The Stage 2 racing line is flat out everywhere except gates 3 to 5. Stage 2 of Mars Rally Championship, a free browser rally game, is The Long Run: 2,306 metres through 12 gates, where only two corners need the brakes, a 39° right at gate 3 and a 34° left at gate 5, both on crests. Brake in a straight line before each, turn in early, cross both gates on their inside half, turn before the drop at gate 7 and save battery for the last 800 metres. Gold is 2:24.2, about 58 km/h on average.
Mars Rally Championship Stage 2 in numbers
The Long Run has been Stage 2 since 20 September 2026; notes and times from the older route do not carry over. Its timed line is 2,306 metres long and runs the full length of a 2.5 km terrain square. The first 330 metres fall about 20 metres; after that, every gate sits between 85 and 94 metres up.
Gold is 2:24.2, silver 3:04.5 and bronze 4:16.3. None is hand-set: each is the time the line takes at a fixed average speed, 16 m/s (about 58 km/h) for gold, 12.5 for silver and 9 for bronze. No author time is set yet, so gold is the top medal here for now.
A gate is a pair of solid posts 24 metres apart. It counts only when you cross the line between them, in order, and T on a keyboard, or Y on a gamepad, returns you to the last gate cleared with the clock still running.
If you learned the first stage from the Stage 1 racing line guide, expect a different exam. The Opener is a 1,164-metre descent with six corner calls. The Long Run is twice the length, with ten corner calls, eight of them sixes: it is won by carrying speed down long gaps and lost in one 218-metre sequence.
The Stage 2 racing line, gate by gate
Distances run from the start position along straight lines between gate centres. The co-driver counts from the start arch, 15 metres in, hence its opening call, "stage starts, straight 109 meters". Left and right are as the rover sees them (the co-driver's calls were un-mirrored on 25 September 2026), and the speed after each call is the strip's advice. Pace notes, in the WRC's A-Z, are the co-driver's shorthand for the road ahead; the game's are derived from the gates' angles and know nothing about the ground.
| Gate | From previous | From start | Turn and call | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start arch | 15 m | 15 m | 18° right, not called | Full throttle; the ground falls 15 m to gate 1 |
| 1 | 109 m | 124 m | 21° right, "right six", ▼ 110 | Flat: you arrive well under 110 km/h, on polygon |
| 2 | 206 m | 330 m | 11° right, "right six", FLAT | Flat; polygon starts just before it |
| 3 | 158 m | 488 m | 39° right, "right five", ▼ 80 | Crest. Brake on the polygon, turn in 60 m out, cross the right half |
| 4 | 120 m | 608 m | 12° right, "right six", FLAT | Keep turning: gates 3 and 4 make one 51° right-hander |
| 5 | 98 m | 706 m | 34° left, "left five", ▼ 80 | Top of a climb. Brake on the hardpack, cross the left half |
| 6 | 226 m | 932 m | 8° left, "left six", FLAT | Flat |
| 7 | 230 m | 1,162 m | 21° left, "left six", FLAT | Top of a 20% drop: turn before it, lift if you fly |
| 8 | 369 m | 1,531 m | 23° right, "right six", FLAT | Longest gap: 15 m down into a hollow, 12 m back up |
| 9 | 354 m | 1,885 m | 18° left, "left six", FLAT | Flat; polygon for about 125 m after it |
| 10 | 174 m | 2,059 m | 8° right, "right six", FLAT | Flat |
| Finish | 248 m | 2,306 m | "into finish, caution" | Flat through the line, 6 m uphill |
Gates 3 to 5: the only corners that need the brakes
Gates 3 and 5 are harder than their numbers. The co-driver calls a 39° bend and a 34° bend fives, and the strip's ▼ 80 is honest flat-ground physics: the speed Mars grip allows on an arc that starts about 60 metres before gate 3, or 50 before gate 5, and passes 7 to 10 metres inside the gate's centre. Both gates, though, sit on crests.
