go Bruins!) to study computer science. Graduated in '96 then got a decent as a software engineer at Intel (yes the processor maker) in Portland. Have worked there since.

For 3 years I raced motorcycles as a hobby in the Oregon Motorcycle Association, but beside being a spendy passtime it also took all of my free time. I took a year "off" in 2007 hoping to go back in '08. However, I ended up getting married and now we are expecting our first child in less than a month, so racing wasn't in the cards this year either (nor next).

As for Sim racing, I am BRAND new to it... I got GTR-E a month ago (Sept 13th my bday) and have been playing since. I need something to satisfy my speed addiction.

I would say I am very slow compared to most of you on here, but I want to have fun!!

See you on the track

[Rafael Barbosa]

Hello everyone.

My name is Rafael Barbosa, I am from Rio do Sul-SC, Brazil, is unmarried got 29 years.

I started running with GTR 2, without steering wheel, when I decided that it would be my hobby bought a MOMO. Today I am RACE 07 is the GTREvolution.

Unfortunately I have little time to run because I am finishing the course in Electrical Engineering at night and work during the day.

I hope I have fun and make friends on tracks.

[Richard Bunschoten]

Hello everybody,

I am Richard Bunschoten. I life in Zoetermeer in the Netherlands. I work as calculator/planner at a technical installation company. Some experiance with online racing i had with GTR2 and Rfactor. I also drove GPL online a while in a league, the "GPL League".

Played alot of racegames in my life starting with "VROOM"on the Amiga , or wait no it started with "Poleposition"on the Atari 800 , then vroom, GP1, GP2, NFS, Viper racing , GP3, Sportscar GT, GPL, Formula1 challenge , GTR, Rfactor , GTR2, lots of mods on rfactor and now where here with EVO.

I have a wife and a daughter of 1 year old. And my friend Marcel helped me find this community. I'm sure i'm gonna have lots on the servers of RD, and intend to become a competitive part of the comunity

Thnx all , cya on track

[Warren Dawes]

Welcome to Racedepartment guys, great to see more new faces.

Richard, I was interested to see you live in Zoetermeer, my only trip to the Netherlands was a working trip of two weeks in Zoetermeer, working on a technology exchange program with the Brinkers Company. I have some very fond memories and made some great friends there.

[Richard Bunschoten]

Very nice people in Zoetermeer Warren
Nice to read you liked your stay.

Most people in the region however call zoetermeer the "sleepcity" Since most people who life here do not work in Zoetermeer but in the hague, or some other city in the surrounding . Myself worked in the hague to , but our company moved to rotterdam. But i think it's a fun town with lots of great people indeed.

[Christopher Aponte]

aaahh Zoetemeer...
a peacefull place last time that i was there (some months ago)

[Patrick Leung]

Hi,
I am Patrick Leung from China, Hong Kong . I am 16 years old
I've played simulation racing game since 2005 and my first sim racing game is rFactor (I am also playing now ;) )

I am love to watch F1 & WTCC . That's why I buy Race 07

I hope can improve my driving skills here

[Cor van der Burg]

Hi my name is Cor van der Burg im from Holland Den Helder.
Im racing some years.
I have a website iceroad.nl and dit some championships.
Thats all i have to say.

[Rick Gough]

Hi all, my name is Rick, I live on the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England. I play in a band called Rehearsal for Murder (www.bebo.com/rehearsalformurder ). I've raced for years in the EA F1 series, GPL, NR2003 and all the Simbin titles.

I've come from Gamers-Crib where I was/am an admin/moderator for the past couple of years. Sadly there just isn't the RACE07/EVO community over there though, so I'm moving on.

Great site, great community, look forward to racing with you

And yes, that was another shameless plug for my bands website

[David Hal]

Hello all,

I'm David Hal, living in a small village Zuid-Beijerland in the Netherlands.
I'm 33 years old and sharing my house with an stubborn Iguana.

I had some hobby's in the past but that didn't work out.
1 Of them was a Yamaha YZF R1, and did some flying for a couple of years.
Looking back, it was major fun(beside the accidents, and 2 R1 total loss)
but glad im still in one piece with a driverslicense in my pocket.
The other one was not that fast but still had a nice amount of HP's.
But it was getting to expensive for me.
link1
link2

....Today i drive a Cannondale mountainbike....

Im a rookie with sim-racing,
so i must learn alot of it.

But that shall not be a problem over here at RD.
There's alot of knowlege in this comunity, and already i've learned alot
just of reading the topics.

[Matt Gray]

Well guys - first of all - hello! Looks like I'm the new tea-boy here...

So I'm Matt, 21 years young and currently residing in Oxford, UK - albeit I'm Yorkshire born and bred! I've been racing for a couple of years now at a number of communities, most notably and recently the GRC (to feed my rFactor needs) and AnE Race (to feed my Simbin needs).

