More damage slows down a dash. Finishing a race on a difficult level increases game time. I believe that all Super Nintendo games that have difficulty levels must be adding up in the tables. this also applies to the percentage of many Super Nintendo games within the speedrun (ANY%) and is more common to be found at the game tables within the speedrun, however it is still possible to carry out races in other phases with other characters and with a percentage completed. nowadays people are looking to do races of all levels and percentages of the games
(all games that only have a % easy category in the table, most of them are outdated, this was certainly the principle for the player not to perform more races in a certain outdated game due to lack of option in the table 100%/difficult/ normal/ 2 players etc)
