Aurel is one of the rare few players who qualified to the final phase each season he took part in. The GamingPrive.com athlete took an overall 3rd place in this Winter 2021 regular season thanks to an amazing consistency and very few lost points on maps 5 & 6.
This isn’t the first time that Aurel is in the top positions after a regular season as he was already 3rd on the Winter 2020 edition. This time, the Frenchman didn’t win any map of the season, but might be able to create the surprise in the Final. On the Fall 2020’s final, he reached the Final 6 phase but was eliminated alongside Affi, a player with a profile like Aurel and who is also qualified in the final this year. Before the Final, we asked him a few questions.
You had a regular season with a lot of consistency and few mistakes, even though you had qualified at the last minute in Fall 2020. Did you change your mindset this year?
Obviously, my mindset clearly changed, it was quite heartbreaking that my training didn’t pay-off last season, thanks god it did at the very last step.
Coming into this Winter Season 2021, I decided to take this one less seriously by caring less if I don’t perform well at the end. That’s why overall, I trained way less this season and I was only focusing on the last 2 maps of each step. In the end it worked pretty well so I’m happy of that. Seeing the maps I trained the most, I performed quite well.
This is your 3rd TMGL season and your 3rd final phase. What do you expect from this new final?
Even if this is my 3rd final phase which means I always went through the regular season phase, my expectations are always the same. Playoffs are always my goal, then I take it as a bonus. Mainly because regular season is about consistency and pace (what I’m good at) whereas in the Final you have to be faster, and it’s not that easy with such fast players like Pac, Gwen, CarlJr around me to win a round. So I will still try to do my best, being realistic and hoping for a 5th/6th position in the end as last season would be great, and a top 4 will be amazing!
The Step and the Final formats are different. Will you change your approach for The Final?
My global approach will be quite the same, which means I’m trying to go in the Final as a player having nothing to lose. Final format isn’t the one I excel the most, moreover it’s not the mappack I could have hoped for. I might have to train in a way to be fast on tracks, find new approaches for sure, but in the end, I don’t want myself to put any pressure on me. I’m not the one that people are waiting for in this format, I will push to my maximum and see how it goes.
Thanks to his 3rd place in the regular season, Aurel will be able to pick the 2nd map of the Final 9 phase. As a reminder, The Final will take place on March 14th from 7 PM CET live on Twitch!
Tags: Aurel , GamingPrive.com , TMGL , TMGL Winter 2021 , trackmania , Trackmania Grand League