Day 248 - Origins

the man, the machine

Today I was reminded of a promise I made way back near the beginning of this blog (week one in fact), to explain who Jonny Hendrix is (and why!)...

To those brave souls who venture past this second paragraph to the murkier depths below, I did also point out that it's not that interesting...you have been warned!

So way back in the day (probably around 2002), a couple of friends and I started dabbling in a PC-based F1 Racing Simulator, Grand Prix Legends.

Within the GPL programme, you have to give yourself a Driver Name, and this was the name you raced under.   We decided to try to come up with names appropriate to 1967 playboy Formula One drivers...

And so the dashing Wiggy Harris, the uppity Quentin Fortescue and the legendary Jonny Hendrix were born!

GPL is known to be one of the most realistic driving sims available, and on top of that, Grand Prix cars of 1967 were very hard to drive...they had big, powerful engines, and hard, non-sticky tyres...and it was the last year before aerodynamics started to be used.  

The result was a car that was insanely fast in a straight line...but could neither brake nor turn very easily at all. 

It's perhaps not surprising that half of the drivers who competed in 1967 were killed in motorsports accidents. 

Here's a video that gives a bit of an impression of what it was like (ignore the music!)...

Anyway after much practise, Wiggy and I decided to join an online league, and so we joined the GBGPL scene and started racing competitively on the internet. 

As my character in the game was called Jonny Hendrix, and all my car setups, lap times and whatnot were logged against this name, I had to continue to use it in races...but it quickly became clear that the other drivers were confused by me using one name in race, and another in forums and chatrooms. 

So I created an email address for Jonny, and started using it as my online persona. 

I met some of the other drivers in RealLife(TM), and it struck me that there was a whole social group that only knew me as Jonny. 

I did quite well in the league, winning the championship for two consecutive seasons, before taking the slowest car available for the following season, and coming second overall. 

I think I still hold one or two world records (for particular cars at particular tracks - very obscure tracks, obviously...).

Anyway, after two or three years of regular competition, I retired gracefully...and without competition I quickly lost motivation and gave up driving almost entirely. 

But the Jonny Hendrix alter ego persists to this day, and being inclined to privacy online, I use it as my main online identity.  

In fact, if you looked up the RealMe(TM) you'd struggle to find anything at all, except for an Engineered By credit on a single track on an equally obscure Cozy Powell tribute album...

Good luck finding that!

I consider it one of my biggest achievements - to have spent 20 years heavily using the internet, since the very early days of the World Wide Web, and to have virtually no online presence...

The great Jonny Hendrix is alive and well though, and these days can usually be found on a rock somewhere, or otherwise pretending that he really is a young playboy...

Hey, I can dream!

:-p

PS no I didn't really use the helmet when sim-racing online!