time speed running is a race against time in any game or activity you speed run the point is to complete it as fast as possible it's a great concept because it focuses so much on self-improvement and breaking the limits that were previously thought to be impossible in track mania speedrunning it is no longer just a race against time but a race against fractions of time because in the world's most competitive racing game players take speed running to the extremes and battle for world records by just hundredths of a second all the cars and track mania are completely identical and the physics are completely deterministic meaning that there's nothing random going on in the game and the only way you can gain time is by driving better racing lines and executing tricks better the best track mania players are optimizing everything they possibly can and over the last 13 years they've pushed the world records in the game closer and closer to perfection al-1 race is the first track in trackmania nations forever and over the years millions of players have set foot on this track and thousands have battled for the world record it's the most prestigious record to hold in the entire game and up until recently the world record on the track was a 23. 83 by tribatia the 2383 by tarbaria was set in june of 2020 and it long reigned as one of the greatest records achieved in trackmania history with this record being 300 of a second faster than what any other player had achieved on such a competitive track and it perfectly encapsulated what speedrunning is all about that of setting a goal for yourself putting great effort into practicing and refining your skill and having the dedication to see it through until you get a near perfect run trobadia claimed to have spent almost 1 000 hours on the map to achieve this record and during that time he set many other records that were faster than what other players could achieve he was just on a level above everyone else and it was awe-inspiring to follow his journey and see how far he could push the record but sadly if something sounds too good to be true it usually is and trabadia's case was no different during the recent cheating channel in trackmania it was discovered that trobarius al-1 world records were all cheated leaving everyone in the trackmania community speechless it was just unbelievable for us to think that one of the greatest trackmania records wasn't done legitimately and that such a good trackmania player astrabadia would cheat but that's what happened and ryolu who was in second place on the leaderboards with a 2386 was also found to be cheating by playing the game in slow motion and when both of their records were deleted the a01 race world record was sent all the way back to a 23. 87 driven by kripka in 2014 seven years of perceived progress on the track was lost and a really bad stain was left on trackmania's most prestigious leaderboard to the community the whole situation was tragic but all hope wasn't lost because in adversity there's also opportunity and on al-1 race there was now a chance to repair the damage the cheaters had done and some top-level players wanted to bring the world record back to its former glory and try to beat the cheaters legitimately to start let's have a look at the track apart from driving good racing lines and going as close to the walls as possible there are three main sections where you can gain time on al1 race the downhill the speed slide and the uphill the first section the downhill takes place just after the start and here it is vital to reduce air time as much as possible the trek mania car only accelerates when the wheels have contact with the ground and since the rest of the track is driven at full speed after the downhill it is vital to land as early as possible so that you can start accelerating again quickly this is best done by doing a short release of the acceleration while also jumping diagonally doing this you travel a longer distance than jumping straight meaning you have to release the acceleration less and you will be able to carry more speed as you land on the downhill following that the track takes a sharp left turn before getting to the second important section the speed slide here it is very important to be fully on the right side of the track at the entry to the turn then steer left and do as quick of a brake tap as possible this will make the car start sliding and when you're sliding at high speed and track mania at a very specific angle the car will actually accelerate faster than if you're just driving straight this is what's known as a speed slide the goal of the speed slide is to build up as much speed as possible before the final jump and to compete for the world record this slide has to be perfect for the entire turn any small error whether it's steering too much known as an oversteer or not steering enough known as an understeer will cost you massive amounts of speed then we get to the third part of ao1 race the uphill where players abruptly steer to the right to go up the hill while this looks awkward the movement causes the car's back wheels to touch the ground sooner and thus they accelerate a little bit more before the last jump gaining a few hundredths at high speeds combining these three parts at the highest level without losing even a hundredth of a second is just immensely difficult to do and for a long time nobody was able to beat the track in under 23.
