Note: This post was created 4/5/2010 about a race which happened on 3/12/1999. IGPS was the first simracing league I ever joined and my first ever podium was this one at Rouen. It should be noted that the video is created from the server replay and that my ping to the server was probably about 0.4 seconds at the time (I was located in England, the server was somewhere in the United States). This meant that the movements of the car were exaggerated and at times unrealistic to the view of the server and other drivers (some others also had a ping over 0.3s – meaning an in-race lag of 0.7s or more was common). The basic rules of the league were that you could reset (get a fresh car) for everything except complete engine failure and being flipped upside down.

I’d qualified fifth in my third ever league race at Rouen with a time of 2:02.97. I got a decent start and immediately jumped to fourth as John Simmons damaged his engine pulling off the line. I them moved into third-place as Tony Rickard spun ahead of me and we made contact (causing us both to have issues, but I got away first).

I ran a really good race from that point, making a few mistakes here and there but seemingly less than those behind me. I managed to stay in pretty good touch with Graeme Nash for a while and even with a few off-track excursions came home third. My first podium ever!

Harjan Brand went on to win, 54 seconds ahead of Nash.