Speed Racer

The road in this one is not empty. Other cars move along it at varying speeds, and the job is threading the gaps that open briefly between them rather than pinning the throttle and hoping the way stays clear.

What has to be read is relative speed. A car that looks comfortably distant but is travelling much more slowly becomes an obstacle sooner than the eye expects. Drivers who crash a lot judge purely by the space; the ones who overtake smoothly check whether that space is widening or closing before committing to it.

Once that clicks, a run stops being about survival and becomes about stringing overtakes together, which feels quite different from racing on an empty circuit. That is why people who like road racing tend to prefer this to the pure time-trial titles nearby.