Races

Cars lined up at the beginning of a race

Seeing race results at the end of a race

Races are the central and most important feature of Nitro Type. In a race, racers try to type a passage or body of text faster than each other. Each racer's position is represented by a car on the track.

Types

There are two types of races: regular races and friend races. Practice races were removed in the v3 update.

Regular races

Arriving at the finish line (on the old track)

The disqualification message

Regular races, also known as the "main track", are public races. When one enters a regular race, their car will show up on the race track. The race track holds five racers in total. The racers can either be real people or bots that join the race if there are no available players for matchmaking in a player's speed range. After that, a few seconds will be given before the race begins. During this time, the text to be typed during the race is unveiled below the race track. There used to be an advertisement banner with Flag Girl alongside it. This was removed with the release of Nitro Type 2.0 in 2015.

The length of the text depends on the average typing speed of the player, meaning that regardless of speed, the passage will take around 25 seconds to complete without a nitro. When the countdown finishes, the text below the race will be able to be typed, and the person racing is supposed to begin typing, usually with the goal of completing the text and reaching the finish line before the other players or bots racing with them. A nitro can be used to skip a word, which will push the player further ahead. If more than twelve seconds pass without any characters being typed, they will be disqualified. If a racer is disqualified from races 5 times in a row, they will be unable to race for a short period.

Message that appears if you hit your caps lock key during a race.

Upon completion, the race results will be shown and the player will receive rewards. The rewards earned depend on a few different factors. Another race can be entered by refreshing the page, pressing the "enter" key on the keyboard, or clicking the "Race Again" button on the bottom right of the screen.

Friend races

Friend races are identical to regular races, except they are only reserved for one player and other people invited from their friend list or who join using the player's join link. There is also a canned chat for friend races. The maximum number of players that one can invite to a friend race is 4. There are two friend race modes: Casual and First To Finish.

Practice races

Practice races were a type of race that would automatically start upon a player's entrance. The player would be given a full text to type that was not shortened relative to their speed. Practice races were completely private as only one player could be in one. The Practicer, Practice Makes Perfect, and Lord of the Practice achievements could be completed by doing practice races. They were removed with the release of Nitro Type v3.

Race tracks

The Nitro Speedway Track

The Seaside Rally Track.

The Heritage Trail Track.

The Nitro City Track.

There used to be several different tracks that were available to race on. They were chosen randomly at the start of each race, except during some Xmaxx and Summer events. During these events, using an event car would change the track to the theme of the event. For instance, during an Xmaxx Event, the track would be snowy with tinsel and Hanukkah menorahs in the bleachers. In summer, a beach theme would take over. Other tracks included a desert track, a forest, and a few others, which can all be viewed below. On November 11, 2020, the various different race tracks were removed and replaced with the HD track, complete with a dynamic crowd. The HD track originally only had one track, similar to the grass track below. However, on May 7, 2021, a Seaside Rally track was added, along with accompanying sound effects, like a new crowd and seagull sounds. On October 4, 2021, The Heritage Trail track was released, complete with sound effects and animated leaves. On November 22, 2021, the Nitro City track was released, complete with animated lights and a rain animation.

Forest Track:

Arctic Track:

Beach Track:

Alternate Beach Track:

Desert Track:

Grass Track:

Holiday Track:

Pro tips

While waiting for racers to join the race, there is a pro tips box at the bottom of the race screen. These tips range from basic typing advice to encouraging players to thank their teachers.

Alternate tactics and exploits

There are multiple methods that players have used in the past to complete more races in shorter amounts of time, typically to give themselves unfair advantages, mostly in the context of the leaderboards. Below is a list of some of the strategies used.

Cheating

Cheating, commonly known as "hacking" or "botting", is the most common method of exploiting races. Cheaters run a typing program or script in order to automatically input keystrokes. They can modify it to simulate human errors and use nitros. All typing programs and scripts are bannable, and any non-Gold member will be permanently banned for cheating.

Other cheats exist, such as ones that allow players to change the text, use infinite nitros, type multiple characters or words within a single keystroke (e.g. macros), or see the longest word in the race. With the exception of being able to see the longest word, all of these cheats are bannable.

