Back to iRacing!

Back to iRacing for the first time in a good few weeks. Did a quick race at the Jefferson Course at Summit Point Raceway. No qualifying, 10 minutes of practice and starting last on the grid: I wasn't expecting much! Much to my surprise then when, after a wonderfully manic first lap, I come out in 3rd place! The video at the top is a commentary of the first lap as well as replays of a funny incident involving a flying Mazda!

The video below is the full race video from my perspective! The first lap is well worth the watch!

New Channel Video

Hello Everyone!

I'm currently revamping my Youtube channel to make it easier for new and old viewers alike, to find their way about the different series I do. I've already posted the details of the new look, and now I've made a channel video to tell new viewers about what I do. Take a look below:


I've got several reviews in the works for the coming months so stay tuned! And don't forget to like and comment on the videos: views are all fine and good, but it's also good to know what the viewers want too!

New Channel Look!

Hi Everyone!

I've not had time to do all that many videos lately, but I have just finished a new look for my Youtube channel! There's a preview below check it out for yourself here! It should hopefully make it easier to navigate the several different series that I do! 

Hope you enjoy!

Day 2 at the Commonwalth Games

A bit belated now, but on Tuesday I went to the shooting events at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, at Barry Buddon, near Carnoustie. It was a great day out and, as a competition shooter myself, it was a great chance to watch the professionals at work, as well was getting to see other events.

After delays caused us to miss the rapid fire pistols, the first event we got to see was the finals of the Men's Trap (clay pigeon shooting). We had a competition among ourselves to try to get a picture of a clay being hit. We all managed to get one! Here's mines below (you can see the puff of pink smoke) :

The first part of the finals were over and it was time for the medals matches, with Australia pitted against England for the gold medal. Australia went on to take the gold medal, and so began a rather windy medal ceremony, with the armed forces marching the flags to be hoisted.

A renown clay pigeon shooter himself, the medals were presented by Sir Jackie Stewart OBE in his famous tartan trousers!

The flags of the medallists: Australia taking the gold, with England taking the silver and India won the bronze medal match to take the bronze medal.

After the trap event, we hurried back to the 50m range for the men's 3 position final. Despite turning up 5 minutes before the event started, there were no seats in the grandstand and then some: the organisers had grossly underestimated the attendance of the finals events. We left the range and watched the event from the TV screen outside. It was a close event, with England's Daniel Rivers taking a phenomenal win. Having been second most of the match, Hammond from Scotland slipped down to 6th during the standing shooting. He was eliminated and Scotland's other entry quickly followed in 5th. Unfortunate!

While we were outside, the fullbore event finished and so began a fullbore tradition! The winner is carried through the crowds high on his chair! I didn't see any of the fullbore, but I saw his scoring card afterwards. It was a great win and another gold medal for England!

Sadly, we were not able to stay for the women's 3P finals, but I was avidly following it in the car journey home and was delighted to hear Jen Macintosh of Team Scotland getting a well deserved silver medal! Another friend of mine was shooting the day before in the men's prone shooting: Ben Kelly, shooting for Isle of Man, finished an impressive 26th out of 40 in his first games, including leading the field at one point in the event!

My final picture from the day is a badge I got from the police at the event. Aside from the competitions, the police were the one memory I take away from the day. All the police officers at the Barry Buddon Shooting Centre were fantastic: smiling, saying "hi" and "thanks for coming",  as well as dishing out some banter around the venues! They really were a shining example of customer service, making everyone feel welcome and involved - more so than the volunteers, I'm afraid to say, whose job it was to do that!

So hats off to all the officers from Police Scotland at Barry Buddon and other Commonwealth venues for really bringing the games together! Hats off too to all of the athletes, who put on some spectacular performances! Both me and my cousin were really taken by immersion of speculating at these events, it's our first time at any major sporting tournament. Just ashame the next games are so far away!

It's not all video games and dash cam clips!

No it certainly is not! Tonight I had the wonderful opportunity to be a spectator for the quarter finals of the team badminton event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games at Glasgow. We unwittingly wandered to what would turn out to be one of the best seats for watching the Scotland-Malaysia games on court one.

 

The first games were the mixed doubles, and holy hell, the Scottish pair of Blair and Baniker pulled out an absolutely performance to win their match, two games to one. It was an absolutely electric act, with some of the most insane rallies I've ever seen, including several spectacular series of smashes by Blair!

 The games were close, going point to point in a painstaking battle, but eventually Scotland came through to win the mixed pairs match. I didn't realise the zoom on my camera messed with the focus when on video mode, but I managed to catch the final of point of the match!


Sadly, Scotland would not go on to win the rest of the matches and lost the quarter finals, but it was great to be there in the stands to watch the great games played by all the athletes from all the countries across the 4 courts. Sadly I'll be at work, so I won't be able to follow the semi-finals and finals in the coming days but I wish everyone good luck!

On the way back, there was even enough time to stop off for a great meal at the Dakota hotel at the outskirts of the city!.

More Emergency Videos!

I've added another couple of emergency videos on my channel, showing clips from the past few weeks, including my first ever clip of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in action. Although, it would have been nice to have gotten the clip without the fire tender almost running me off the road!

Here's the clips:

iRacing set!

With exams done, I can finally get some serious racing done. I've put a few racing videos online lately and here's a few more! The first video is my most intense oval race to date, resulting in a 3-way loggerhead for 1st place with me coming off second. A great, clean race - great fun!

The second video is another fantastic race for me; racing the Mazda MX-5's at Lime Rock Park. It was great fun and despite crashing twice, I fought off a last lap challenge and held on to 3rd place - my first ever podium in iRacing.

This third video was one I raced a while back and did a post-race commentry for. It was a devastating race: I was in 2nd place, fighting for the lead, when a mistake put me behind a back marker who promptly took me off the track! Went from fighting for the lead to dragging it home in 9th place. Hmph!

The final video is another race in Street Stocks at Charlotte Motor Speedway. This was a good, solid race where I brought the car home in 3rd place to complete my 3rd podium in three races, having never had a podium before then!