Beginners Racing Guide, Get better at your Podracing [UPDATED]

I was bored, so I figured I would come up with a simple guide at improving your podracing skills, whether you're a newcomer who heard about the game and is coming to try it out, or a common player who just wants to improve their skillset, I can assure you that while it might be a daunting racer game due to it's high velocity races, and the amount of podracer wrecks that can come from it, it is a rather simple racer when you learn how the mechanics work. So with that, let's get into it.

1. Controller Recommended

Now, this is a personal preference, but I'd recommend using a controller, not only for the button layout, but also because having a thumbstick can help a lot with minor direction adjustments that can determine the chances between crashing and making it through a tight area. for controller layout I'd recommend this for an optimised racing layout;

Accelerate (Thrust) - X/A

Air Brakes - Circle/B (Brakes will rarely be used, from what I know they can be used to cool your boost quicker)

Boost - Square/X (This puts your boost closest to your right thumb for easy access)

Drift (Slide) - R1/Right Bumper

Repair - L1/Left Bumper

Roll Left - Left D-Pad

Roll Right - Right D-Pad

Taunt - L3/Left Thumbstick Click

2. Boost as often as you can

This could take a little practice for beginners to reduce crashes that can happen because of boosting, but you're going to want to boost as often as you can in any straight lane of a track to gain a quick advantage on other racers, Hold Up on the thumbstick to charge your boost, and hit your boost button to activate it once the light on your speedo turns yellow, if you boost for too long your podracer will overheat and set on fire, which will require you to repair your Podracer which can slow you down in a race, when heat is high I recommend using boost in bursts, letting go of accelerate will stop your boost, this can especially help in tight areas. Be careful with boosting on some jumps though, sometimes you might go too fast and crash your Podracer when it lands.
As for Jumpstart boosting at the start of a race, I find it's best to hit accelerate at the moment the 1 starts to fade from the count down, the timing can be a little iffy, but you will get the hang of it once you find that sweet spot.

3. Stay centred and learn your drifts

This one is pretty straight forward too, most times you're going to want to stay centred on the track to avoid hitting walls, making minor adjustments to your direction unless it's a tight turn in which case you can use your Slide, the Slide button is basically your handbrake, tight corners can be tackled pretty easily by holding it down as you turn your corner, I'd keep an eye on holding it for too long though, as it can very easily make you over shoot your turn, but it's quite easy to gauge when to let go of your drift and continue racing.

4. Tight fits and fake shortcuts

Tight fits are something you'll learn about very quickly through the very first Tatooine track about 3 quarters of the way through, this can be very easily combated by using your roll buttons to give you a little extra space to fit through your tight spaces, but what the game doesn't tell you about is in some of the later maps, and that is fake shortcuts, while there are plenty of real shortcuts in tracks, this isn't really something that can be combated against other than just learning from the mistake, and it doesn't start happening until about 3 tournaments into the game, I believe the first track to have a fake shortcut is Baroonda Grabvine Gateway in the third tournament, while this does become a real shortcut later in the race, very early on, it can be mistaken for an early shortcut which will inevitably destroy your podracer and lose you some time, it is best to know so you can keep on your toes and be ready to learn that the game can be a little unforgiving in later races, as simple as the game may seem right off the bat.

5. Braking

Braking is something you won't really have to do often on the earlier tracks, later tracks are when turns start to get more tight, I'd say the second half of the game's tournament's will start to have REALLY tight turns, but it's always good to get used to it before the really tight turns come in.

Basically, braking along with your Slide controls will offer a much tighter turn in exchange for slowed speed, which if you've gotten the hang of boosting and keeping your racer centred, then this shouldn't be much of a problem, but if you need to practice, then it's always good to jump into freeplay and practice braking and sliding on those turns that can really mess with you.

6. Fastest racers

For me I find some of the fastest racers you don't unlock until the second tournament, and that is Bullseye Navior, and Ratts Tyerell, they are the two I found to have faster accel times and top speeds. Until then your choice in racer is pretty much whatever you want, I tend to go with Anakin or Dud bolt for the first couple races, but the choice really is yours and what feels good to you.

