Time trial racing games

Why time trials are addictive

A time trial strips racing down to one question: can you do that lap again, a little better? There is no luck, no AI that slows down when you fall behind, and no one to blame. Three things make the loop work:

• Instant restart. A mistake costs seconds, not minutes. The best time trial games put restart on one key.
• A ghost. A replay of your best run, drawn as a car you can drive through. It turns an abstract number into something you can see: you were two car lengths behind it at the hairpin, so the hairpin is where the time is.
• A leaderboard. Other people's times tell you what is possible. If you can watch their replays too, they also tell you how.

Splits help as well: a time shown at each checkpoint, compared with your best. They tell you which sector cost you before the lap is over.

The problem with leaderboards: can you trust them?

A leaderboard is only motivating if the top times are real. If they are not, you are chasing a number nobody drove. In most games the client sends a time and the server stores it, which leaves the door open to edited saves, slowed-down game clocks and plain fake requests.

Trackmania, the best-known time attack series, has lived through this. In 2021 one of its best-known players admitted to cheating records after the community, led by an investigation video from the YouTuber Wirtual, picked apart his replays.

The fix is simple to describe: the server keeps the inputs of every run (steering, throttle, brake, frame by frame) and drives the run again itself with the same physics. The time that goes on the board is the one the server computed. A run that was faked or slowed down does not reproduce, so it never appears. Not every game can do this, because it needs physics that give exactly the same result every time from the same inputs, but when a game can, its leaderboard means something.

1. Trackmania (PC, consoles · free to start)

The reference. Ubisoft Nadeo's Trackmania is the game every other entry here gets compared with. You race short, stunt-heavy tracks against the clock, earn medals against set times and climb global and regional leaderboards. Official seasonal campaigns rotate, there are weekly short tracks and an arcade channel of community tracks, and the editor has thousands of building blocks. Free Starter Access covers the core racing; a paid Club Access subscription unlocks full campaigns and more community content. The 2020 release came to Windows first and to PlayStation and Xbox in 2023.

Play it if: you want the deepest version of this genre and a huge community. Skip it if: you want something that runs in a browser tab.

2. PolyTrack (browser, PC, Android · free)

Trackmania in a tab. Kodub's PolyTrack says on its itch.io page that it is heavily inspired by Trackmania, and it shows: low-poly tracks with loops and jumps, time trial racing and a track editor whose tracks you can export and share. Its devlog traces the features this list cares about: ghost replays to race against (version 0.2), a leaderboard where you pick opponents (0.3), watching replays from the leaderboard (0.4), and racing or watching up to ten ghosts at once (0.5). It is free (name-your-own-price), in the browser or as a download.

Play it if: you want Trackmania's loop for free with nothing to install. Skip it if: you want the depth of a full commercial game.

3. DRIFTIT (browser · free)

Time attack, but sideways. This one is ours. DRIFTIT is a top-down drift game in the browser: 20 tracks across 5 worlds, each a three-lap run against a target time between 70 and 155 seconds. Targets come from a bot driving the real physics, with a 25% margin. Touch a wall and it is a crash: the run restarts on its own, so a time only counts if every lap was clean.

Your best run is saved as a ghost in your browser and drives next to you on the next attempt, and the checkpoint splits show your delta to it. Each track has an online leaderboard, and this is the part we care most about: the server re-simulates every submitted run from its recorded inputs and puts its own time and score on the board, exactly the check described above. Signing in with X puts your @handle there; guests can play everything.

Where it falls short: one car, no track editor, and you cannot download other players' ghosts yet, only race your own. Desktop only.

Play DRIFTIT free

4. Distance (PC · paid)

Neon survival racing. Refract's Distance is the spiritual successor to Nitronic Rush: a car that drives upside down, along walls and over buildings, and can fly to find shortcuts, through a dark, neon-lit city. Its Arcade mode has ghost racing and Steam leaderboards, there is a level editor and thousands of community levels on the Steam Workshop, and online and split-screen multiplayer. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Play it if: you like Trackmania's stunts and want more atmosphere. Skip it if: you want plain tarmac racing.

5. Circuit Superstars (PC, consoles · paid)

Top-down motorsport with weekly time trials. Original Fire Games' racer looks like a toy car set seen from above, but it has pit stops, fuel and tyre wear. For this list, the important mode is Weekly Time Trials: every week a new challenge with global leaderboards, and global ghosts that show how players around the world drive each track.

Play it if: you want a fresh time trial each week with real racing around it. Skip it if: you only want to play in a browser.

6. Absolute Drift (PC, consoles, mobile · paid)

Time trials judged on style. Funselektor's minimalist drift game is scored on points rather than pure time, but it belongs here: its Steam page lists online leaderboards for global and friends' scores, and you can watch replays and ghost cars from the top players. We wrote a full list of games like Absolute Drift.

7. art of rally (PC, consoles, mobile · paid)

Rally stages against the world. Also by Funselektor: a stylised top-down rally game with historic cars. Beside the career there are daily and weekly challenges with leaderboards, which make it a quiet time trial game: one stage, one attempt that counts, the world's times to compare against. More in games like art of rally.

An honourable mention: Mario Kart

Plenty of people met ghosts in Mario Kart. Its Time Trial mode has had staff ghosts, set by Nintendo's own team, as targets to beat for many games now. If you have a Switch, it is a gentle way into time attack.

At a glance

How to get faster in any time trial

• Find the one corner that costs the most. Watch the gap to your ghost. Time is rarely lost evenly; usually one corner, often the one before the longest straight, decides the lap.
• Exit speed beats entry speed. Braking a little earlier to get on the throttle sooner almost always wins on the next straight.
• Finish first, then push. A clean run sets a ghost. A faster run with a crash sets nothing. In DRIFTIT, a wall touch restarts the run, so this matters twice.
• Learn from the top. Where a game lets you load faster players' replays, watch where they brake, not just where they turn.

For DRIFTIT specifically, our guide to faster lap times goes deeper, corner types explains how to take each kind of bend, and the track guides list every corner with its radius. A good first time attack is the Carousel, the track with the shortest target (70 seconds).

If you want more free racers in a tab, see the best browser racing games.

Quick answers

What is a ghost in a racing game? A see-through replay of an earlier run, usually your best, that you race against but cannot touch.

What is the closest free game to Trackmania? Trackmania itself has free Starter Access. In a browser, PolyTrack.

Can leaderboard times be faked? In games that trust the client, yes. Games that re-run each replay on the server, like DRIFTIT, only post the time the server computed.