4D Racing

Four Dimensional Racing (shortened 4D Racing) is a TrackMania Nations Forever map style that takes advantage of the Hermann Minkowski's theory, stating that, similarly to when the car jumps in the air (the third dimension) it could derivate in the Minkowski space (the fourth dimension). This allows to use a plethora of tricks, bugs and shortcuts.

This map style is oftentimes called Intelligent Track Racing or ITR.

Origins
4D Racing, similarly to its real world tantamount, was always in the game and players were using its benefits even if they were not realizing it yet. Around the 24/09/2011 at approximately 6:00:07 CEST, an anonymous player from team IQ+ acquired the world record on the tendentious map A01-Race.

This tremendous feat was achieved thanks to an in-depth understanding of the Minkowski space, allowing the incognito player to perform a new trick : the Speed Derivation. This trick is the equivalent of a Fourth Dimensional Speed Drift.

Usage
Since its formalization in the 20.7a update, many players have dedicated unnumbered hours to the creation of 4D-Exclusive maps. Those maps make use of the newly added "Up" and "Down" steering, made possible by the new steering wheel released by Škoda for a partnership between the automobile company and Nadeo. Players that happened to buy the steering wheel got an exclusive 2009 Škoda Octavia car skin and an even more exclusive Škoda Flag to strut around with on the online servers.

The first very popular map making use of Four Dimensional Racing is "fourth dirtbug" by Ejber42. This map quickly became the allegory of 4D Racing and created a small controversy amongst the Time Attack purists, as more players were able to glitch through layers of reality to shortcut their beloved tech maps, but, as time passed, 4D Racers turned out to be mesmerized by Ejber42's map and were hosting tournaments and events on this single map, leaving other maps untouched.