How to maximise your speed in Team Sonic Racing

Find yourself losing out to faster opponents? Here’s how you can push for the podium.

Arcade racing is always about fast-paced, intense action, often with long drifting to get you around corners efficiently, making the most of the small speed burst at the end of it. Team Sonic Racing is no different, but much of its mechanics to keep your pace with the leaders comes with team maneuvers, so in order to get the most out of your speed, there are a number of things that you can do either as a team or solo to maintain your top speed as you go through the game.

Collecting Rings

This may seem like an obvious thing to collect, but the rings function much in the same way that coins do in Mario Kart. By collecting as many rings as you can, you are effectively raising your top speed. Rings are plentiful across most courses, but they are shared amongst the racers so if you have the opportunity to snatch rings away from your opponents without leaving yourself open for an attack or falling off the track, it is highly recommended that you do. This is most important for those on the Speed class, but it can help everyone.

Be careful though. Like a traditional Sonic game, taking a weapon hit, spinning out or falling off the track will cause you to lose all of your collected rings, so contemplating risk vs reward is important.

Drifting

The hallmark of any kart racer, drifting is a big part of Team Sonic Racing’s DNA. Often required to keep the pace with the leaders and essential for coin collecting, mastering the drift will allow you to get the most out of boosting around the track. Power class racers will have the hardest time pulling them off effectively, but often have the best in terms of boost stats so going into the corners hard will provide the biggest challenge but offer the most reward if you can keep a consistent drift line.

Keeping in your teammate’s slipstream will also compliment a good drifter with an additional slingshot boost off a drift, though the Technique Class will find pulling this off much easier.

Slingshot boosting

Speaking of slipstreaming, a team mechanic introduced in Team Sonic Racing is the slingshot boost. The teammate that is furthest forward will produce a slipstream for their team to follow. Keeping on this line while increasing your speed while staying on it for a short time will charge a boost for you to burst ahead as you catch up with the racer providing the slipstream. The mechanic doesn’t work with opposition racers, so working with your team is imperative to maximising speed as well as the boost received off the end of it.

Skimboosting

Has your teammate just taken a hit and spun out? Well, skimboosting is the mechanic in Team Sonic Racing designed to help fallen partners get back into the race quickly. If you see a teammate ahead of you spinning out, make sure to tag them as you go past them. This will cause a skimboost, which will launch them forward and bring them back to top speed before you know it. It won’t bring back their coins but is vital for maintaining momentum against aggressive opposition.

Boost Pads

What would an arcade kart racer be without boost pads? Racing over these will provide you with a boost over a short space. When compared to rivals such as Mario Kart 8 and Crash Team Racing, they are not a common as you’d expect in order to encourage that teamplay element, but they are particularly useful for the Power Class to maximise their boost potential. Look out for the purple arrow markers on the floor to snag those extra boosts.

Boost Wisps

Much like mushrooms in Mario Kart, Sonic and friends can call upon a boost Wisp to get a boost of speed when needed. The one to look out for is a white, one-eyed Wisp, and it’s recommended to keep these in case you spin out, or if you need to tough it through a rough terrain section of the track. It’s also a great item to offer to one of your teammates if they look to be struggling.

Stunts

While many of the tracks have drops rather than jumps, there is plenty of opportunity throughout the game’s various courses to perform a stunt, which when completed successfully will provide a welcoming jolt of speed on landing. You can perform these by pressing the right analogue stick in any direction, with forward and back performing a forward-flip and a back-flip respectively. You can also press it to the right or left to perform a barrel roll which moves your character in the direction you press.

Be careful though. Missing the landing will cause you to spin out and lose all of your collected rings, so use this technique when confident you can complete the stunt.

Team Ultimate

All of the team mechanics contribute to an Ultimate meter for the team. Once it is full, you are prompted to press the Triangle (“Y” on Xbox, “X” on Switch) button to launch your team into its Ultimate ability. This acts in the same way a star does in Mark Kart but for the whole team, offering you invincibility, higher acceleration and top speed for a short time. Falling off the edge will cause you to lose this, but picking your moment to pull the trigger can be enough to push your team’s speed to the absolute limit.

It’s also recommended that you trigger this while around and at the same time as your teammates. This will trigger automatically when playing in single player but will require communication in multiplayer. Doing so should increase the time that the ultimate lasts.

We hope that all of these tips will help you to maintain the speed needed to be king of the track. Happy racing!