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Gino Martens and Jeff Johnstone took a victory each in tonights opening rounds of the Autumn 2008 Lites series, fellow Whirlwind Driver Joonas Puhakka took pole for both races and contributed to the teams 1-2-3 in the second race.

Race 2 only had only 1 caution period in the 50 laps of racing, the new server configuration contributing to some close and very exciting racing.

Now in it's 5th year of operation, V8Thunder continues to provide close, exciting racing between the best sim-racers in Europe, and today announces it's schedule for the Autumn 2008 Season.

The 12 Round series kicks off at Michigan on 16th September with the Novice "Lites" taking to the track first, followed by the intermediate Truck series on the 17th, and the headline Trophy series on the Thursday evening for a 100 laps thrash around one of the fastest tracks on the calendar. Summer 2008 Champions' Sanjin Haler (Trophy, vMaxSR), Caspar Kahari (Trucks, vMaxSR) and Sergey Rebrov (Lites, Independent) will have strong competition in the defence of their crowns.

More details can be found here.

A spirited (and inspired) drive through the field saw Paul Taylor overcome an early-race accident and win the first race at Martinsville after lapping all but two other cars (Gino Martens and Sergey Rebrov) in what was a surprisingly clean race.

The second Martinsville race turned out to be the yellowfest that all drivers dreaded. Track position was everything, just like not getting pushed out of the way was the key to success. Gino Martens managed to make the best out of it, finishing the race ahead of Whirlwind teammate Joonas Puhakka

After the mid-season break Paul Taylor - surprise surprise - was the fastest driver on the track tonight and throughout the weekend too. Since it was the first and only road course in the calendar, it was again a subject of some good racing, right turns (!) and sadly some crashes too.

Race 1 started with a pile up already exiting turn 1, when a 3-wide situation went horribly wrong almost taking half the field out. After that racing settled down and Taylor managed to stretch himself a 30 second lead. He almost had a heartbreaker 3 laps before the end when he kissed the outside wall in last turn and broke his engine - losing 9 seconds per lap! In the end though he won the race, lucky not having to drive another lap there.

Race 2 was more calm after the storm and hellfire of the previous start, but nevertheless we saw both heart-breaking and joy-filling scenarios with chaos-like first laps, but a lot of mature racing too, especially in the lead fight between Taylor and Eugeny Dmitriev. After a lot of avoiding, battling, speeding and rubbing it was Taylor who managed to master the track and take a clean sheet from this weekend, right in front of Dmitriev and Alex Chistov, helping Ringrace in the team championship, which is a really tight struggle between SRD, both Whirlwind teams, Fastlane and Ringrace.