How I got Trackmania's Most Frustrating World Record

this is d14 endurance one of the official campaign tracks in trackmania nations forever a competitive formula racing game released in 2008. growing up and playing track media as a kid i used to hate this track and i wasn't alone many new trackmania players have felt the struggle that is d14 endurance and the track has become notoriously known as the most frustrating track in the game due to all of its very difficult and precise corners and once i finally managed to beat the author time i stopped playing the track immediately and felt happy with the thought that i'd never have to play it again but as i got a few years older i got a sudden urge to return to the track you see there's a strange alert to d14 endurance that got me hooked while it's frustrating to play this track also has an incredibly high skill ceiling and i was captivated by it i think the younger me never could have anticipated that i'd ever play this track again but for the last few years i've been on a mission on d14 endurance and this is the story of how i came to hold trackmania's most frustrating world record d14 endurance starts out with a downhill followed by a series of very tight turns to the left it then goes on to a straight and through a tight hairpin turn to climb up towards the second checkpoint then it goes down again building up a lot of speed towards this flower looking turn where you have to manage your speed very carefully to make it through but once you're past that you're into the second half of the map where the track kicks things up a notch in terms of difficulty here there's just hairpin turn after hairpin turn and you have to very carefully drift close to the corners to maintain your speed then the track ends with a sharp left turn a sharp right turn a jump inside this house and a long drift which gets you back to the starting block and since this is an endurance track you have to do this all three laps in a row but when it comes to beating the track as fast as possible there's one main way to gain time on d14 and that is to drive close to the walls and carry as much speed as possible through the turns doing this to near perfection can gain you several seconds over the course of a run but you're also playing a very risky game in order to go close to the walls you'll have to cross this border on the sides of the track known to track mania players as the ramstein border when you cross this border there's a chance that you can get what's known as a ramstein bug where your car collides with the border lifting your wheels up into the air and making you lose control of the car on every border you cross there's essentially a chance to hit a land mine that could end your run but if you survive the time saved from crossing the border is definitely worth it better yet you can also drift through these corners to gain even more time in order to drift in tight spaces in track mania you need to do a technique called the neo slide a precise series of inputs that allows you to drift at low speeds many players struggle to do just one nil slide but on d14 the sky was the limit for how many you could do as long as you were precise enough then at the end of each lap there's a strap to save time in this turn instead of slowing down and drifting it's much faster to go at high speed and intentionally crash into the wall and realigning your car perfectly for the next turn but in order for it to work you have to hit a specific region on the wall with a specific speed and angle and if you're a little bit off your car will simply launch off the track so to recap a track with invisible landmines at every corner tons of precise neo slides and a wallbang lottery three times in a row might seem frustrating enough on its own but to make matters worse in 2018 a new strategy was discovered that would really give d14 the status as the most frustrating campaign track the d14 endurance shortcut in 2013 the player jav discovered that it's possible to skip this flower turn and climb directly over the wall and drop down to the road but he estimated that it wouldn't save more than a few tenths of a second which didn't seem worth it on such a challenging track however in 2018 i decided to experiment with the shortcut and i discovered that if done perfectly the shortcut could save upwards of one second it was by no means consistent and it seemed ridiculous to go for with all the other parts of the run as well but i decided to give it a shot and try to do it in just one lap and then drive the rest of the track as normal and after a few weeks of playing in december of 2018 i managed to get this run on the track i wasn't the best at driving d14 and my lines were somewhat unoptimal but i got a really good first shortcut putting me about one second ahead of the world record i then proceeded to make some small mistakes and got a really bad wall bang which diminished my lead to basically nothing so i decided to go for the shortcut again in the second lap and it was decent enough to put me ahead i was now on clear world record pace if i could just drive a good last lap but then in the flower turn i got a few ramstein bugs and knew i had to push it all in the end to get the record oh my god okay [Music] [Music] [Music] please yes oh my god and just like that i'd barely gotten my first world record on the track i felt very happy about the run but it wouldn't stand for long in fact the very next day the player race hans managed to beat my record by 30 hundredths of a second using no shortcuts at all my time was so close to the normal way world record that by driving a slightly cleaner run than wally's he beat me despite me using two shortcuts i had to step up my game so i went back to hunting the track but this time i decided to only go for two shortcut runs just hoping to get a run where i would get two clean jumps and no bad bugs or bad wall banks luckily for me only two days later this run happened a run where i got a solid first shortcut putting me about four tenths ahead of my personal best and