in march of 2022 a trackmania player made an unbelievable discovery a brand new shortcut on the official track ao2 race one of the most simple courses in trackmania nations forever this entire track can be completed in 15 seconds and it's made up of a left turn a big jump and a right turn into the finish looking at all the incredible shortcuts track mania players have done over the years it was shocking that one had gone unnoticed on a map as basic as this one hiding in plain sight for 14 years this is the story of ao2 race during the video i challenge you to try to spot the shortcut yourself it's harder than you might think also remember to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss when i upload new track mania content it really helps me out now then let's get on with the story the first traces of a potential shortcut were found in february of 2010. back then the world record on the track was a 1561 by the player barry in the start barry went all the way out to the right before fully turning in towards the left corner he did this to minimize air time on the bumps after the turn and also because on dirt and track mania steering loses you speed and generally you want to steer as little as possible to build up speed on dirt tracks that is why on the following turn he went all the way from the inside to the outside barriers carrying as much speed as he could towards the big jump he then landed far on the left side and did a smooth final turn into the finish for its time this was a very strong record and players started thinking outside the box in order to beat it the first and most readily available shortcut idea on ao2 race was to skip the first turn by b-lining directly to the checkpoint several variations of this were tried but none were even remotely close to barry's record since they all crucially lack the speed for the ending the second and more promising idea was discovered by the player william b who wanted to jump out to the right after getting the checkpoint however there are a lot of obstacles that prevent you from going directly to the finish william's idea to get past them was to turn his car sideways and perform a bug slide on the dirt mountain flinging his car into a backflip in between the trees and then climbing over the wall to get to the finish line skipping the final turn entirely the path evidently worked but was it faster than the normal way william started experimenting with it and on the 24th of february 2010 he shared a completed run with the community a 16 second time four full tenths of a second behind barry and just looking at it it was hard to see where one could improve further only a month earlier in january of 2010 a very similar shortcut had been done on the track stadium a2 where a jump onto a dirt mountain followed by a bug slide into the finish revolutionized the track which gave players some faith in williams idea the problem though was how precise the trick was to perform getting the correct angle required hundreds of attempts as if you angle the car too much sideways it would fling you the wrong way and if you didn't angle enough then simply nothing happened also by the looks of it the trick only really had the potential to be faster with a world record level start which perhaps would be best spent just driving the normal way a few players tried the idea but nothing more came of it at the time and one year later in december of 2011 a big discovery happened on the map a young and aspiring trackmania player by the name of race hans who is now known as one of the greatest players was chasing his first ever world record in the game and on ao2 race he found something very interesting the understanding at the time was that steering the car on dirt would always lose your speed but after the car shifts into the fourth gear at around 230 speed that is no longer true due to something called speed slides if you steer the trackmania car and make it gently slide towards one direction after you pass the fourth gear it will accelerate faster than if you're just going straight and raise hans managed to take advantage of this on a02 he drove the start just like everyone else but immediately after the car shifted into the 4th gear he started speed sliding wiggling the car back and forth all the way up to the jump and building up a massive speed advantage from there he could just cruise into the finish with a new world record 15 57 four hundreds faster this discovery was massive and led to a flurry of new records on the leaderboards some players managed to beat razon's time but only a few days later he would take it right back and by the end of the month racehorns held the record with a 1553 this improvement seemed like it would make things even more difficult for the shortcut players but they too could utilize the additional speed the wiggle gave them and in fact it actually resulted in more promising shortcut attempts in september of 2012 william managed to get a new best time with his route 15.80 in that run he lost a tenth of a second to the world record in the start but the ending seemed close to perfect 27 hundredths left to go his run inspired a few new players to have a go at it but the hype was short-lived the idea that you could be wasting your time trying a shortcut that was potentially slower than the intended way was the motivating to say the least and most players gave up quickly thereafter for the next few years the shortcut fell into a state of limbo every now and again it would be brought up tried a few times and then quickly retired back into the idea bank basically everyone had given up on it except for william b who in 2015 once again improved his shortcut time down to a 15-69 only faint remnants of this run still exists but one can see he got a slightly faster start and an even faster ending this was the ideal shortcut run on a02 and it was still nineteen hundredths slower than razon's record of 1550. after that run william too stopped trying the shortcut as it seemed like there was just no way to gain the remaining time in 2017 beating the world record with a shortcut would get even harder when a new trick was