Want to become better at Wave Race? This thread is a good place to begin. If you have questions about what settings to use on specific courses, there is another thread for that.

The B button. This is very important in the game, because staying in the water is important to keeping your speed. Tapping B can stablize your jetski so that you do not bob up and down as much, and can better maintain speed. Each B tap kind of pushes down on the jetski to keep it close to the waters surface. Tapping B while moving up out of the water will resist the upward motion and keep the jetski down, but when moving downward, tapping B may result in a hard splash into the water in certain wavy conditions, which could result in a loss of speed. Try to learn to use B in a way that will maintain speed the best you can. The B button is also very useful around turns and can help keep speed pretty well while taking corners.

Lines and turns. In order to keep speed, you can not keep making adjustments to your angles. Especially on straight aways, you want to go as straight as possible so that you can get max speed, and don't turn at all until you have to. This also means you should try to end your turn as soon as possible, at the correct angle so that again, you do not need to make adjustments. Always try to keep on the shortest path available.

Watch videos of top players. Not just my videos, but the other players as well. Learn the lines that we take, and get good with them. Keep in mind though, there may always be a slightly better way to do things, so always look out for things we don't already know, like different paths, even if just slightly different.

The Dive Shortcut. This is tricky, but once you learn it and get it down, it really isn't all that bad. The first part you need to learn is how to execute the dive animation. Practice it on a ramp first. When you are on the ramp, pull back on the stick and then push all the way forward when launching off the ramp, and the rider will crouch and dive the jetski into the water. You can also get the dive to work by using the waves in the game, and this can be used to take some shortcuts. The most useful ones are on Marine Fortress, Twilight City, and even Southern Island. This will take some practice, but it earns you 5 seconds on MF, 3 seconds on TC, and half a second on SI.

Remember, you are allowed 4 buoy misses before you fail. This means you can skip buoys if it makes it faster, which on a lot of levels, it is. That is why it is important to know what the fastest paths are, and I encourage people to try their own thing to see how it is, but at least be aware of the current strats and compare them.

Play Time Trial first. I know it is exciting to get through the whole game on your favorite difficulty, but what is really going to make you a beast at the game is playing individual levels, and getting each levels time the best that you can. Trust me, once you have great times on each course, you will be able to absolutely destroy any Championship Mode time you could get before you spent time in Time Trial.

This game takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. You can not expect to just pick up the game and get a 1'03 on Sunny Beach even in the first week of playing. It takes a lot of discipline which makes accomplishing goal times extremely rewarding!

If anyone has any questions, post them here and I will ocasionally update this post.

The dive is required to get a good time on MF because it saves more than 4 whole seconds on the timer. Definitely a must! It is a bit tricky though!