Sandbagging

Sandbagging is the purposeful lowering of typing speed to race in lower speed ranges. This technique is effective for a few reasons:

• There are more racers in lower speed ranges. Thus, the races will load faster, allowing players to increase the ratio of races completed to amount of time spent.
• Lower speed ranges have shorter texts, requiring less keystrokes (and therefore less energy)
  • For some players, it increases the chances that they can obtain a new high speed due to not having to maintain a high speed for longer periods of time.
• It allows for multitasking, as a player who is in a speed range lower than their actual speed can take frequent stops during the race without losing or getting disqualified.

Sandbagging was commonly used to earn certain achievement titles such as "God Mode" and "Holiday Hacker". However, with the removal of these achievements and certain measures taken by the admins to discourage sandbagging, the method has fallen out of mainstream use. It can still be used to complete the "Winning Races" Daily Challenges faster.

Nitrolling

Nitrolling is the skillful use of nitros, usually at the end of a race, to taunt or "troll" other players by stealing the win from them. The game itself has made references to nitrolling (ex. the Salty sticker). This tactic is also commonly used alongside sandbagging where the racer may slow down after speeding up to use a nitro. If a user uses a nitro on the last word, their car will come to a stop at the finish line while the nitro animation is playing even though they are not in the race sequence. This term was originally coined by Vielle in 2012.

Guest racing

Guest racing is a method that involves opening their friend race track link on four other browsers or devices while running autorefresh on them. The effect of this is that, when joining their own friend race track, each race will begin instantly. This eliminates bot load times, giving the player a massive competitive advantage.

Guest racing was used to speed up race load times as far back as 2013 by racers such as Vielle and former moderator andrew1167. It was used once again in 2017 during Season 1 by Nightmare to boost his team, resulting in a controversy that essentially made guest racing a taboo. Despite this, it was used once again by Galaxied and ayeyuhskuh during Season 18, an action that prompted the admins to drastically cut bot load times for racers above 100 WPM and disallowing multiple guest racers from joining a single friend race.

It is not currently known whether this tactic is still banned, but due to the aforementioned reductions in bot load times and the fact that only one guest racer can join a single friend race, it is no longer necessary.

Account sharing

An account-sharing player gives other players their account info to do races for them. This tactic is allowed but has been historically been frowned upon among community members. It also increases the likelihood of the account being stolen. This creates a huge risk, especially considering the fact that many people who get their account stolen are usually unable to retrieve it.

Multi-tracking

Multi-racing (also referred to as multi-tracking) is the process of racing on multiple windows at once. Multi-tracking takes two forms:

• Doing multiple races at once on a single account. This method was first used by Nightmare during Season 1. His reporting of it lead to the creation of the Bug Smasher achievement and title. The method was also used and reported by ayeyuhskuh during Season 18, after which it was patched.
• Doing multiple races at once, spread out among different accounts. This method is essentially a combination of the above form of multi-tracking, account sharing, and sandbagging. It was invented by Vielle during Season 39. The method was mainly used by SECT members and was broadcasted on the Top Type YouTube channel. This method is largely used to optimize race and point efficiency for a team. One can race on more than one account at once by using another incognito window, computer, or browser instance. This form of multi-racing is allowed by the admins. Players using the method have been able to complete up to 5,000 races in 12 hours using 4 accounts.

Completing races using multi-racing, like guest racing, is largely considered to be more intensive on the player than it would typically be due to the fact that both methods allow very little time for breaks. Multi-racing specifically requires the player to switch windows every 8 seconds (if racing on two accounts) due to the disqualification timer, and this time period decreases as the number of accounts the player wishes to use increases. Because of this, multi-racing is only used by the most experienced of players, due to it requiring an immense amount of knowledge regarding other game tactics such as sandbagging and account-sharing and requiring the player to have a reasonably high typing speed and familiarity with keyboard shortcuts.

Nitro Speedway Track v3

Heritage Trail Track v3

Seaside Rally Track v3