i was clearly on world record pace and then in the second lap i got an otherworldly shortcut i looked at the checkpoint time inside was a 118.9 which was the fastest run anyone had ever had up until this point i was on pace for a low 237 or maybe even a 236 going into the last lap and while i was stressed i managed to hold the lead avoiding all the landmines and saving the wall bank and with that i could cruise into the finish for a new world record of 237.28 this run blew the no shortcut runs out of the water and from this point on whoever wanted to beat the d14 world record would have to start using the shortcut my record would stand for about half a year but in the summer of 2019 a new challenger entered the battle another player who was equally captivated by the shortcut and the difficulty of d14 endurance raiso a fellow member of the shortcut team fwo fastest way only who was also really good at climbing over walls and doing the neo slides but raiso would do me one better because instead of just going for two shortcuts he decided to go for all three and in the summer of 2019 he put in an immense effort to break the record and it resulted in this run 2 36 74. going into the last lap razo was behind my run but he managed to get the first ever third shortcut just barely avoiding crashing the wall and with that he could cruise into the finish himself and claim the top spot [Music] i was a bit stuffed up about losing my record and i decided i had to go back to d14 once again to reclaim it but i also welcomed the competition so i started going for attempts trying to take it back and just 20 minutes after starting up my stream i got this run i run with a solid for a shortcut and a decent second shortcut in the checkpoint i was seven tenths behind my personal best but i knew that with a good last shortcut i could still recover and in the third lap this happened looking at the checkpoint splits i knew that was going to come right down to the wire and i pushed everything i could to beat razor's record in the final few terms [Music] please yes yes yes and i managed it just barely 236.69 a new world record by 500th of a second but while raiso wasn't having it three days later he answered back with an absolute bomb of a run 236.40 but it could have easily been much faster in his new world record raiso had an almost perfect first shortcut getting a 2782 checkpoint time way ahead of my record and he pushed it to be a 53-72 first lap which was the fastest lap one ever his second shortcut was decent and he got around 119 flat on the checkpoint still way in front of my record and then in the third lap he held the lead against my very strong shortcut in the last lap improving the record once again this run was pretty crushing and i decided to let the track rest for a while but after one month in september of 2019 i was once again motivated and i returned to d14 and after playing the track for a few days coincidentally on my birthday i got this one oh yes happy birthday happy birthday bliss despite raiso's insane first lap i managed to chain together a really solid lap 2 and lap 3 shortcut which resulted in a new improvement 2 36 12. things went quiet for a few days after i sat the record but in the back of my mind i knew a comeback from racial was going to happen soon but i did not know the gravity of the record he would achieve 10 days later i got the answer when rachel uploaded this one to the leaderboards he started off with a slightly better shortcut than me in the first lap and then extended this lead to 20 hundredths of a second by the end of the lap his second shortcut was rather wonky but he made it across to the road and continued his run in the end of the second lap he was about to overtake me again but then this happened he got a bug in the downhill that sent this car flying into the air and towards the wall but with a split-second reaction razor managed to steer right and then left to bend this car around the corner barely avoiding a crash he was able to set up for the wall bang in time and the race continued it was all coming down to the last shortcut where raiso once again got it near perfectly climbing at just the right point so that he would barely make it to the road and could drive to the checkpoint as soon as possible and from there he held that lead all the way to the finish getting a 2 35 71 this run was amazing from reso it wasn't that long ago that we were only doing one and two shortcut runs on the track and now he'd gotten a near perfect three out of three shortcut run i considered fighting back at the time but the run was daunting to go up against and i simply felt that i wasn't good enough to compete with it i constantly lost a lot of time in the skill-based drifting parts of the track and there's a limit to how lucky you could get in the shortcut lottery losing the d14 record didn't bother me too much though because that year i was on a world record spree in the campaign and by the end of 2019 i was up to seven total world records in the campaign and third on the overall leaderboard i decided not to bother with it and i threw in the towel but throughout 2020 amid all the other things that happened that year many players were grinding trackmania nations forever and as 2021 came around the corner i realized i'd lost almost all my world records for all the hours and the effort i put into the game i was down to just one world record overall i felt like i had to return to the campaign and reclaim some of my lost records many of them had been drastically improved in 2020 and felt out of reach for me unless i put in a ridiculous effort but then there was d14 which had stood since september 2019 untouched so in january of 2021 one and a half years later i decided to return to d14 endurance once more to try to beat razo's record looking at the track with fresh eyes i noticed how me and raiso were doing vastly different shortcut approaches he would often just fling across the wall and take whatever landing he'd get while i often tried to do a smaller jump and land as far left to the