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And here is the ZCT287 update of the rankings! Personal best ratings were attained in this round by Argammon, HerrNove (interesting situation around the 1900s!), KyLiE, MiDiaN (the two of them consolidating above the 2000 mark) and Mortimer McMire. Another highlight is dreadnaut's +78 gain, the biggest jump so far in the season by an already ranked pipsqueak. Below is the updated evolution chart:

That's a fun idea! It would fit nicely along @alanrotoi 's themed rallies     

Funny, from the original cars the least used is GTO, followed by Corvette, Acura and Indy. All PG cars!!

It's also curious that the Countach, which is (was?) a very polarising car, is joint second place in that list!

12 first places for pg cars vs 8 first places for the rest of original cars. Remember there are only 4 pg cars and the others are 7.

Indeed; there's a correlation in play here, with PG cars reaching podiums more often than average (often through split podiums) and therefore having less opportunities to have single-car podiums.

[Realized single-car podiums per car]

Some stats about single-car podiums! The criteria for inclusion is the same as in the site: cars driven by at least three pipsqueaks that didn't reach the main scoreboard podium, in races since 2023 (30 so far).

Realized single-car podiums per car

LM002    21
Countach    18
Lancia    18
Mercedes    15
Jaguar    15
Audi    11
P962    11
Carrera    11
Indy    11
Thunderbird    10
Acura    9
Pantera    9
Lola    9
Vette    9
McLaren    9
CERV    8
Challenger    7
GTO    7
Stratos    6
F40    6
Oxia    5
Camaro    4
ZR1 GT3    3
Diablo    2
Lotus    1

Car with best medal record per pipsqueak

afullo — CERV (1-3-1)
Alan Rotoi — Thunderbird (3-2-2)
Alecu — Mercedes, P962 (0-0-1)
Argammon — LM002 (10-1-0)
Cas — Jaguar (0-1-3)
Daniel3D — Vette (0-0-1)
dreadnaut — P962 (2-0-0)
Duplode — Countach (6-2-0)
Erik Barros — Thunderbird (2-0-2)
Frieshansen — Lancia (2-2-1)
Friker — CERV, Countach, GTO (0-0-1)
Gordon Freeman — LM002 (0-0-1)
GTAManRCR — CERV (0-0-1)
HerrNove — Oxia (0-1-2)
KyLiE — LM002 (1-0-1)
Marco — Thunderbird (0-1-0)
Mark Nailwood — Lancia (3-1-0)
Martincho — Lancia (0-0-1)
MiDiaN — Camaro, Oxia (1-0-0)
Mortimer McMire — Vette (0-0-2)
Overdrijf — F40 (2-0-1)
Raskolnikovik — Mercedes (0-0-1)
Ryoma — Lancia (1-5-5)
Shoegazing Leo — Countach (1-0-2)
Shorty — Vette (0-0-1)
Spoonboy — Audi, Mercedes (1-0-0)
Stein Viterbo — Thunderbird (0-0-1)
Stingray86 — Vette (1-2-1)
Usrin — Audi (0-0-1)
Zapper — LM002 (6-5-1)

Total medals of any colour

Zapper    114
Duplode    96
Alan Rotoi    84
afullo    51
Ryoma    48
Frieshansen    46
Argammon    43
Mark Nailwood    41
Shoegazing Leo    38
dreadnaut    26
Spoonboy    26
Cas    22
Erik Barros    21
Overdrijf    14
KyLiE    6
HerrNove    4
Mortimer McMire    4
Stingray86    4
Friker    3
Alecu    2
Marco    2
MiDiaN    2
Daniel3D    1
Gordon Freeman    1
GTAManRCR    1
Martincho    1
Raskolnikovik    1
Shorty    1
Stein Viterbo    1
Usrin    1

There are many ways to slice the data here; the full list of entries is attached in case you want to play with it.

Don't forget the Position Time Bonus. They're not shown in the season standing but they also count.

By the way, something added a couple days ago that I hadn't gotten around to announcing yet: the provisional PTB page now has a summary of the points (and carryover hours) awarded so far!

The gaps at 2000 and 1500 call my attention. They're very noticeable!

Indeed! Glancing further back in time, it looks like the density is lower around these values for most of the competition history -- perhaps I should try quantifying that. In the case of 1500, I wonder if it being the starting value for the ratings introduces some kind of "repulsion" (and if such an effect can also be observed in Elo-like rankings elsewhere).

