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Reinforcing the call made in January by @stanceboyCZ : CCC Season 5 will be running in the second half of the year, with a minimum of five rounds (and potentially more, depending on what the calendar will ultimately look like). We'll need a good handful of tracks for that, and your creations will be much appreciated!

Here are the key things to know when designing for CCC:

• The CCC rules allow shortcuts with restrictions: tunnels and the finish banner are checkpoints which must be driven through the inside, driving through barriers is forbidden, and so is penalty time. (That said, we're open to tweaking the rules for a specific race, if your design calls for it.)
• In particular, you can use tunnel checkpoints strategically to block specific shortcuts, if that's part of your plan.
• RH is allowed, though tracks which are also enjoyable for NoRH-with-shortcuts are a very nice plus.
• Each race in Season 5 will feature three cars. Feel free to pick them and design the track with your chosen cars in mind. (If the same car is picked repeatedly by multiple people, it might make sense to tweak the car packs to avoid that, but I'm sure we can talk it out and find a good solution if that happens.)
• Given how the CCC scoreboard works, there's no need to make the car pack balanced in terms of performance. There usually is some kind of unifying theme behind the choice of cars for a race; what that theme will be is up to you.
• As the name of the competition suggests, custom cars are preferred; however, it's fine to have one of the DSI cars in a pack if that makes sense for your theme, or if you want to have a performance benchmark for the other cars.

If you're interested in designing for CCC, just let us know, and privately send me the track whenever it's ready -- we'll happily accept submissions in advance, starting from this very moment. The exact schedule of races is yet to be decided, but we'll sure find a slot for your track!

(P.S.: By the way, the final race of CCC Season 4 ends today at UTC midnight! Looking forward to your replays there as well )

For the third and final round of Season 4 we will visit Krakow, a track originally designed by @Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister for @CTG 's Unskilled Stunts competition. Krakow was originally an IMSA race; accordingly, the car pack this time (attached below and available from the site) comes from the IMSA neighbourhood:

• @alanrotoi 's Baronetti A-70
• @Overdrijf 's Audi V8 Quattro DTM
• Ryoma's Lancia LC1
• @Zapper 's Mazda 787B IMSA/Group C

In keeping with the original design vision, the driving rules will be loosened for this race, like they were for Sweden-3 last season: no tunnel checkpoints, no need to finish under the banner, and any line is okay as long as there is no penalty time.

To avoid a clash with the ZCT296 deadilne, this round will end one week later than the usual, on 2026-04-11 23:59:59 UTC. It's not a given that we'll do this every time in the future, but with this race being the last one in the season it was an easy enough adjustment to do.

Now, fasten your seatbelts!

As not uncommonly happens in this genre of track, there are some cheap "two tile" dual-way lines possible on ZCT296. (IIRC the last similar case was in ZCT259; see the discussion we had back then.) Two demo replays are attached to show what I mean. Should we add a special rule for this race to prevent such boring lines? (I feel we should: while it's not a given this sort of thing will dominate the race in three weeks time, better safe than sorry IMO.)

My suggestion for a rule, if we add one, is something simple to follow and no more restrictive than necessary: after the dual-way split, it is not allowed to turn around and go back past the bridge, across the yellow line in the map below. (This would be similar in spirit to what we did for ZCT256).



Cc @dreadnaut and @Erik Barros

The new track will be up later today, probably at some point in the evening.

In the end it wasn't possible for me to get everything ready last evening, my apologies. In any case, planning is well underway, so we'll start this evening for sure. I can confirm we have, among other things, a track name, "MacArthur Park", and a car list, which I'm keeping under wraps for the moment

It has come to our attention that the ZCT294 replays posted by Alain from 2026-01-13 up to now have initial sequences of input bytes (between 29 and 51 seconds long) which are identical to the one in CTG's earlier public replay from 2026-01-12 (driven time 1:55.60). Those replays have been excluded from the race. After the deadline, they will be listed and downloadable at the bottom of the All Results page. As an additional sanction, any further replays posted until the end of ZCT294 by Alain will be rejected. The ZCT294 PTB chart has been recalculated accordingly.

CCC Season 4 is on! The first track, Dual-Tip by @stanceboyCZ , will be open for racing at CCC's usual address until 2026-02-21 23:59:59 UTC. To race it, we will use four stylish cars by Ryoma:

• Citroën CX 25 GTI Turbo
• Alfa Romeo SZ
• Opel Omega Lotus
• Citroën XM V6 24

The car pack is attached below, and can also be downloaded from the site as usual.