90 seconds the first player to do so legitimately was the player krypka who in december of 2014 achieved a 2387 on the track doing everything close to perfect for a while it was thought that this was as low as the record would go on a01 race as it becomes absurdly difficult to gain any significant time after reaching 2387 but as the years went on there would be some very interesting developments on a01 in october of 2019 ryolu set his 2386 record on the track which was later found out to be cheated by playing in slow motion but at the time this was seen as a grand accomplishment by the community and then in may of 2020 a big hype started forming around a01 race when the players rollin troubadia and draker all started going for the 86 themselves or maybe even 23. 85 on the 5th of may 2020 drucker would drive a historic run on a01 race he started by getting a decent downhill being a few thousandths of a second ahead of kripka after the turn and then in the ending he got the greatest speed slide anyone had ever seen on the track holding the exact angle perfectly all the way through the turn he was way ahead of the record and all he had to do in those split seconds was aim his car towards the finish at the last jump and the world record would be his but drucker angled slightly towards the right on the jump and across such a big distance a tiny difference can have a big consequence all drarku could hope for was that the car wouldn't crash before reaching the finish line but with only one block left to go dwarker's back wheel touched the wall and it resulted in him getting a 23-87 and if he hadn't crashed dwarker would have had the new world record of 23. 85 but it just wasn't meant to be and despite seeming like the top contender to take the record someone else would beat him to it because one week later on the 12th of may 2020 tribatia set at 2387 on the track at first it seemed rather inconspicuous as trabaria had steadily climbed up the leaderboards in the weeks prior first getting a 2389 and then a 88 but trabaria would quickly show that he was on another level because the very next day he set a new record of 23.
85 on the track it's hard to emphasize the gravity of this record tribalia's personal best was still 2387 before this run meaning that he skipped past 2386 but this one certainly wasn't a fluke over those two days in may of 2020 tribaria had gotten 5 23 87's 19 23 88 and 30 23 89's before he got the eventual 0. 85 the trek mania community saw this as an incredible achievement and many of us thought that the record would stand forever but in the next week trabaria would tie the 2385 six more times for a total of 7 23 85 runs other ao1 specialists like roland couldn't fathom how he could be that consistent at the speed slide something that he'd only gotten perfect a handful of times in his hundreds of hours on the map but trabaria was getting a perfect speed slide almost every time and two days later trebatia lowered the record again down to a 23. 84 and then somehow after reaching 23.
84 tribadia kept playing the map for the next two weeks and in the start of june of 2020 he uploaded an unimaginable unthinkable 2383 on trackmania's most competitive track a record that had been actively fought for and optimized ever since 2008. tribalia was now 300th of a second ahead of anyone else it's the reason why this record was so highly regarded in trackmania as one of the peak achievements in the game's history the story of the player who despite holding the world record pushed further and further for perfection was a story that we all wanted to believe but sadly it was just a little too good to be true everyone trusted trabadia and nobody thought that he would cheat the wreckers but early in 2021 when doma digo and i conducted a cheating investigation on trackmania replace we looked into trabadia's al-1 world record and found something very strange about his speed slide trackmania replays store the exact inputs a player did in their run and when comparing trobadia speedslide to other players there was a stark difference other player speedslides like drakers and krypkus consisted of hundreds of tiny movements whereas trobarius consisted of a few very robotic looking steering values this didn't seem normal at all but when we looked more into it the picture became much more clear as it turns out trobadia's inputs and his speed slides on a01 were the exact same every single time not even the slightest fluctuation but exactly the same inputs this level of precision simply isn't possible to have consistently as the steering range in trackmania has 65 000 possible values and after we confronted trobari about it he confessed to cheating on ao1 race using macros in a twit longer in the twitlonger he mentions how he became obsessed with perfection on the map which eventually led to cheating that he felt he couldn't control he says that he didn't do it to glorify himself or out of narcissism and that he almost never played tragmania with the goal of being first instead he says that if there was a public tool-assisted speedrunning tool in trackmania he'd want to become a tool-assisted speedrunner he also says that his idea was to reach a semblance of perfection and then he would feel happy but no matter how many times he improved he never felt satisfied nobody would have any problem with trobadia using