Competitive Scene, Ranked & Top Players

Rocket Racing shipped with a full ranked ladder on day one and a dedicated time trial mode within its first three months, and then Epic left the competitive layer exactly there. The community ran the competitive scene; Epic did not. The official infrastructure (ranked MMR, an Unreal global leaderboard) existed and worked, but every prized competition was funded by sponsors, creators, or speedrun.com itself. By the time of the October 2026 shutdown, the speedrun.com community had become the mode’s competitive scene and its best preserved record source.

10.1 The ranked system

Ranked launched simultaniously with the mode on December 8, 2023, branded “Season Zero” source. The ladder used eight named tiers above Unranked (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Elite, Champion, Unreal), with Bronze through Diamond subdivided into divisions I-III and Elite/Champion/Unreal as single tiers source. Epic’s official support page kept the progression rules deliberately simple: “winning ranked races promotes you; losing more than you win demotes you,” driven by race finishing position via hidden MMR source. Placement came after the first race, and parties of up to four were matched at the highest member’s rank source.

Track gating. Rank controlled which tracks appeared in the pool. At launch this meant 9 Novice tracks (all ranks), 7 Advanced, and 10 Expert, with Expert tracks restricted to Diamond and above source. The pool eventually grew to 53 tracks (20 Novice, 18 Advanced, 15 Expert), with Diamond rank granting access to all of them source.

Unreal leaderboard. Players reaching Unreal received a numbered position on a global Unreal Leaderboard, ranked by MMR and hosted on Epic’s official ranked leaderboard site at fortnite.com/ranked/leaderboard?mode=rocket-racing; players could opt out of public display via account privacy settings source.

Season history and resets. Ranks reset each ranked season source:

After the v31.40 pivot (Section 3.4), ranked rewards were delivered as version period quests rather than themed season tracks, until the March 2026 shutdown announcement ended ranked rewards altogether (see Section 17). Note: a December 2024 merger of Rocket Racing ranked rewards into the shared Battle Royale ranked track is reported by FortByteNews (cited with an “(unverified)” flag in Sections 2-3) but is not corroborated by the sources gathered for this section; treat it as unconfirmed.

Ranked rewards, consolidated. Every season and ranked period paid out its own cosmetics through ranked quests. Pulled together in one place:

No official rank distribution data was ever published for Rocket Racing; Esports Tales’ Fortnite rank distribution tracking (still updated as of May 2026) covers only Battle Royale and Zero Build source.

10.2 Speed Run mode (v28.30)

Update v28.30 (February 22, 2024) added Speed Run, a time trial playlist that became the mode’s real competitive core: ghost replays of best runs, collisions and slipstream disabled, and Season + Friends leaderboards source. Global leaderboard filters were disabled as of March 6, 2024, leaving in game comparison limited to friends and seasonal boards source. The community filled that gap externally on speedrun.com.

10.3 The speedrun.com scene

The main board at speedrun.com/Rocket_Racing is the largest surviving competitive record of the mode. As of July 2026 it tracked 60 levels, 4,003 total runs from 449 players, with 484 followers source. Two sister boards exist: Rocket Racing: Community Tracks (65 levels across Community S0/S1/S2, Psyonix Maps, and Other Maps; 157 runs from 42 players) source and Rocket Racing Category Extensions for meme/extra categories source. Board moderators include AceDelusional, DarthZed, Havvak, and skiizuo (unverified). A community maintained world record video playlist archives WR footage on YouTube.

Caveat: the “bhop removal” claim. Board notes attribute a split of leaderboard runs by game version to an update cited as “v44.00” (March 19, 2026, an impossible version number; Fortnite is on v41.x as of mid-2026) removing the bunny hop (bhop) movement exploit source. However, this claim was refuted 0-3 in fact checking for this archive: the specifics of the claimed “v44.00” bhop removal are unconfirmed and should not be treated as established. What is documented is that the bhop tech itself existed and was reported as an exploit on Epic’s developer forums source.