The default CCC rules apply in this race, with one exemption: the tunnels on the west side of the track only must be driven through if you exit the dual-way sector using the icy path. In practice, that means it is okay to use the dirt path on the far west without it being a checkpoint violation.

A couple other notes about the new season:

• As I mentioned earlier today, Season 4 will be comprised of three races, each one lasting for three weeks. Since all races will have the same length this time, weights like those of the Christmas event won't be needed for the season scoreboard.
• Another change from the Christmas event is that for now I have reverted to CCC's usual setting of public replays until the quiet day.

The third and final round of the Christmas Special is open at https://ccc.mystunts.net/ ! The track for this week is by yours truly, and is called Blankenship. The deadline is next Saturday, 2026-01-10 23:59:59 UTC, and the cars for this round are:

• Ryoma's Lancia Delta Evo 3 "Viola"
• Ryoma's Ferrari GTO Evoluzione (competition debut!)
• @Zapper 's Lamborghini LM-002 Tuned For Real (competition debut!)
• Ryoma's Citroën ZX Rallye Raid (competition debut!)

You can (re)download the cars from the site or from this post, to make sure you have the latest versions of them all.

Note that the normal CCC rules are back in place for this round: tunnels are checkpoints to be driven through the inside; finish under the banner; no driving through solid barriers; no penalty time.

The second round of the Christmas Special is open at https://ccc.mystunts.net/ ! This week, we'll race on a retro track: Sweden-3, from Krys TOFF's WRC Stunts. The deadline is next Saturday, 2026-01-03 23:59:59 UTC, and the cars for this round are:

• @alanrotoi 's Ford Sierra RS Cosworth
• Ryoma's Lancia Delta S4
• Alan's Land Rover Defender 90
• @CTG and Ryoma's Subaru Impreza WRC

You can get the cars from the site, or from this post. Specially for the Delta S4 I recommend re-downloading the car from the new pack, as the current version is not compatible with the one used in CCC back in 2022.

There are no tunnel checkpoints in this track, and the must-finish-under-the-banner rule will not be applied in this race. As usual in CCC, penalty time is not allowed; other than that, any line is okay.

@stanceboyCZ 's Christmas Special is on!

The first track, Rally Square, is open for racing at the usual CCC address, https://ccc.mystunts.net/ . Its deadline is 2025-12-27 (the Saturday after Christmas) at 23:59 UTC. Since this is a longer track, we'll race it for ~2 weeks; the later rounds may well be single-week ones.

The rules for this first race are the usual CCC ones, though note that driving through the inside of all tunnels means there will be some path-finding to do! The track map on the site includes navigation hints. As for cars, the pack for this round includes four of them:

• @alanrotoi 's Lada Niva 4x4
• Ryoma's Lancia Stratos Gr5 (competition debut!)
• @Zapper 's Audi Quattro Sport Tuned For Real (competition debut!)
• Zapper's Toyota Sprinter Trueno

You can download the cars from the site, or from this post, to make sure you get the correct versions of them. Fasten your seat belts, and enjoy the ride!

Starting with a poll! And with an amusing tidbit from Wednesday's PTB update 

While the race is still on (seven hours to go! plenty of time to get a lap in  ), here goes a bit of background on the track. It is a Stunts adaptation of Rouen-Les-Essarts, a former road circuit which hosted a few editions of the French Grand Prix in the 50s and 60s. Here is some on-board footage showing what it was like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwIfa0w1lxQ . The Torino was a period-appropriate choice for this race, but also, as @alanrotoi noted, it turned out a very good fit for the sinuous nature of the circuit.

[Technical security]

Earlier today on the ZakStunts shoutbox, @Alain il professore and @MiDiaN raised some valid questions about site governance. That provides a good occasion to bring together key information about how the site is ran, which is spread across various corners of stunts.hu, to a single place. We're happy to answer any follow-up questions, or generally any other question about you might have about it.

Technical security

Since the technical aspects are the topic of Alain's companion thread, in this post I'll just add a few general notes about the evolution of the site.

As Alain mentioned, back in 2006 the ZakStunts server was invaded by a hacker. Nineteens years later, though, the scenario is very different from the one under which that attack happened, with two main differences. Firstly, stunts.hu is now hosted by a professional provider, which provides automated backups among other things. Secondly, Dreadnaut has, in a gradual process over the years, rewritten the ZakStunts site code, replacing fragile solutions with more robust ones, and error-prone manual admin routines with automated ones.

The ZakStunts code base is currently maintained in a repository under the 4d-stunts organisation on GitHub. Though the repository is currently private, we're open to granting access to community members who would like to follow the site development.

