As Sunday afternoons go, this was a pretty good one...

I don't race multiplayer much, I'm an AI guy. My internet connection is rubbish and I don't have the time to commit to leagues so I find public servers just a waste of time, but last Sunday I did some multiplayer racing of the highest calibre.

I've been fortunate to have been involved in motorsport, both racing and organising, for a number of years and have many good friends from this sphere. One of these friends is a chap called Neil Cunningham. If any of you followed national GT racing int he UK in the last 15 years or so, Neil was a real star of the British GT Championship, a genuine great bloke. Hailing from downunder, he received assistance from current BTCC boss Alan Gow to come to the UK to race as a youngster. Those of you who don't know of his racing exploits will have probably seen him unknowingly as he has been an occasional man in a white suit on Top Gear as well as a stunt driver in the recent Bond films. Unortunately a couple of years ago Neil was diagnosed with Motor Neurons Disease so one of our mutual friends who runs a sim racing centre in the UK decided to hold a charity Formula Ford event to raise money for equipment to make Neil's life a little easier. The criteria of entry was to be a current or retired racing driver with a link to Neil. Over 60 drivers turned up to race including a who's who of single seaters and sportscars. Representing F1 we had Mark Webber, David Brabham and Tony Trimmer. From BTCC Jason Plato, Paul O'Neil and current champion Andrew Jordan. From GT and Sportscars was Darren Turner, Johnny Mowlem, Warren Hughes, Jonny Kane, Duncan Tappy, Alex Brundle, Peter Dumbreck, Tommy Erdos this list goes on and on!

The sim centre is called The Race Hut and uses R Factor to run its rigs (though they like AC and maybe when V1.0 is out I shall try to get them to talk to Kunos about corporate licenses).

The event comprised of open practice followed by 10 min qualifying, 10 min heats, 2 x 10 min semi finals and the 10 min final.

At the end of the event and after some fantastic nose to tail and side by side racing I ended up finishing second with Webber close behind in 3rd. All things considered that was quite a good day...