History ThatOneLevel / RacingGame

** Ironically, oval racing isn't necessarily as straightforward as UsefulNotes/FormulaOne drivers have found out when they tried their hand at NASCAR, making oval races potentially that one level for drivers more used to the former. Inversely, NASCAR drivers adept at oval racing might hit a hurdle when they need to race on a road course. The car might need a JackOfAllStats setup by the team mechanics due to the wide variety of turns on the track, making the job challenging for them as well.

** The Preview Lap on Waterfront using the Classic Hotrod, which has perhaps the strictest gold medal requirement in the game, at 1:30:00. If there is a Preview Lap with practically ''zero'' margin for error, it is this one; even a clean lap may not be enough, as the gold time is so strict that just scraping against a wall can cost you, given the loss of speed that comes with it; and it's easy for that to happen with how easily the Hotrod slides around. That's not getting into this game's habit of placing traffic in the perfect spot to blindside you, such as at intersections or hills, which will screw you over here. You'll be channeling your inner speedrunner as you try to figure out as many time-saves and optimizations as possible, and you ''will'' be restarting a lot. It also doesn't help that this is one of the last events you'll unlock, throwing up quite a roadblock if you're going for an all-gold-medal playthrough, and it pairs with the above-mentioned penultimate race series to make a nasty endgame two-headed monster. Don't shocked if you're getting the gold time by literal ''milliseconds.''

** The Preview Lap on Waterfront using the Classic Hotrod, which has perhaps the strictest gold medal requirement in the game, at 1:30:00. If there is a Preview Lap with practically ''zero'' margin for error, it is this one; even a clean lap may not be enough, as the gold time is so strict that just scraping against a wall can cost you, given the loss of speed that comes with it; and it's easy for that to happen with how easily the Hotrod slides around. That's not getting into this game's habit of placing traffic in the perfect spot to blindside you, such as at intersections or hills, which will screw you over here. You'll be channeling your inner speedrunner as you try to figure out as many time-saves and optimizations as possible, and you ''will'' be restarting a lot. It also doesn't help that this is one of the last events you'll unlock, throwing up quite a roadblock if you're going for an all-gold-medal playthrough, and it pairs with the above-mentioned penultimate race series to make a nasty endgame two-headed monster.

** The Pinstripe race is cake compared to the final showdown with [[BigBad Nitros Oxide]], however. This is for four reasons: first, he flat-out ''cheats'' by giving himself a head-start at the beginning of the race; second, he has the infinite powerups of [[AllYourPowersCombined all four of the previous bosses combined]]: Ripper's TNT crates, Papu's potions, Komodo Joe's nitro crates and Pinstripe's bombs; third, [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules he's completely immune to being launched]], the best you can do is briefly stun him; and fourth, you race him on Oxide Station, a technical course almost entirely comprised of narrow corridors which make dodging his infinite powerups and overtaking him that much harder, on top of maintaining a lead since, like every other boss, Oxide is considerably faster than you. And to add insult to injury, after you've finally beaten him, he declares [[TheBattleDidntCount the win didn't count]] and makes you collect all the Time Relics - which effectively means you must get OneHundredPercentCompletion, since you need Relics on two courses that must be unlocked by winning all the Gem Cups, which in turn must be unlocked by [[ThatOneSidequest collecting all the CTR tokens]] in the normal races. And after all of that, what happens? You have to ''beat Oxide '''again'''''[[note]]Mercifully however, he isn't any harder the second time you race him, so if you've already beaten him once, odds are good you'll be able to beat him again. [[GuideDangIt And the game doesn't tell you]], but you can actually skip the first race with him altogether if you don't bother to challenge him at all until you get all the relics[[/note]], and only ''then'' does he finally acknowledge his loss.

* ''Cars Race-o-Rama'' had a type of race called Guido Kart, where you play as eight of the small cars (Guido, Luigi, one of Lightning's pit crew, one of Chick's pit crew, a blue pit crew, a white pit crew, Mike, and this yellow car with weird hair on her head). A few of them are really hard, but none of them comes as close as Level 6 does. In Level 6, you have to race around near the entrance to the Rustbucket Arena in Ornament Valley, but the path is so thin and the controls are so sloppy that you'll more than likely end up crashing more than once. There's actually a shortcut after the starting line where you can skip the first U-turn up ahead, but in order to that, you have to pass through the metal rails, which have such small space to get through that there's almost no margin for error to actually ''take'' the shortcut. Worse... ''the items...''

* TruthInTelevision: Monaco ''is'' That One Level in Formula One. It's the only track where drivers who ''failed to finish'' have won because they made it farther than everyone else! Being composed entirely of narrow city streets don't help either.

** Think ''Forza Motorsport 2''[='=]s "New York Circuit" is a nightmare, with its long straightaways and extremely sharp turns? You haven't seen the worst of it. In ''Forza Motorsport 3'', they add tire walls to the circuit, in a zig-zagging pattern, which can catch many racers coming from ''Forza Motorsport 2'' off guard. Hell, it catches the ''computer racers'' off guard. Set the difficulty to easy, and [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments watch at least one car run head on into a tire barrier without fail, which is funny]]... unless they get in your way and make you wreck. You'll be glad for the game's [[AntiFrustrationFeatures rewind button.]]

* The President's Run in ''VideoGame/{{Driver}}''. Your felony meter starts at max, so every cop in town is after you and drives at maximum speed, the roads are slick with rain and snow, and you're driving a slow and sluggishly handling limousine, so the cops are much faster than you. Which leads to you being [[CycleOfHurting helplessly smashed to scrap metal]] after being [=PITted=]. The PSX version also has FBI cars beside the police, and a taxi blockade at the start in all directions. Also the enemy cars are much faster than on all the other levels. Which means they can easily catch up to you with a lot of speed difference and turn you around even when you'r at full speed in the straights. Also they carry so much momentum, that it breaks the game engine and they push you enough as they ram you to clip through walls. At least your car can take more punishment than usual.
** That assumes you got past the ForcedTutorial. Many players ''never actually got to play the game'' because of it.