SRC Series: Rocket Racing Expert Tracks (Feb 16-26, 2024). The only prized event with any platform backing was funded by speedrun.com itself as the inaugural SRC Series challenge source. The $500 pool (self funded by SRC) paid $250/$150/$100 to the top three of 26 submitted runs; prize eligible runs had to be live streamed, entrants had to be 18+, and all participants received a “Rocket Racer” site title source.

source

10.4 Top players and record holders

On the ranked side, no named ladder stars were formally documented; the visible record consists of YouTubers chronicling Unreal leaderboard pushes, e.g. “How I became one of the first 100 UNREAL players” and “I Finally Became The Number 1 Unreal Player” (unverified).

10.5 The record holders: who to know, and where the live board is

Live leaderboards (always current): speedrun.com/Rocket_Racing, with 60 levels, one “Speed Run” category per track, no full game categories. Individual records change constantly, so this archive names the people rather than freezing times.

The faces of Rocket Racing speedrunning (as of mid-2026):

• Dylanos_ (Ireland): 876 runs across the boards (814 on the main board), holding the overwhelming majority of world records across the 60 tracks (roughly five of every six), from launch tracks to the Tutorial itself; also a board moderator/verifier (profile). Community attested to also go by “bestplayerhop” (public evidence ambiguous: the two names appear together in one TikTok with unclear phrasing).
• rebel4, Delta_103, EnergyWizard: the strongest challengers, each holding multiple records in the mode’s final era.
• notsilas, Ziemson, Idontcheatk67, TentrixJam: record holders on individual tracks.
• B1gstretch: ruler of the sibling Community Tracks board (65 levels, ~157 runs / 42 players), holding the large majority of its records, alongside razorjay_83 and Littlemuzz5.
• Board staff: super moderators AceDelusional, DarthZed, Havvak, skiizuo; verifiers Dylanos_ and Rambeanie (Community Tracks adds Dawman89, SK_btw). A Category Extensions board also exists.

A note on “v44.00”: speedrun.com’s boards filter runs by a version variable labeled “44.00” (see the caveat in Section 10.3). This board variable naming is very likely the origin of the erroneous “Fortnite v44.00” patch claims refuted in Section 22.

Preservation note: the leaderboards themselves are the record: dump the speedrun.com API shortly before the October 2026 shutdown to freeze the final all time records once they can no longer change.

10.6 Leaderboard and tracker sites

10.7 No official esports: a community funded vacuum

Epic never ran an FNCS adjacent event, cash cup, or any official competition for Rocket Racing; the entire prized scene was community- and sponsor driven (unverified as a negative claim, but consistent across all gathered sources). Liquipedia’s Fortnite wiki documents the whole circuit: THE HIPPO HERD “We Can’t Drive 55” ($5,000, Saturdays in Feb 2024, finals Feb 24; hosted by ToeKneeTM, sponsored by Reuben_The_Hippo, up to 36 applicants, mandatory streaming, suicide prevention charity component) source; Ally and NASCAR’s $10,000 Talladega Rocket Racing Tournament (Oct 4, 2024, entry via the Ally Discord, prizes including 2025 Daytona race tickets, promoted by streamer Chica) source; the RRD Rocket Racing Open 2024 and RRD Winter Cup 2025 (Feb 15-16, 2025, $250 pool) source; plus the RRR Revive Racing Winter Grand Prix and Rocket Racing Royale 3 Mans’ Cash Cup source. Total documented lifetime prizing across all events: roughly $15,750 (player count trajectory: Section 17). Community coordination survived in Discord hubs: the main Rocket Racing Discord, a “Rocket Racing League” server on Disboard, and the Fortnite Speedrunning Discord used for SRC Series entry source.

10.8 The community record scene (Rocket Racing Dynasty Discord)

Some of the most serious competitive record keeping happened away from speedrun.com entirely, inside the Rocket Racing Dynasty (RRD) Discord’s speedrun channel, which ran a full community record system: “BKT” (Best Known Time) posts, a mirror of the speedrun.com board, and a custom bot with a “WR Update Ping” role that announced new world records (“You can grab the world record ping role if you wanna see every wr that happens!”, RRD, Sep 26, 2024). The bot was written by Havvak, proposed May 23, 2024 (“I could probably code up a bot that sends a message whenever a new WR is posted on SRC”) and running by May 26, 2024 (RRD, May 23-26, 2024); per community messages it was down to tracking only Season Zero maps by October 2025 (RRD, Oct 4, 2025). Compiled from the RRD export:

