Pre-season MotoSL racing gets underway

After a very long hiatus, MotoSL 3 kicked off last Saturday with a practice race at the PSU track. It was a chance to show off the new OMG bikes and the team’s nice leathers provided by sponsor Szentasha Fashions, and also to get together with a few of the oldtimers I’ve been racing with since the latter part of Season 1. In the pic above, left to right, that’s Matt Kraken, Dena Dana and Gianluca Mahoney warming the bench next to me before qualifying gets started.  Race Director Les White is in the background, making it all happen.

It felt great to be back on the bike in competition again. I qualified on the front row, a few tenths behind Jafo Tendaze, and thanks to a badly-considered gearing change on the grid I had the displeasure to watch him pull gradually away from me on the first lap. Damn, I hate when I do that. But as I crossed the line on lap 2, the timer said I was in first place! Ever the gentleman, Jafo contrived to crash on his second lap, and handed me the lead. From that point on, it was just a matter of circulating at a reasonable pace and not running off the track. Crippy Oh and Jafo joined me on the podium (well, in the pits near the podium anyway: it was a pretty informal day) in second and third spots.

One more test race in a week or two, then the points chase begins. It should be an exciting season! Check out the RaceSL site for a few action pics.

OMG’s MotoSL3 team bikes are done.

Ace modeler, texturer and procrastinator Vincent Nacon (that’s the proud daddy admiring his handiwork) finally found some slack in his busy schedule to squirt the paint on the OMG Magazine team bikes for the impending MotoSL 3 season. Definitely worth the wait, Vince did a great job of applying my annoyingly complicated design to SL’s fussy prims.

Of course teammate Xia Mirabeau and I had to do a bit of vamping on the new toys. Here we are on the quay at Les White’s Misp Shipyard, all dolled up in our custom Szentasha Fashions leathers (sponsor plug!), ready to roll. The bikes should be in the rezzers starting today!

Another race win!

Woohoo! Today we had one of the most exciting race days ever in FormulaSL; at the Snowpeach track, Round 9 of 12 in the series. Every one of the day’s three races was fiercely contested, with great dices from start to finish.

Based on my performance early in morning practice, it didn’t look like it was going to be a very good day. Then I did a mediocre job of qualifying, but managed to get 4th fastest and guarantee a second-row spot on the starting grid for the main event. But in a 30-lap race with two pit stops anything can happen. So while grid position is certainly important, there’s time to remedy the situation with a good race.

And I had a good race! At the start, a good launch from the second row got me into 2nd spot by turn 2, the hairpin, and then into the lead halfway around the first lap. But on lap 3 I got too cautious. I carried a bit less speed into turn 4 than needed and clipped the cones on the inside, spinning into the grass at low speed. From 1st to 3rd, just like that, and now I was behind Jafo and Crippy of Archer Racing, whom I’d just managed to get the drop on from the starting gate! Augh!

But to my amazement and delight, it only took two laps to catch and repass Crippy to regain 2nd position, then another two laps to get back into the lead ahead of Jafo when he put a wheel on the grass and lost drive out of the hairpin. From that point on, I just had to stay focused and not make another error. I managed to hold that lead for the next 23 laps, to the checkered flag. It all just clicked today: a good race rhythm, a perfect setup for the conditions, clean and fast pit stops, and no further mishaps of the sort that caught out some of the strongest competition.

You can read all about it on the RaceSL website in Race Director Les White’s report, including some nice action shots of the racing. In a few days there’ll be another outstanding video from SLodcast as well, so stay tuned The race video is now available for download, get it here! I’ll update this entry with appropriate links as soon as they’re live (you can download videos of previous FormulaSL events here). Don’t miss the video: this is the best racing in Second Life!