in 2005 robert kubica showed up to the polish national colin mcrae rally championship. not the real one. the video game.
the regulars had teams, memorized every stage, spent weeks on car setups. kubica had no computer. he'd played maybe 20-40 hours at a friend's place. he ran default settings because he didn't know you could change them
he finished, thought it went badly, then realized the timekeeper had mistyped a digit and added a minute to his total. once corrected, kubica had won by 0.7 seconds.
the forum obviously accused him of cheating. very loudly. after the event. kubica didn't care and offered to send the trophy back and returned to driving real cars
he later made fake accounts to race in online rally leagues, which caused its own drama.
the original forum threads are long gone, but some kind soul archived them. if you read polish and want the full chaos, it's on the internet archive
#carlore