The players shared rooms together; I stayed in a room with the Team Dignitas players and Massa. The rooms were much like hostel rooms, with bunk beds and shared bathrooms. This lead to many funny conversations and an endless stream of banter (both good and bad).

The match area was very professional, with multiple high-grade cameras around to capture all the action. A small set of stairs led you to the sofa used for casting and interviews. Just outside this building was the pool and gazebo, which provided players and fans with a refreshing break from the intense TrackMania races that occurred over the Saturday and Sunday.









The Competition

The seeding for the event was like nothing seen before in TrackMania. Players were transported to a go karting track on Friday evening for time trials, the results of which would determine each player’s opponent for the following day’s matches: the fastest karting driver would play the slowest, the second fastest would play the second slowest etc. The higher seeded driver would also win the right to choose the first map played in all matches he played in the tournament.

The maps used for the tournament were purpose-built mirrored tracks, i.e. there was symmetry about the starting block. They were somewhat multi-styled, and are comparable to maps used for fB’s Weekly Race, although they were shorter in lengeth—about 45 seconds each—and were not multilap.

Jonathan “JonNo” Holmes and Marius “Marius89” Wenke stormed ahead of the pack, setting the top two times. Third-best driver Dennis “Massa” Løtze would be my opponent in the third match the following day after I set a rather lacklustre personal best.

It turned out that neither driving the go karting track, nor the three maps prepared by organisers Jakub “Kubayz” Faul and Erik “hakkiJunior” Leštach, was my forte; I was knocked out fairly convincingly by Løtze in the first round. Single elimination meant that my tournament run was over almost immediately, which left me feeling a little frustrated. I joined Fredrik “Bergie” Bergmann and Wenke, the two players who had lost the two first matches, for a beer in an attempt to make the most of a disappointing run.