The Cup

Trackmania has multiple "cup" events each day - there is a cup of the day, a cup of the night, and a cup of the morning. Introduced as an incentive to have more skillful and accoladed players compete on the game's featured Track of the Day, the Cup of the Day gameplay mode was implemented on November 2, 2020 as a beta release and was fully released over a month later on December 12, 2020.

The Cup of the Day competition is scheduled with the release of the new Track of the Day at 7pm CET and is conducted in two consecutive phases, starting with a 15 minute time-trial qualification period, where all participating players race for the lowest possible time. After the qualification period is over, participating players get distributed into numbered divisions containing 64 players each, where Division 1 is made up of the players ranked 1st to 64th after the qualification period, Divison 2 contains the players ranked 65th to 128th and so forth.

The second phase of the competition is now held in rounds mode, meaning every player will get only one run per round to set a time and after each round (except the very first round), a number of players with the slowest time during the respective round are eliminated from the competition until only one player remains, where the number of players eliminated each round is dependent on the remaining player count as follows:

* 64-17 players remaining: 4 eliminations per round
* 16-9 players remaining: 2 eliminations per round
* 8-2 players remaining: 1 elimination pe round

In order to allow players from different time zones to more conveniently participate in a Cup of the Day-style event, two additional cups starting 8 hours (3am CET, thus being named "Cup of the Night"), respectively 16 hours (11am CET, thus being named "Cup of the morning") after the main Cup of the Day were added on August 11, 2021.

Marc mainly plays the Cup of the Night, while very rarely playing the main Cup of the Day. His cup-performance history is tracked here by Trackmania.io. Marc next to never misses out on placing inside division 1 for the Cup of the Night, pursuing a top 10 overall time during the qualification period regularly and has won the Cup of the Night twice. His goal for every Cup of the Night is to get at least top 8, as it gives one trophy 6. Placing top 3 or better in the cup is considered moment-worthy, although Marc himself considered lowering this threshold to a top 8 placement beginning in February of 2023.

Marc is notorious for being most stressed about being eliminated during the very first round, where no eliminations are possible, but then progressing to letting himself get distracted more easily in the following rounds. Many iconic phrases have been created due to Marc's habit of actively reading the chat even during the cup, such as "we're in the middle of the cup". It is possible that Marc has a third eye or some kind of telepathic ability, as he often reads the chat while driving the cup and while seemingly not even looking at a monitor on which he displays his chat.

Another iconic phrase is tied to the way the player's current placement during the rounds mode phase is presented. While a player's position on the server leaderboard has always been shown on the back of the car in Trackmania in white numbers, the numbers become red during rounds mode when the player is currently in a position facing possible elimination during a round. This has led to Marc constantly repeating the color of his number ("number is red" or "number is white") during many runs, especially since Marc is known for having rather slow starts compared to most of the field.

1. ↑ https://www.trackmania.com/2020/11/02/cup-of-the-day-arrives-in-trackmania/
2. ↑ https://www.trackmania.com/2021/01/27/earn-trophies-with-the-cup-of-the-day-mode/
3. ↑ https://www.trackmania.com/news/1814