• ewarz was the scene’s dominant runner, widely called “the best player in the world,” and once “set 4 strong asf world records in like two hours” in a single sitting (May 29, 2024); the same day’s chat logged “EWARZ 9 WORLD RECORDS BRO” (RRD, May 29, 2024), and by May 31 the standing complaint was that one player held everything: “theres 37 tracks, many talented players on this game, but only 1 guy has all the records?” (RRD, May 31, 2024). A record integrity dispute followed when videos used to submit records were privated/deleted: “I don’t think you’re supposed to delete/private videos that were used to post records” (May 25, 2024). Other recurring top names: dylanos, Zarza, gloryy, broz.
• The ewarz to dylanos handover. ewarz left the RRD server around the end of June 2024 (members noticed July 1-3, 2024), and the community tied his exit to rising competition: “Ewarz finally gets competition that can keep up and he quits” (RRD, Aug 26, 2024). dylanos then took over the boards, counting himself at 60 records after reclaiming the Outpost WR: “I got outpost wr back therefore I’m at 60” (RRD, Aug 7, 2024).
• Sample records: dylanos’ 2:15.556 Seaside Farms 3-lap BKT (RRD, May 30, 2024; the submission video is titled “Seaside Farms 2:15.556s World record”, correcting this archive’s earlier misfiling of the time under Outpost); a near miss “0.05 behind ewarz” on Outpost (RRD, May 25, 2024); a record beaten by 0.013 seconds over Zarza; sub-34 then a 31.111 on Airborne.
• The “meta car” controversy shaped record legitimacy: whether times set with the Behemoth (the fastest body) should count against runs on the Octane. It began May 24, 2024, when Havvak found the SUV body’s hitbox differed from the sports cars’ (“SUV hitbox is different than sports car”, RRD, May 24, 2024); within a day the Behemoth was the expected record car: “He’s taking records without using behemoth” (RRD, May 25, 2024).
• A game speed change forced a full leaderboard reset, invalidating the “old speed” world records and splitting the board into old speed and new speed eras. Game speed struck again in 2025 as a bug: “speedrun has a massive speed glitch bug right now” (RRD, Aug 7, 2025), with some clients racing at an “ultra mega rare 130% speed glitch” (RRD, Aug 15, 2025); Havvak purged the contaminated times from the WR bot through October 2025, and the community formally ruled glitch era runs off the leaderboard on March 20, 2026: “That doesn’t mean speed glitched times belong on the lb with regular runs.” (RRD, Mar 20, 2026).
• Ramp bug boosts were a route defining exploit: “the only way to beat that record was a ramp bug boost.” ewarz demonstrated the trick was replicable and frame perfect, retiring his “jlaunch” name for it: “I called it frame perfect ramp bug to get speed” (RRD, Jun 1, 2024). Runners petitioned Epic’s Devin directly, “devin please remove ramp bug before someone uses it in pitstop” (RRD, Jun 3, 2024), while noting an earlier patch notes fix had not taken: “they said they fixed ramp bug months ago and yet here we are” (RRD, Jun 1, 2024).
• On the official side, Epic staffer Devin confirmed the in game time leaderboards failed to reset due to an error, promising a fix for the next rank reset (RR #community-support, Aug 16, 2024). The in game Speed Run boards were then wiped outright at the v31.40 season boundary: “did they reset speedrun times?” / “ye they did reset them” (RRD, Oct 13, 2024). UEFN custom tracks were seen as polluting the leaderboards, which “deletes people from leaderboard.” A “top-100 exclusive” Discord existed but was gate kept and buggy.
• The record scene stayed live to the end: “Just got lazy lake world record again” (RRD, Jun 6, 2026), with fresh WRs logged through mid June 2026 (“Wr by a whole sec”, RRD, Jun 16, 2026) and active speedrun.com moderation as late as July 8, 2026, when one track was closed to submissions over a luck dependent method: “submitting to src will result in a denial until further notice!” (RRD, Jul 8, 2026), four days before the export ends.

Sourced from the RR / RRD community Discord exports; times and claims are community reported.