ZakStunts

Long name: Zak McKracken's Stunts Competition, or Zak's Stunts Competition. An online competition running continuously since March, 2001, now in its 8th season holds the title of the longest running competition. It was also the first competition which required racers to drive different cars each month, and also the first one to implement a fully automatic php based replay sending form and scoreboard system. Altough there were competitions with higher number of participants, ZakStunts is often considered as the most influencing competition of the online Stunts community.

History of ZakStunts

2001 File:Http://stunts.mine.nu/zakstunts/pics/history/1s.jpg The first season only started in March, and only had 9 tracks, as one track, during the summer lasted for two months. The original concept included the Opponents commenting the sent replays. Competitors mainly arrived from the biggest and best of the time - the Kalpen Competition, and achieved 10 racers/month at most.

The winner of the season was Roy Wiegerinck, with Ben Snel and manager Zak McKracken finishing close.

2002 [[1]] The second season was the first full-length season of ZakStunts. As the Kalpen competition closed and others not so popular, ZakStunts took the reputation of the biggest and most prestigious competition on the web. This season Teams were introduced, and racers started to cooperate with eachother, or in some strange cases with themselves, using Ghosts. Racer number reached an incredible 20/month, and the number of replays sent started to get unbearable for the manager. Also ZakStunts didn't only host a competition, but served as an abandonware site too, offering various racing games for download - so raising the number of the site visitors and the racers.

During the summer months, three so called "Special" tracks were presented, with their averaged result counting as one competition track. These tracks required Cheated cars or Special rules to finish, and have shown the potential of some newcomers.

The winner of the season was expert driver Bonzai Joe, while a newbie, joined only in April, named Alan Rotoi, aka. 'The Dog' came second, and the former champion, Roy Wiegerinck only finished third.

2003 [[2]] The third season gave a BIG twist to ZakStunts. Introduced a completely insane point system, and the Dual League, where the top 10 drivers formed the Pro league, and the others the Amateur league, Relegations/place changes on the last/first three places took place each month, Pro/Amateur drivers raced the same tracks. Of course in order to handle this excessive amount of activity and replays, a semi-automatized PHP system was created and installed by Zak McKracken, where racers could send the replays online, with the help of a web form, and so their times immediately appeared on the Scoreboard. ZakStunts also stopped to work as an abandonware site, as the required number of racers seemed to be reached (around 20/month)

In this season, the competition got really fierce and hard, and a previously unknown amount of teamwork was shown by the teams. The community life was also flourisihing, with the forum running and night-long chats taking place in the IRC chatroom.

Apart from all this chaos, a secondary competition was also hosted, with tracks designed each month by the winner of The 2002 Track Design Contest (TDC), Akoss Poo. We can conlude, that 2003 was perhaps the busiest season of ZakStunts.

Winner of the season was frenchman Alain from the dominating team Orion, former champion Bonzai Joe came second, and the third place on the podium was reached by Akoss Poo.

2004

In its fourth season ZakStunts tried to return to a simpler form. Dual League and secondary competition were dropped, and the point system was also simplified. In order to restrict heavy teamwork, the maximum number of team members was reduced to 4, and because of the Time hiding Leading Time Bonus was intrduced. Another improvement was the TDB rule, which similar to the 107% rule in Formula One, gave one bonus point to the drivers close to the leader.

Racer number dropped to an average of 15/month, and the site visitor number to its half. Still, community life was going on, and in August the first World Stunts Meeting took place in Budapest.

With team Orion falling apart, new top drivers appeared. Thanks to Alan Rotoi a very strong South-American Stunts scene evolved, and the better racers started to appear on ZakStunts too. One of them became champion: Gutix. In a hard battle, Akoss Poo came second, and former champion Bonzai Joe third.

2005