discovered on the map yet again there's a fundamental track mania principle that the less time you spend in the air the more time you'll spend accelerating on the ground and that reducing air time will almost always be faster and on the big jump on there had been talks of a potential strategy to land earlier the player rollin was the first to give it a serious attempt when he approached the big jump he lined up his car all the way to the right side of the track and then he jumped as diagonally as he could while still landing on the road and tried to touch the dirt fence with his wheels to get a stable landing it was a completely absurd strategy to go for but the earlier landing would give him more speed towards the finish and could save a few hundredths but the only way to find out was by trying and trying he did roland played the map for several weeks and finally in may of 2017 he got this run [Music] a 1548 two more hundreds shaved off off of a very optimized tract with most shortcut ideas exhausted and this trick being so difficult to perform it seemed like a record that could stand unbeaten for a long time but one year later in december of 2018 the french player alien was hunting the record and he managed to do something that no one at the time thought was possible in the start of the run he managed to match roland's pace up to the checkpoint but on the big jump he got an even lower trajectory than roland it looked like there was no way it could possibly result in a clean landing but with a well-timed air brake his car perfectly rolled off the dirt fence and the landing pushed him forwards on a tight line towards the finish as he crossed the line he got an incredible 1544 400 of a second faster on one of the most optimized contested tracks in the game people were stunned and sat with a feeling that they had just witnessed what peak performance on the track looked like how could anyone possibly improve further the simple answer is that for a long time they couldn't alien's record on al2 would go on to become the second oldest world record in the game it was a ridiculous time with the normal way and william shortcut seemed too slow to beat it but in 2021 the trackmania community would finally get some answers to the shortcut mystery when dona di gu developed a tool that allowed players to create their own tool-assisted speed ones the trackmania interface in this tool you can replay any string of inputs manually edit them frame by frame and brute force attempt runs thousands of times over until you create a theoretically perfect speed run the player plus directs decided to try william's shortcut in the trackmania interface to see if he could find any way to make it faster what he discovered was that if you balanced on the nose of the car it would climb over the finish wall quicker and after some experimentation he was able to make this tool assisted speedrun 1542 a mere 200 faster than aliens record but proving that in theory the shortcut could be faster than the normal way however plus rex would take it one step further and collaborate with the player sajrad to create this one [Applause] [Music] a 15-17 a full 2700s of potential gain all you had to do was get a powerful bug slide on the mountain perfectly balance the car on its nose and clip the red string of the castle to flip the car into a bug finish on the panel this works because of an oversight from the developers where they made the finish line clip slightly into the side of the finished blocks so by hitting the panel in a precise spot with the back wheel the run counted both of these shortcut methods were equally insane to attempt in real speedruns and they really didn't bring humans any closer to breaking the track so what now could there really be another shortcut hidden on the map somewhere that nobody had discovered yet no one in the community could imagine that there was anything left to discover on ao2 race and saw the track as uncuttable but on the 15th of march 2022 jav had a groundbreaking idea on the track and decided to make a tool assisted speedrun of it to try it out after several hours of tweaking this is what he came up with [Music] 15 19 200 slower than the other tool assisted run but this idea looked way more approachable for humans what jav had discovered is that with a pixel perfect approach angle on the jump it was possible to thread the car in between the trees at full speed and though it required incredible precision if you got through you could set up for a much faster wall climb into the finish and with all the crazy shortcuts that have been done by humans in the past this one looked seriously possible as well in the youtube video about the run jav wrote that he wouldn't be surprised if someone managed to do it this year but immediately after he published the tool assisted run the shortcutting team fastest way only got to work and the very next day roland got this one on the track [Music] 1542 the first ever shortcut time in ao2's history ever since 2008 this idea had been out there all along and it took the community 14 years until they discovered it williams shortcut ended up being possible as well but in hindsight it blinded players from looking further for a new shortcut on the very same track since its discovery hafest and roland have battled for the record hafez managed to do a 1535 and roland took it back with a 1533 but surprisingly he improved his record one more time [Music] 15 28 an overall incredible run with a solid start a great shortcut and a near perfect wall climb the story of al2 race really makes you wonder what more could be out there that hasn't yet been discovered we like to believe that trackmania is a solved game and every year we get surprised with new and incredible optimizations if you yourself manage to spot the shortcut during the video then congratulations and thank you for watching until the very end before i go i want to give a big thanks to my patrons for the continued support i sincerely appreciate all of you but that's all for now guys i will see you all very soon with a new video and until then as always have a good one [Applause] [Music] you