I would say in terms of racing level, I'm Pro - but more in attitude than in outright ability. Usually I'm in the midfield somewhere but as always it's nice to have someone to race against of similar ability regardless of where in the grid you are.

Hopefully I can see some of you on the track shortly and get to know you all a little bit better!

[Richard Hamstead]

Hi all,

I'm Richard Hamstead, 15 years old, still stuck in High School. Nothing much interesting to say about my personal life, so I'll move on to my sim racing life.

Prior to September last year I only raced PS2 games such as the F1 series, the V8 Supercars Race Driver (aka TOCA) and the NFS series with my Driving Force wheel. I think this was a good introduction to race-gaming as it taught be the basic lines and such in an easy environment without having to worry about setups and the like. I got sick of it and started looking on the internet about race-sims. I got hooked when I found No Grip and all of it's mods so I went out and bought GTR2. I raced offline for about 2 months, then I started to drive on public servers.

Eventually my Driving Force broke so I bought a G25, which is amazing!

One day I came across a group of guys racing on a public server using Prototypes at the Montreal track. They were a good group of guys and they mentioned about their "league". At that stage I had no idea about what a league was, so out of interest I went to their website and joined. In my first season with them I was relatively quick but inconsistant. My first online win came in my fourth race with them, but I failed to win another race that season. This season I started off a bit slow but have since won 5 races and had several pole positions.

Half way through the season I came across another league called Iconz. They were running a fun league using only the Lotus Elise. My first race was pretty crap and I had several spins. That was the last race of the season until a few months ago they started their feature series, the IGTO, using GT cars.. My first race was great, pole, race win and fastest lap. Since then things haven't gone quite so well but I've been running near the top and won at Spa the other week.

My only other online racing has been with SSCA at the Fuji 10 hour race where I was reasonably quick but my teammate's incidents added together with my mistake during a driver swap meant a DNF 5 hours into the race.

Gunthar Rowe originally posted a link to RD at the ICONZ site which brought me here for some Evo action.

That pretty much sums everything up, I look forward to seeing you on track!

[Mark Birney]

Hello everyone,
My name is Mark Birney, 16 years old and am doing Leaving Certificate next year (freedom!). I am also proud to be Irish!

I consider myself good with my hands, in things such as Geometry and Carpentry, but it can also be useful for sim racing, with reactions, and control. Because of school, an prior commitments, Sim racing has been featured a lot less than it was in the summer, which is a shame, but soon with the Nations Cup starting, I will devote a bit more time to practice, forum reading and general training.

The Sim racing stage of my life began at a late agi, about 2-3 years ago, with my first true sim being GTR, this was mainly due to the fact that Sim racing has been shaded over by the epic FPSs, such as Half-Life etc. Eventually, I got into rFactor, and the rest was history. In terms of leagues, I was in the F1CPS3 league, but left halfway through the season as I couldn't find the time for it, although I hope to compete in 2009 with new drivers, and new rules (mainly because the physics weren't up to much ). I use a G25, and can use Heel-and-toe if needed. Thanks to experience at F1CPS3 and a short stint at PSRL, I have a firm understanding of the rules of conduct, and will vow to follow them in every sim race I join here.

Well, that sums everything relevant up! Hope to have some great racing with you in future, and thanks for accepting me for membership.

Mark

[Gonzalo Diez]

Hi guys, Im an engineering student from spain. I love the cars, motors, thats why im here.

Im pleased to have entered into this community, i hope i will race against you this weekend.

[Péter Bártfai]

Hello everybody!

I'm Péter Bártfai, 21 years old, I live in a village near Veszprém, Hungary. I like, and play racing games since I was very young, the first game I played was Test Drive on Commodore64. I watch F1 since 1997, and I also like WTCC, saw the last two race weekends, and about to watch every race from now!
I'm very happy about joining the club, and I'm sure we will have great races together!

[Dave Stephenson]

hi all, Im Dave Stephenson from Barnsley, South Yorks, England.

I've been racing many years since the good old speccy/c64's i inherited from my dad but really started filling my gaming time with racing games with he ps1 and toca series for which i bought my first wheel. as my gaming tastes changed i moved onto pc eventually steppping up to sim racing when i was introduced to gtr1. i still have my antique wheel (see below) but am looking to invest in a g25, this will probably have to christmas since i aint in the money atm.

game release highlights for me would have to gtr2 and nascar 2003 (i only wish papyrus could get back in the market)

thats about it. hope to learn and have fun with you guys im sure youll see me often.


as promised my antique :

[Kieran Mcgeachy]

hi all, i'm kieran mcgeachy im 19 years old and live in the little village of ballywalter in n.ireland.

i only started racing sim racing a month or two ago and im thoroughly enjoying the racing.

so if u see me on track pleasssse go easy!!

big thanks to RD, kieran