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Before August wraps up, here is the ZCT300 update of the rankings! We gladly saw many comebacks for #300, with afullo, Bonzai Joe, Daniel3D, Friker, KyLiE, Overdrijf, Shorty and Zak McKracken back into the current ranking. Some big swings in such a busy race, with the biggest gains being by Ryoma at +59. Personal best ratings were reached by Alain, MiDiaN (into the historical top 3!!) and RC Bandit. Below is the updated evolution chart:

And here we go: CCC Season 5 has started! We'll be racing on Triple-Tip by @stanceboyCZ for the next four weeks (deadline 2026-09-13 23:59:59 UTC; here are all the planned dates for Season 5). The car pack (attached below and available from the site) is:

• Ryoma's Mercedes 190 E (competition debut!)
• Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R
• Ryoma's Porsche 928 (competition debut!)

Dual-way switching is not allowed in this race. Other than that, the usual CCC rules apply.

I have updated the opening post with the planned schedule of Season 5. We already have several track designers on board, but no spoilers for now We still have a free slot for a guest designer, so get in touch if you'd like to take it!

(And last but not least: 05R1 is indeed confirmed to start sometime around UTC midnight!)

[next Sunday, August 16th]

CCC will now have a break, but we'll be back for the second semester, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, we're looking for guest tracks for future races, so if you'd like to see your track in CCC just get in touch!

As promised, CCC will reopen for Season 5 next Sunday, August 16th! Details about the schedule will be announced in due course. For now, I'll just note that we still have room for another guest track designer this season, so please let me know if you're interested!

Planned season schedule:

05R1: 2026-08-16 to 2026-09-12
05R2: 2026-09-13 to 2026-10-10
05R3: 2026-10-11 to 2026-11-07
05R4: 2026-11-08 to 2026-12-05
(Christmas break)
05R5: 2027-01-03 to 2027-01-30
05R6: 2027-01-31 to 2027-02-27
05R7: 2027-02-28 to 2027-03-27
05R8: 2027-03-28 to 2027-04-24

The point system will be the same as that of Season 4: linear bottom-up scoring for each car/track combination; all races count with the same weight.

When Forum attachments are available again, we probably should replace the link to BB 1.0 in the Wiki to one that points to rallyfiend's zip (see this conversation for context), which was made from the original floppies. It's worth noting that, to the best of our knowledge, HELENS.TRK wasn't included in BB 1.0, but only in later versions.

With minutes to go until the deadline, it's a good time to talk about the track map!

Sirius is the intro track of Eye In The Sky, the album by The Alan Parsons Project. It is also notable as entrance music in sports, and in particular it was used that way in the World Cup 2026 group stage first round. Accordingly, the map pictures a World Cup classic: Argentina versus Netherlands, which also happens to be a clash between great Stunts nations. Besides the flags you spotted on the southwest and northeast corners, the shore on the south half of the track is loosely shaped like the Argentina coastline (the city would be Buenos Aires, and the beach, Mar del Plata) -- except that on the other side of the Río de la Plata instead of Uruguay we have Netherlands-reminiscent lowlands.

Are the trees in the middle of the track a reference to the Custom Car Championship?

The three Cs drawn with vegetation stand for the number 300, as @Alain il professore noted. A reference to Daniel3D's competition, though, also fits very nicely to the concept!

Does the scenario south of the north-east flag represent the Canis Major constellation, to which the Sirius star belongs?

It also turns out that, in Greek mythology, Sirius is Orion's canine companion 

Oh, I thought it was Paraguay's flag like Alan suggested in the chat, and that the map took place on the border between the two nations, on the banks of the Paraná.

This is a cool idea!

Even later than last month, but improbably still on time, here is the ZCT299 update of the rankings! Since the Southern Cross site isn't fully operational yet after the technical issues of the last couple days, I'll post the current ranking right here instead. Coming back with a win in this round means Argammon retakes the current ranking lead, while also extending his historical ranking lead by four points. The only other pipsqueak to reach a personal best this round was Victor Narl. Oh, and something I forgot to mention in the previous update: RC Bandit became the 100th entry in the historical ranking! 

Code Select Expand

+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|    ||          Räcer | Rating | Change |
+====++================+========+========+
|  1 ||       Argammon |   2418 |    +15 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  2 ||         MiDiaN |   2303 |    +10 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  3 ||    Victor Narl |   2215 |    +12 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  4 ||        Duplode |   2078 |    -12 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  5 ||            CTG |   2055 |    n/a |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  6 ||          Alain |   2055 |    -37 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  7 ||       Spoonboy |   1949 |    +38 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  8 ||     Alan Rotoi |   1949 |    +53 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
|  9 ||         Zapper |   1898 |    -28 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 10 ||       HerrNove |   1858 |    -31 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 11 ||    Frieshansen |   1847 |     +3 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 12 ||  Mark Nailwood |   1808 |    +45 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 13 ||      RC Bandit |   1752 |    -23 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 14 ||      dreadnaut |   1653 |    -15 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 15 ||    Erik Barros |   1586 |     -1 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 16 ||          Ryoma |   1546 |    n/a |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 17 ||            Cas |   1398 |    n/a |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 18 ||         dstien |   1359 |     -7 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 19 || Shoegazing Leo |   1266 |    -16 |
+----++----------------+--------+--------+
| 20 ||    stanceboyCZ |   1136 |    n/a |
+----++----------------+--------+--------

Edit: Adding the evolution chart, now that we have attachments again 

Hi @viniciusferrao ! You can change the theme by going to the Look and Layout settings of your profile, "Current Theme" option.

As some of you may have noticed (in particular, @Spoonboy and @Zapper had written to us about it), the Forum is behaving weirdly these last few days. An initial investigation has revealed a configuration problem that came out of nowhere, and it looks like dealing with it eliminated most of the misbehaviour (in particular, custom themes should be loading correctly now). The main exception are attachments, which aren't being retrieved or saved correctly. While I think I know what's going wrong with them, fixing it will probably take a few extra steps. Until we get to the bottom of it, attachments will be temporarily disabled across the whole Forum, so you won't see the names of the files under the posts, or even the buttons to attach files.

Note that the attachments have not been lost: The files and their metadata are safe and unchanged on the server; it's just that the Forum software is momentarily unable to put two and two together and retrieve the files, for what seem to be very silly reasons.

(Reproducing the announcement from the front page)

This Saturday, ZakStunts and the other stunts.hu sites stayed offline for the better part of the day, from early in the European morning up to now, around 22:30 on Budapest time. To avoid compromising anyone's entry due to a hosting (or timezone) misfortune, we are extending the deadline by one day, that is, up to 2026-07-26 23:59:59 Budapest time.

(Before looking at the current score of France-Sweden: Oh, it hasn't started yet!) France, unlike Germany, is a proper strong team, so they should be okay for now. Morocco was always going to be a difficult opponent, though there remains a sense that this Netherlands team was playing below it's potential.

Are those flags Argentina [...] and Netherlands?

Correct

the extra slots give a fairer deal to at least some of the continents (Africa in particular).

Various other issues aside, this seems to have been vindicated with 9 out of 10 CAF teams reaching the novel Round of 32. (Though the contrast with AFC -- 2 out of 9 -- striking.)

I have very nearly ran out of time, but anyway let's record the ZCT298 update of the rankings! Personal best ratings were attained by the three Hyperion pipsqueaks -- Alain, new winner Victor Narl and Zapper. The rankings also have had a new entry in RC Bandit. Below is the updated evolution chart:

   

@jenkings Don't worry, your posts are definitely welcome! BTW I still have to give Stunter a proper go -- as soon as I find my way back to my Windows machine.