ZakStunts management

@zaqrack (our founder and backer), @dreadnaut and me (who handle the day-to-day affairs of the site) have full access to the code and data of stunts.hu, and of ZakStunts in particular. The three of us are the only ones with access to the critical parts of the site with respect to competition integrity, such as ZakStunts admin commands and the site database. While Dreadnaut and me have the same access on an operational level, Dreadnaut has the final word on the interpretation of and changes to the ZakStunts rules, as well as on the code that goes live on the site.

A few extra remarks on database access. Direct access to the database is occasionally needed for admin tasks, as well as for a few processes that haven't been fully automated in the site yet (the most visible example right now being the PTB updates). I also use it to collect data for research purposes (as in the balanced bonuses project). Unlike the admin tools implemented in the ZakStunts site proper, querying the database directly can potentially expose non-public information about replays. To avoid accidentally seeing data I'm not privy to as a pipsqueak, I follow a self-imposed rule of not doing database work during the quiet days. That's why, for instance, I only post the final PTB update for a race after the deadline, and not immediately after the PTB window closes at the start of the quiet days. (In theory, an urgent need -- say, the site goes down on deadline Saturday, and querying logs in the database is necessary to diagnose the problem -- could justify making an exception, though I don't remember any such situation actually happening across the years I've been involved with adminship.)

Forum management

Zak, Dreadnaut and me also have admin powers on the Forum, with the latter two being currently active as global moderators. Unrestricted access means that accidentally viewing subforums of teams we don't belong to is a real concern. To mitigate that, shortly after Zak made Dreadnaut and me Forum admins in 2018, we have created separate admin accounts, @dreadnaut+ and @Duplode+ respectively. These accounts are only used when carrying out admin or modding tasks make it necessary; otherwise, we stick to our regular accounts which have no admin permissions.

Wiki management

The users with elevated permissions on the Stunts Wiki are the three global admins mentioned above, plus @dstien and @JTK. Account creation at the Wiki is done by request solely for the sake of controlling spam. We'll create an account for anyone who wants to contribute. (If you're interested, just send me a PM.) 

Here is a 2:17.xx lap driven with SimCar car #4 on ZCT289, the current ZakStunts track. It was driven OWOOT almost to the end (I made a concession at the final pair of ramps).

The rocket feature is an interesting addition. Besides being useful for Stunts tracks (as the readme suggests), it fits the setting pretty well.  (The mechanics may be very different, but jump boosts in Stunts 1.1 are a form of boost that's crucial to the gameplay. One might even draw parallels to the special modes of the Speedgate and the KITT.) Oh, and the loops feel nice to go around!

Italy and Brazil will play the Women's VNL final later today! The semifinals were exactly the same as last year (Italy v Poland and Brazil v Japan), but this time we won a hard-fought 3-2 against Japan rather than the other way around.

Very good racing around the park, beginning with the Oxia in the first week, and now with the Indy!

While the schedule of live races may have slipped a bit since last year (these last few months have been very busy for many of us), there's still plenty of time to set up a nice live racing session in the second half of the year! I know, for instance, that both @alanrotoi and @Erik Barros have ideas for events; also, I would be happy to host a race as well (ideally closer to the end of the year).

Might as well make a poll this time!  The context:

@ Herr Nove, I will add a new color after the public days making it even more colorful 

I am not surprised that @ Argammon is going to hide the secret sauce he's preparing with a (I guess) blue car.

Audi or Mercedes? 🤔 This is not the first time the Audi Quattro runs along one of the DTM cars. In ZCT217, for instance, the Audi Quattro and the BMW DTM stayed at close quarters for pretty much the whole race.

Speaking of projections, the PTB update at the end of public days (and 360 hours from quiet days) has just been posted. While having half a dozen pipsqueaks in contention for PTB +1 is a pretty realistic scenario, only Frieshansen has a chance of reaching PTB +2 (margin at midnight: 31:44).

A minor update (way more minor than the ones by @dreadnaut in last year's thread): in the sent replays stats page, the bar chart for specific races now includes days before the official start (a common case being the Sundays when a track is posted), and subtly highlights the days in which the different phases of the race begin (official start, non-public days, and quiet days).

Just an idle thought: "live race" is an established term in our jargon, but is there a reasonable word or expression for the opposite of that -- that is, a race with a deadline measured in days rather than minutes, in which people send replays in their own pace? The first thing that comes to mind is "monthly race", but that doesn't always apply -- the race could be weekly, biweekly, etc.