Bugqtt1 - MCRO's 2nd cheating scandal

After fish_br was banned in Septmeber 2022, we all hoped that this would be the final cheating case for MCRO. However, during S4 there was a guy called Bugqtt1, who despite not lapping everybody with a slow car was accused of cheating.

The first races

Bugqtt1 joined MCRO in late April and decided to sign up for both F1 and Hypercar S2. He then signed up with Dark Horse for F1 and Aston Martin Hypercar for Hypercar. The times seemed really good for a rookie, as he was close to the best driver's times in the same cars.

Bug's first race was F1 S1R4 on Macow Street Circuit. He qualified P5, behind Obli, earning his first point in his first race. However he wasn't really happy about the result, as he accused Obli for constant corner cutting and even wanted him disqualified. However, nobody was disqualified and the race went on. For his first race, Bug was doing rather good - being mostly in the points range and then promoting himself to P5, eventually finishing with that position. Then he did his first hypercar race - and failed hard. He forgot the course and qualified last in the qualifying, and handed the car to his friend - sadboi. The car was then given to Egg, and then back to Bug. The team did a good comeback from P5 to P3, mostly thanks to Egg.

The next race didn't go that well - even though he was leading in qualifying, he crashed on the final corners of lap 1 and eventually qualifying P8. He then passed 3 cars and got to P5 and stayed there for some time, however on the final laps he lagged and then dropped to P9, outside of the points.

Success begins

Bug skipped S2R2 of Hypercar and went to do F1 S1R6. It would be agruably his best race so far. He qualified P3, behind Syrz and Sot and had a decent start, even overtaking his teammate. Since Syrz had big chances to win the championship during that race, the team leader of Dark Horse, Sky told Bugqtt1 to let Syrz past, and so he was P3. Then, Streekh overtook Bugqtt1 and the battle for P4 between them started. While Bugqtt1 went back to P4 for a while, Streekh went to finish the race 4th, with Bug coming behind. That made him really mad - as according to him, Streekh was corner cutting a lot and deserves a disqualification. The investigation on Streekh had started and it was found that he didn't cut that much and ended up with no penalties. Bug went really mad and even caused some drama in the general chat of MCRO.

That was Bug's final F1 race, as Dhen replaced him in R7. But his racing career didn't end there, as he did 1 more race in MCRO S4 - Hypercar S2R4. Behind the wheel of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, Egg qualified P3. The Aston team was doing really well in the race, even leading for a small while. And even in the hands of Bug, the things weren't looking that bad as they kept P2 (few laps ahead of P3 Mazda). They eventually finished P2.

Bug never raced in S4 ever again, but planned to do MTCC and GT in S5.

First off, he claimed the Alpine team and hired Syrz - F1 and F3 champion, Avith, Lexi and sadboi - 2 final ones were his friends. The team looked well. He then signed for GT with Mercedes-AMG, owned by John. As he showed some promise in the previous races, Bug was looking really good. However, behind the scenes not everything was perfect

Dark side of Bug

For starters - Bugqtt1 was really sensitive on corner cuts. Every single time somebody cuts he goes really mad and sometimes even wants extreme penalties (like DSQ's). He even made a suggestion about stricter penalties. Bug wasn't really a dirty driver, however his anger was sometimes too much.

But that's only the least of the worries - Bug was also faking his times in the time showcase channel in the MCRO discord. Or at least that was the theory. But the times seemed so good that they were even too good, being faster than some of the best drivers in the leauge. Bug was asked multiple times if he was using race engine or a different car, but always declined. However, many believed that he was just lying and did a lap in a completely different car and then switched to the actual car and then did the screenshot. This caused the hacking investigation to begin.

note: sadboi was driving a Bolide

Bug was invited to servers to do a few laps on circuits to see if he was hacking. While investigators believed that he was hacking, there wasn't much of a difference (compared to fish, at least). He was mostly accused on having insane accelerations on straights, just like fish. But it wasn't as obvious as with him, as some of the investigators could actually catch up with him. The lap times also seemed normal and he wasn't sandbagging, probably. But some people pointed out that he could do the final harpin of CDT Circuit while breaking mid-corner (and going flat out into the corner), which was impossible in the game, at least without crashing.

Bug then did the GT Pre-season Testing, and it all seemed normal. But after that he was temporarily race blacklisted for faking lap times. He was the interviewed a bit and then did 4 laps of CDT City Race with the Alpine A110, doing a 37.5 lap time, which was very difficult to achieve, if not impossible. After reviewing the footage the Bug's pace seemed normal, but the game was kinda laggy and often the timer would freeze, especially at the finish line, causing lap times to be shorter than usual. That wasn't really cheating, but the investigation didn't stop there.

Into the MCRO jail

He then did Chicken Cup, finishing P3. He was then accused of going above the car's top speed quite often, however there was no real proof given so the case didn't end there. But, a few days later, Mat hosted a Miata race, which Bug raced in. He did really well, being in podium positions often. However, whenever he crashed, he came back to top 3 suspiciously quickly. When he was fighting for the lead, he then suddenly accelerated, passing Vark for the lead and eventually winning. The pass on Vark however was impossible as his speeds exiting the corner prior were perfect and Bug had a slower exit but accelerated past Vark. He was even caught doing 180 mph on the straights, but as it turned out the method used to calculate top speeds was inaccurate. To avoid any biased decisions, Foxzie's staff who didn't have any relation to this case were requested to look into the proof and they too confirmed that he was exploiting. On July 17th 2023, Bugqtt1 was unmuted for about 8 minutes, and then banned from MCRO and other Foxzie-related servers.

The investigation was finally done, with a help of few people - Avith, Jeno, John and Vark. Bug continued to stay in the Racing Hub and LR Racing Server, however in the latter he was really frustrated, for a reason. He started sending a lot of Andrew Tate GIFs and was made fun of thanks to that. Even some MCRO members joined the LR server to see the madness, however Bug eventually left that and Racing Hub servers, making it the end of Bug's CDT racing career. That also caused Dhen to almost retire from GT, as he really wanted Bug for his team, and sadboi to quit, as he was Bug's friend.

And there we are - MCRO's 2nd cheating scandal has come to an end. It was a really difficult one, as it took over 2 weeks compared to Fish' case, which only took about a week. Let's hope this will be the final cheating scandal until the end of MCRO.