macros to execute perfect speed slides if he stated that his runs were tool assisted from the beginning the problem is that he claimed his runs were achieved legitimately and uploaded them to the leaderboards where they absolutely do not belong and on several locations for months after setting the records claimed that they were legitimate in videos and in messages the focus of this obsession also seemed to revolve around being perceived as a perfect player rather than just reaching the limit on the track as he was often seeking approval and validation for the runs even in his apology he claimed to have achieved a 2384 without macros but provided no evidence of the run leaving a sour taste for anyone that would now want to go for the a01 world record one year earlier drucker was just a few pixels away from making history on the track and with the news of the cheaters now being gone he decided to try to repair the damage they had done and started going for the world record on al-1 race once again and after only a few days of grinding on the 5th of june 2021 drucker got this run on al-1 race [Music] [Music] 2386 the new world record on ao1 race this was an incredible run by dwarker he had a fast start with a good downhill and reached 479 speed after the speed slide and the uphill which was just barely enough to break the 23-87 tie and claim the first ever legitimate 2386 track mania records are rounded down to the hundredth of a second but you can also check what thousandth of a second they cross the finish line drucker's new a01 record ended up being a 23-867 whereas ryolu's cheated 86 was at 8-6-9 meaning drucker had not only set a new world record he'd also beaten one of the cheaters on a01 race it was an amazing achievement from darker but now it was hard to imagine the world record going much lower the only difference between trobarius runs and drucker's run was the speed slide but robotically holding the exact steering values that generate the most amount of speed simply isn't possible to replicate because controllers in trackmania generally fluctuate between steering values of 500 even if you hold the stick perfectly still despite trabadius records being removed from the leaderboards it seemed like his claim of 2384 and his cheated 83 run would haunt the tracks history forever and it very well could have if a new strategy hadn't been discovered but somehow after 13 years of competition on a01 race there was a new strategy that nobody had discovered until the 1st of june 2021 when the player lx created a tool assisted speedrun of 2378 what alex had discovered was that it was possible to speedslide the first corner as well speed sliding in track mania is only faster when going at over 400 speed and it turns out that this is just barely possible in the first corner of ao1 but the problem is that you have to tap brake to initiate the slide which loses a bit of time so you must slide for long enough afterwards that you can compensate for the time loss after the slide alex was still behind but he had more speed than the previous tool assisted record and this tiny bit of extra speed snowballs through the next speed slide and the rest of the track alex's new task record regained all the time it lost and more before the finish line saving two hundredths of a second at first this new speed slide was deemed too hard for human runs but roland decided to experiment with it and he very quickly noticed that it could potentially save time humanly as well so he started going for attempts with a double speed slide and after a few days of grinding roland would show the potential of the double speed slide strategy when he tied druker's 2386 record on ale1 [Music] then two days later roland shared another a01 run with the community [Music] [Music] 2385 a new world record on a01 race with a new strategy the last time the track saw a strategy innovation like this one was nearly 10 years ago so this was a big deal but roland wasn't done yet as he said in his own words this was only the beginning he kept grinding a01 race and two days later he got this run [Music] 2384. roland was the new king of ao1 race he was leagues above anyone else on the track and the entire community cheered him on to keep going and tried to break the 2383 which was the final hurdle to return the a01 leaderboard to its former glory and though there now wasn't much room for improvement left rolling knew he had it within him to get the improvement and five days later history was made on al-1 race when roland got this run [Music] 23.
83 roland had done it another new world record and another incredible accomplishment on ao1 race this one really had everything a good start and downhill followed by two perfect speed slides being just enough to clinch another 100th of a second on the track looking at the a01 race leaderboards again it was as if despite the tragedy of the cheating scandal nothing had really changed it took an immense effort from both players but at long last rollin and drowker had successfully brought the a01 record back to its former glory but the hype for ao1 race was far from over because of the new double speed slide strategy many players were grinding the track and the leaderboard was getting packed with runs under 23. 90 a few days after rowan's record hafez managed a 23. 85 and the week after that ulaka doll drove a 23.
