For most of Star Wars Episode One Racer's speedrunning history, it was pretty much 100% Time Attack Mode. However, now there is Tournament Speedrunning too, and the strategies can be radically different for Time Attack Mode.
Here are some of the main differences between the two.
Tournament Mode: At the start of Tournament Mode, you can only play the first tracks of the Amateur, Semi-Pro, and Galactic Circuits, and have stock parts that can be upgraded via Watto's Shop and/or the Junkyard. However, Watto's Shop and the Junkyard are never used in no upgrade speedruns of any kind due sticking with the stock parts all the way through.
When you do tournament mode upgrade speedruns however, there is a much more delicate and strategic aspect to doing them. You start out with one Pit Droid, and you can buy up to 3 more in Watto's Shop. Each Pitdroid will prevent damage to one upgraded part, and if you are upgrading more stats than you have Pit Droids, you will be gambling on a part failing after the race. This means with the max number of 4 Pit Droids, you will be gambling by default with your parts when you upgrade 5 or more parts. When you can only get the highest level parts in the Junkyard until finishing almost all of the Amateur, Semi-Pro, and Galactic tracks, striking out on a damaged part (Especially Top Speed) can easily be catastrophic to your speedrunning, and especially on single circuit runs where you will not beat enough tracks to be able to buy those high level parts brand new.
The best way to go about this is to only upgrade as many parts as you have pit droids to avoid the risk of damaging your upgraded parts. As for the top 4 stats to upgrade, the first by far is Top Speed due to directly tying into how fast you can go on the track. The second priority is Cooling since it determines how fast you can recharge the boost and therefore how much you can use the booster. Third and Fourth are the Handling Stats of Traction and Turning. This will force you to leave Acceleration, Air Brake, and Repair at stock part level if you want to avoid damaging your investments. Of those 3 stats left stock, you rarely use the brakes, and ideally should not be using repair. Because of not being forced to use the brakes outside of a handful of tracks, acceleration less of a concern when you do not need them for the most part. To afford these upgrades, make sure to set the prize money distribution to Winner Takes All for the maximum amount of money, and to unlock podracers in Tournament mode.
Time Attack Mode: To be truly effective in Time Attack Mode, you need to wait until you have unlocked all the tracks and racers in the game. There are 2 reasons for this:
- The King of Time Attack mode in Ben Quadinaros is the track favorite of Inferno, and Inferno can only be raced on after winning the Amateur, Semi-Pro, and Galactic Circuits in full. Ben Quadinaros is the fastest pod max upgraded, and the fastest reliable pod without upgrades as the only pod faster than him without upgrades in Boles Roor has significant reliability problems at low framerates.
- You need to buy all the highest level parts brand new in Watto's Shop to even stand a chance at Max Upgrade Time Attack mode.
Since Time Attack Mode does not damage upgraded parts, you can max out and go for broke with impunity. Most Max Upgrade Time Attack Records were done with Ben Quadinaros, with Bullseye Navoir rounding up the remainder not done with Ben apart from glitch runs using Mars Guo. However, Ben Quadinaros takes such insane skill to use on some tracks that most players will probably be better off using Bullseye Navoir or Mars Guo for some tracks. On no upgrade time attack mode, Boles Roor is theoretically the fastest pod on every track, but the extreme difficultly to use him at lower framerates makes Ben Quadinaros and Mars Guo far safer and more reliable than him at low frame rates.
For more information on these details, check out the other guides on here for more specifics on how to go about your runs, and which podracers are the most optimal for each type of speedrun.