If no one else want's to, I can give zct293 a try. The only problem is that the last track I made was in the 90's and I was around 10 years old, so you can see that the lack of experience can be a bit of a problem.

Unless we want a track where the winner is the person who can launch the car the highest in the air. I remember that that was my area of expertise in creating tracks in those times  !

Awesome, thanks Mortimer! Calendar updated 

And who do you think might surprise us all as Morocco did in the last World Cup?

From South America, Ecuador are doing well at the moment, and I can picture them doing a deep run. (Though with the new format it's up in the air what will count as a deep run!) By the way, if Venezuela can hold on to 7th on the qualifiers, they will have a decent shot at making it through the playoffs. (They are the only CONMEBOL team that hasn't made it to a World Cup yet.)

On the Netherlands, from what little I saw the team seemed to be playing nicer football than what I recall from 2022, so maybe there's reason for optimism!

I think the expansion to 48 teams won't weaken the level of the World Cup, and the extra slots give a fairer deal to at least some of the continents (Africa in particular). The bigger problems IMO are groups becoming boring with best-thirds qualification, and 104 matches being too much to follow comfortably.

(It turns out I feel kinda similarly about the Club World Cup. A 32-club tournament every four years arguably makes more sense than the weird yearly little tournaments with lopsided brackets we've had over the last couple decades. Then again, the powers that be apparently want to keep the yearly tournament and also resurrect the old single-match Intercontinental, not to mention there's already some speculation about expanding the CWC to 48 teams. I'm sure Infantino and co. have plenty of golden goose-killing tricks up their sleeves.)

As an Italian, not qualifying for a 48-team competition would be an unprecedented humiliation, but since the downfall of our football movement has been matched by our incredible rise in a ton of other sports, I don't particularly mind.

That's a great point, actually. If football goes down the drain completely, I'll still have the volleyball 

An Stunts Wiki article has been updated and published about the release of the Zapper's Car Pack.

Great article! I have added some Default test results to it, including a comparison with DSI car laptimes.

I wonder if top 4 stats would be much different from top 3. I think that usually there aren't 4 different contenders for the title per year.

That's an interesting angle! Let's expand the stats to top-4 and top-6, then:



Going from podium to top-4 we typically see one to three extra pipsqueaks. The exceptions are 2002, 2019 and 2024 (zero) and 2003 (four).

[Podium]

Races by pattern of cars on the podium (AAA = single-car podium, ABB = winner differs from the other two, etc.) and by number of cars in the top-6, from ZCT080 to ZCT286:

Podium	Races	% (over 207 races)
AAA	144	69.6%
ABB	31	15.0%
AAB	19	9.2%
ABA	10	4.8%
ABC	3	1.4%

Cars in top-6	Races	% (over 207 races)
1	102	49.3%
2	88	42.5%
3	14	6.8%
4	3	1.4%
5	0	0.0%
6	0	0.0%

It is worth noting the 2019 change to the bonus rules has led to a marked shift in these stats. Before that, the coefficients were further apart from each other, as bonus points were exchanged much faster, which meant multi-car races were quite rare for most of the 2010s. (For instance, there's a run of single-car podiums from ZCT162 to ZCT187 -- that's 26 races, more than two full seasons!) Below are the same stats, but for 2019 and on only (so starting from ZCT210):

Podium	Races	% (over 77 races)
AAA	45	58.4%
ABB	18	23.4%
AAB	8	10.4%
ABA	5	6.5%
ABC	1	1.3%

Cars in top-6	Races	% (over 77 races)
1	30	39.0%
2	42	54.5%
3	5	6.5%
4	0	0.0%
5	0	0.0%
6	0	0.0%

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

I can see nowhere in the rules that a team's score is only determined by its best two drivers. Am I missing something?

Indeed! It looks like that information used to be in the seasonal scores section of the rules, was removed for the 2008 season (which exceptionally didn't feature a team competition) but never restored, even though the scoring remained unchanged all along. I have added it back, thanks!

Btw congrats for your lap, you managed to calm down the competitors for a whole day

I'm surprised, too -- an entire day, imagine that 

A clarification update to the rules page: the section on car coefficients now explicitly lists all possible deductions from the bonuses of podium cars. The rules have not changed; the extra information just documents fully how the bonus redistribution has worked since 2019.