Time attack and ghost racing
In time attack the opponent is the clock. You drive alone, record your best time and try to beat it. It is the cleanest way to see whether a change to your line, a car setting or a braking point helped.
The building blocks
- Best lap or best run. Only the fastest result counts, so a bad lap costs nothing.
- Ghosts. A ghost is a recording of an earlier run, replayed as a see-through car. You can race your own best or someone else's.
- Medals and targets. A game may set reference times and award a medal for each one you beat.
- Leaderboards. Times are compared with other players on the same track.
Games built around it
Trackmania from Nadeo is built on a time-trial format with medals for beating set times and online leaderboards. In multiplayer, racers run as concurrent time trials and do not collide. The first TrackMania appeared in 2003, and the 2020 game was released on Windows on 1 July 2020.
Time attack also appears inside bigger games. Mario Kart lists Time Trials among its common modes, Hot Wheels Unleashed has a time trial mode, and the WipEout series includes time trials alongside tournaments and other modes.
Improving lap times
- Pick one car and one track and stay with them for a session.
- Learn the braking points first, then the line, then the throttle.
- Compare your run to a ghost and look for the corner where the gap grows.
- Aim for consistency. Ten laps within a few tenths are a better base than one lucky lap.
- Stop when you stop improving.