Mars pulls at about 3.7 m/s², 38% of Earth's gravity according to NASA's Mars Fact Sheet (the game uses 3.72), so little weight holds the tyres down, and a crest takes some away: a lighter tyre grips less, and one in the air grips nothing, just as you ask it to turn. In the game's own physics, a scripted test driver on the inside line held about 65 km/h through gates 3, 4 and 5; through the middle of the gates it slid at lower speeds, the outside line ran wide, and at 70 km/h even the inside line did. Treat ▼ 80 as a ceiling and aim for the mid-60s: over the 218 metres from gate 3 to gate 5 that costs about two seconds against 80 km/h.
Gate 3: brake on the polygon, turn on the regolith
From just before gate 2 to about 65 metres short of gate 3, the ground is cracked polygon, and the HUD's surface readout says so. It grips about 30% less than regolith: slowing from 100 to 65 km/h takes about 105 metres instead of 70, and the strip's BRAKE cue, worked out for regolith, lights late here. Brake early and in a straight line, finish where the ground turns to regolith, and turn in there. Cross the right half of the gate, which is flat; the middle and left sit on the crest, which falls about 4 metres in the next 40. The posts are solid, so leave a couple of metres.
Gates 4 and 5: keep turning, then climb
Gate 4, 120 metres on, turns another 12° right, so keep the rover turning instead of straightening between the two. Gate 5, 98 metres later, is a 34° left at the top of a 6-metre climb. Its last 40 metres of approach are hardpack, the grippiest ground on the stage: brake there, still climbing, and cross the left half, where the climb is a metre or two lower. A human co-driver would write "over crest" into both calls; the rally pace notes glossary covers what that asks of a driver.
Gate 7 and the drop behind it
Gate 7 is a flat left six on paper and, in practice, the top of the stage's deepest dip. On the straight line to gate 8 the ground falls at about 20% for 40 metres and bottoms out 15 metres lower some 155 metres on. The rover's wheels reach down to follow falling ground, so whether it flies depends on line and speed; a flight there can last several seconds. Airborne tyres cannot steer, so make the 21° left before the drop and run down it pointed at gate 8. Lift whenever the rover flies: throttle in the air still draws on the battery and pushes nothing.
Save battery for the last 800 metres
On a 2,306-metre stage the battery is part of the line. The rover carries 90 kWh, and below 15% charge the motor starts to fade, down to about 15% of its power at empty. Full throttle at racing speed costs roughly 1.5 to 2% of the pack a second; lifting at 100 km/h gives back about 0.4% a second through regen, which the HUD's kW gauge shows as a negative number. Hold full throttle everywhere and the SoC readout can fall below 15% after 60 to 90 seconds, with the fastest part of the stage still ahead.
Three habits fix most of it. Lift early for gates 3 and 5 rather than braking late, since every second off the throttle is charge coming back. Lift for every flight. And reach gate 8 with charge to spend: the 775 metres from there to the line are the fastest on the stage, 25 to 30 seconds of full throttle even on a quick run, roughly 40% of a full pack. The storm variant keeps its storm for the whole run, adding half again to the drain.
What a gold time on Stage 2 takes
A steady 70 km/h covers the line in just under two minutes, leaving about 25 seconds of gold's 2:24.2 for the launch, the corners and mistakes. Gold goes to the tidy run, not the brave one: what costs it is a missed gate, a slide at gate 3 or 5, a crooked line down the drop after gate 7 or a flat battery on the run home. After that, the margins are on the Stage 2 leaderboard, where every run can be replayed from its inputs or raced as a ghost.
Where to drive The Long Run
Mars Rally Championship is free and runs in the browser with no download and no account, on a phone or a Chromebook as well as a desktop.
- Drive Stage 2 now: forward runs carry the co-driver, the strip and the medals.
- The Long Run's stage page: medal pars, pace-note tips and the top three on its board.
- The reversed variant: the same line backwards, with its own board, no medals and no co-driver.
- The storm variant: a dust storm for the whole run, brown haze with the next gate shining through, and no medals.