7. Big Jumps

Big jumps can be hard to hit sometimes due to how directional movement works in this game, for instance on the Malastare 100 track in the Amateur tournament, there's a big jump that you can easily miss if you have a low top speed and are holding forward, holding forward can help for gaining your boost, but on this particular jump, if you're still holding forward, it will make you miss the jump, and send you straight into an explosive crash. the easiest way to combat this I found is to hold back on the thumbstick to tilt your Podracer up, this should give you a little extra airtime and make that jump that can easily be missed.

8. Repairing

Lastly, you got repairing, this is something that you hopefully won't have to do often, but it is best to know when to repair your Podracer, the chance to repair will often be if you overshoot your boost and set your Podracer on fire, when this happens you'll want to hit repair as soon as possible to avoid a wreck, repairing will slow you down, so it's usually good to hit your repair when you're far ahead in the lead, basic damage outside of boosting won't often need to be repaired unless a part of your racer appears to be turning red as indicated in the bottom left corner, in the event of this, I would do repairing in short bursts in order to maintain a lead on your opponents. Worst case scenario you end up crashing putting you back onto the track with a complete repair and you keep on racing.


And with that, you have some neat little tips to improve your high speed podracing, and get those first place ribbons.

Thanks for reading, and happy racing!

[BenkayVFalsifier]

I've been playing this game since N64. How am I only now finding out that *you can drift?*

[Domirae]

Appreciate the response Mayannaise. Your response is very beginner friendly, which is perfect for casually learning the game. I wouldn't expect you to necessarily get every part "perfect" without speedrunning it anyway. Very nice for casuals. I'm currently thinking of making a more in depth guide for those interested in speedrunning, but will likely just point to yours for casual learning lol

[Mayannaise]

Hey Domirae, not nitpicky at all, very fair criticisms, the fastest racers section was more what I found the fastest in my personal experience, I haven't managed to get 100% full upgrades, so my fastest racer most likely differs from people who have played this game for years.

as for your other tips, yeah, those are some good additions <3

[Domirae]

I have some nit-picks with it but overall it was good for helping players improve initially. The fastest pod in the game at max upgrades is Ben Quadinaros, followed by Boles Roor, then Aldar Beedo, Mawhonic, Mars Guo, Elan Mak, and then Bullseye Navoir. Bullseye and Mars are very good for learning the game. I agree that using a controller is good, but it's not needed. A lot of the most important things are binding pitch down (boost charge) to a button rather than the joystick, capping the fps to 60 (unless you want to speedrun, then you should learn the optimal fps and traction upgrade per track), learning proper lines, and learning the shortest routes on each track. Additionally, there's a lot of spots that don't require braking, but only seem to at first glance. Anyway, there's too much to say on here so I'll just respond if there's any questions

[Trajkov]

Oh another thing that I just learned today is that you can change the split of the earnings for each race by pressing left or right, so you can change the reward to winner takes all and take all of that sweet podracing money for yourself!

[IVCL]

Thank you! This helped a lot! I'm new to stream as you can tell lol

[Mayannaise]

Hi IVCL, I use the third party program DS4Windows in order to get the controller working, this program is used to make Windows read Dualshock 4 controllers as Xbox controllers when hooked up via USB, and this will allow you to change the controls for the game in the settings and make it compatible. hope his helps ^^

[IVCL]

I'm trying to use a PS4 controller and its not working. Is it just not compatible?

[sir pickle]

MY DAD HAD THE GAME IT IS HARD

[Kiwibeast]

"I believe the first track to have a fake shortcut is Baroonda Grabvine Gateway in the third tournament"
This track has a shortcut in the zigzag canyon section of the track that is accessible in the second or third lap - the game screen shakes and has sound effects like an earthquake. It's a sharp turn to access it.

A lot of track's shortcut like the Ando Prime ones by the start line open up in the second lap.

A good tip if you want to find them is to do freeplay, set it to 2 racers, fast, and follow the AI to see their route.

P.s I played this during childhood, downloaded it a few days ago for nostalgia. Just clocked it last night, still good fun. Abyss on Ord Ibanna is still as challenging as ever