What Fullspeed is and isn't

What is TrackMania and a “track/play style” in the game?

TrackMania a game that is quite simple to understand. You control a car that is placed at the start line of a track, and your only inputs are forward, backwards and left/right steering. Every car is the same, they behave, accelerate, break all the same. The track gives you a route, and your goal is to drive to the finish line as fast as possible. Sounds quite simple, right?

Not so fast (pun intended)! Once you start playing the game, you should quickly realize that there must be something you are doing wrong when you are unable to get anywhere close to the fastest times. Maybe on some tracks, you are closer to the fastest times than some other tracks. But in general, you can’t get those times no matter what you try.

Maybe you even start watching replays of faster runs and try to understand them. Your lines seem all similar and you have no clue what is going on. This is what is making TrackMania special. Because when you dive deep into the game, you start realizing the immense depth it provides and with that comes an insanely high skill ceiling.

This game depth provides so many different details, so many tricks, so many lines and track features that people started categorizing them into styles. Each style usually feature certain track features and gameplay tricks.

The most popular styles we have in the game, which we like to call the main styles are Tech, Dirt, Ice, RPG/Trial, Fullspeed and Mixed. Most players in this game have their favorite style and may also consider that as their main. Mixed is a style that incorporates multiple specialized styles in one track and is mostly used in the highest competitions.

Each of the styles have their perks and should all be learned. Because if you know one style, it is not that hard to get into another with a bit of effort. In fact, knowing one style can even help you improve in another.

That said, there is one popular style that a big part of the community loves to drive. It is the ultimate style of speed, wicked transitions and rollercoasters elements. This is Fullspeed and the style we will teach you about in this guide.

What is Fullspeed?

So what separates Fullspeed from the other styles? Well as I said earlier, the most prominent feature of Fullspeed is speed. Fullspeed tracks tends to feature speeds well above 400. Most Fullspeed tracks lie between the 500-800 speed range.

But obviously, you can reach these types of speeds in other types of tracks than Fullspeed. So why is Fullspeed so special?

Well, as the name implies, the main thing in Fullspeed is that you are driving the track in full speed. What this means is; no breaking, no releasing of the accelerator, you don’t drift to slow down and you don’t crash. If you can drive the entire track through the intended route while doing those 4 things, the track is considered to be a Fullspeed track.

Essentially, Fullspeed is about maintaining speed. You use this speed to gain more speed, and the speed you gained from that to gain even more speed. Fullspeed is a very momentum based style, and typically, the goal is to snowball the speed throughout the entire track. Anything that either keeps your speed or gains more speed is good. And anything that slows you down is bad.

Certain track features like loops, wallrides, tubes etc. may slow you down. But that doesn’t mean it’s not Fullspeed, these are simply track features intended to be a problem for you to solve by losing as little speed as possible. If you for example drift or break, you don’t follow the concept of losing as little speed as possible.

There is, however a certain trick in Fullspeed called S4D where you break to start a speed drift. This is the ONLY exception for when breaking is accepted. It is simply a small tap on the break to start a speed drift in other to gain even more speed. The reason this is still accepted is that it is a trick to gain speed.

If you do a drift to slow down in order to manage a turn, then you are not really doing something to gain more speed, you are simply slowing down to do a faster line, this is not Fullspeed. Which brings us to the next point.

What is not Fullspeed?

Many people think that if you hold the accelerator through the entire track and don’t break, the track is Fullspeed. As I explained earlier, it is possible to drift without breaking and always holding the accelerator. But if you do this to slow down to be able to get through a turn, you are NOT driving the track full speed.

The rules on what Fullspeed is applies to all surfaces, whether it is asphalt, dirt, grass, ice etc. It does not matter if you have to slow down in a way to manage the track.

“Grass Fullspeed” is a popular style in Track Of The Day, but in most of these tracks, you have to drift on the grass, slowing down in order to make a turn. Contra to many people’s belief, this is not actually Fullspeed. Those tracks are simply a fast track where you don’t release the accelerator.

There are actually sub-styles for these “almost fullspeed” tracks. And they even used to have a very active community back in the day in the form of SpeedFun and FunSpeed. You can read more about the differences of the “speed” styles on this TrackMania Wiki page.