road as possible to build up speed for the long straight and the uphill after experimenting a little bit i realized that my approach was faster but it was way riskier and i'd often not make it across but when i did get across it was definitely worth it and in the one and a half years since i last played the track i'd also improved significantly at the game and after relearning the lines i was no longer losing time anymore in the normal parts i was gaining and i felt that i could realistically get the record back on my first day i played d14 for five hours and i managed to get a 236 57 only eight tenths behind razor's record and that run still had a lot of mistakes and bugs to improve upon i continued playing for the next few days and then the next few weeks until finally on the 17th of february i finally had a breakthrough when i got this run in the run i had a fast first shortcut but sadly i made an unforced mistake at the end of the first lap and crashed into the wall costing me about four tenths of a second still i decided to forget about it and keep going relying on two really good shortcuts to make up for the lost time and to my horror these shortcuts happened after the final shortcut i was behind racel's world record but pushed everything i could in the final corners but it was only enough for a 235 87 16 hundredths behind race's world record and if it hadn't been for the first lap crash well the suffering would have ended still i knew i was getting closer and that the world record was just one run away but the more i played the more frustrated i'd get and as my frustration with the track grew i found it harder and harder to stay consistent precise and composed during runs part of my frustration came from feeling entitled to the record as if all the hours i put in now meant that i beserved the record and that the game was just going to automatically give it to me but the game didn't owe me anything and feeling sorry for myself or acting like a victim wasn't going to help the situation at all if i wanted the record i had to go out there and cease it by playing better by being more precise and by remaining focused and a few days later i got this run after three good shortcuts and otherwise good driving i was three tons ahead of the record and all i had to do was clutch the ending [Music] you're kidding you're actually kidding 235.82 perhaps the most upsetting personal best i've ever gotten that should have been the run but just before the final wah bang i got a bug which ruined my setup for the wall bank and raiso overtook me just before the finish line i was now over 30 hours into playing d14 still without getting the world record and i contemplated giving up i was only 1100 away from the world record but why bother i thought was this really worth it well the more i thought about it the more i realized that this is exactly what i'd signed up for the difficulty frustration and pain i was experiencing is exactly why i was drawn to playing the track in the first place track mania to me has never been just a racing game it's been an outlet for experiencing mastery a place where i'll set goals for myself put my focus towards them and prove to myself that with the right mindset work ethic and patience i can push my limits and achieve what i set out to achieve d14 endurance is just a track in a video game but the perseverance required for me to keep going after all these failures was very very real and that which is hard to do which truly challenges you and makes you have to dig deep is always worth pursuing because the tougher the journey is the more it'll mean to you when you finally reach your destination so i kept playing and with each fail i was hardly bothered because i knew that setbacks would be part of the process i could fail again and i'd still keep going over and over and over again until success was the only remaining outcome because to me this was about more than just trackmania this was about proving my mental fortitude and commitment to my goals and i was not going to stop this close to the finish line and only a few hours later after playing the track for 40 hours in total i finally got this run about an hour each how old's tracer's record one and a half years september or october 2019 because i got world record here on my birthday 12 september and uh then razor beautif a little while later again can't remember one [Music] do [Music] i'm so [ __ ] dumb let's go oh my god my heart rate oh my god we got it oh i'm so stressed i'm so stressed when we got it oh my god 2 35 49 a new world record by 2200 of a second in all my hours of playing this one was the fastest one i've ever had after two laps and though i was very stressed out i managed to hold the lead in the third lap despite losing a bit of time to the wall bang and the final corner but it didn't really bother me what mattered most to me is that i'd achieved my goal and i was once again part of a decade-long story of players competing and improving on d14 endurance because although it is just a track d14 perfectly encapsulates our nature and desire to want to push the limits and i welcome anyone who wants to test their mental fortitude and endurance to join our stride towards perfection and take the next step on the track but for now i could happily lean back in my chair and know that although it was a perilous journey full of frustration failure and pain i kept my calm through it all and i finally reached my goal thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video then subscribe to stay up to date with when more track mania content is coming out and i will see you all in the next video and a big thank you to all my patreon supporters for supporting the channel your generosity is wholeheartedly appreciated but that's all for now guys until next time have a good one

Channel: Wirtual

Views: 1,415,121

Keywords: Trackmania, How, Got, World, Record, Speedrun, History, Wirtual, Summoning Salt, Story, Shortcut, Trackmania World Record, virtual

Id: -2O8ooqUAHs

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021