What a run! MIBR take ESL Challenger League Season 40 North America crown, after dropping just 2 maps across the 23 they played, as they down Carpe Diem as the final hurdle to $20,000 and an invite to Pro League Season 16 Conference, where they can play for a slot in the second Pro League of 2022. 

 The event started with Group play, with each of the 16 teams sorted into either Group A or Group B. Only one team, MIBR escaped winning all 7 of their matches, whilst Valors were the only team to not win a match of their 7 played, over on Group A. For our victors, only one team managed to escape the MIBR bulldozer, with Party Astronauts being the only teams to 2-1, and not rollover on a fairly simple looking 2-0. BHOP, Eros, Gaimin Gladiators, Strife, TeamOne & X13 all tried what they could against the ever present Brazilian favorite. On to the playoffs, MIBR came across Orgless, Carpe Diem & paiN conquering them all 2-0. Carpe Diem fell to the lower bracket, where they managed to defeat ATK, Strife & paiN to climb back up to the Grand Final, where they came across MIBR in the best of 5 Grand Final. 

So just how did the Grand Final go down? With a final score of 3-1 to MIBR,  there was plenty of action, MIBR entered the final 1-0 to start with, as a reward for entering via the Upper Bracket. On Inferno, Carpe Diem almost managed to take down the Brazillian favorites however they fell slightly short, giving MIBR a sometimes pained victory of 16-13. Next up was Dust 2, where MIBR's game plan completely fell apart despite it being their own map pick, and the American/Canadian mix in Carpe Diem managed to throttle MIBR into a 16-9 submission. Next up was Overpass, which turned out to be the final one. MIBR replied in kind off the back of Dust2, and were able to outplay the Carpe 5-man for a somewhat relaxed 16-11 map win, which also gave them the match score.

So what is next for our finalists? Carpe Diem having nothing on thee books in the next month or so guaranteed yet, whereas MIBR have a very busy few months, they'll compete in the Americas RMR for a place in the Major starting 11th April, and then later on in April they'll be competing at BLAST Premier Spring Showdown, where they'll come across the likes of Liquid, FURIA & Complexity to compete for just one slot in the BLAST Spring Finals.