Gingerbread Joyride — Nitros Oxide Time Trial (CTR: Nitro-Fueled)

Oxide Time: 2:03:89 My Time: 1:59:30 Full playlist:    • CTR Nitro-Fueled — Nitros Oxide Time Trials   Season 6 of the Grand Prix is here and with it comes Gingerbread Joyride, the sixth original track released by Beenox. After last season's laughably easy track, be prepared for some whiplash as this is probably the most challenging of all the free tracks to date. Oxide turns in a top-tier time so you will need to keep mistakes to a minimum to best him here. This track has two shortcuts and a single Ultimate Sacred Fire (USF) boost pad. At the start, you can angle your first few slides to hit that first pad off to the right, but don't feel like you have to; once you pick up blue-fire that pad will become irrelevant. Follow the 90-degree bends upward until the track starts to descend, at which point you will arrive at this track's only USF pad. Now your first few times through this track you probably thought the ramp on the right was the shortcut. However, there's a much sneakier shortcut and it's actually directly UNDER that ramp. It requires some practice to consistently nail this shortcut without losing USF, but it's mandatory for clearing the trial. The most important part is angling your approach after picking up USF to give you the best chance of making it through unscathed. Be careful not to hit either side of the gap here as it will cleanse you of blue-fire. Just restart if this happens since it's not worth it to continue. Once through the gap it can help to jump immediately upon landing in order to avoid the snowbanks as they will also kill your blue-fire. Further on you'll come to the second and final shortcut of the track. Try to power slide into it and jump at the last moment. (This shortcut can be used with both SF and USF, but for the time trial you'll want to ensure you have USF.) If done correctly, you can land in a power slide as you head toward the next section. The final section of the track is a series of 90-degree corners, with two chest-bumping Jell-O jerks right before the last bend. These two gave me some trouble because their physics programming isn't always predictable. You'll notice that on the first two laps I slide between them, while on the last lap I hug the left wall. Be ready to make some snap adjustments of your own. If everything went swimmingly, you'll still have USF as you cross the lap marker. To navigate around the 90-bends again, watch your approach angle and don't worry about hitting perfect boosts; the priority here is angling your kart correctly for the next corner. You can lose USF for brief stints and still beat Oxide (he loses it once or twice himself), but for the most part you'll need to maximize your USF uptime as much as possible. I come in about 5 seconds under par time on a not so perfect run, so it's not terribly difficult. Overall, this is a very fun track to master, and slightly less frustrating compared to Nina's Nightmare and its tightly cramped hallway. Enjoy.