Upgrades: Grip, Acceleration and Top Speed
Three pickups on the track make your truck a little better for the rest of the set. Here is what each one does, how far it goes, and how the pickups are shared with everyone in the race.
Besides the green nitro canisters, every race now has three upgrade pickups on the track: Grip, Acceleration and Top Speed. Drive over one and that part of your truck goes up a level. The levels stay with you through all three races of the set, so a pickup you take in race 1 is still working in race 3.
What each upgrade does
Each upgrade has four levels, and each level adds the same step. The numbers below are at the game’s pace of 1.5.
| Upgrade | Each level adds | No upgrade | Level 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top Speed | 2.5% a level | 450 | 495 |
| Acceleration | 5% a level | the usual pull | 20% stronger |
| Grip | 0.05 a level | 0.6 | 0.8 |
Top Speed raises your ceiling above 450. Acceleration gets you back up to speed sooner after a corner, a brake or a hit. Grip is the tyres’ limit described in the cornering guide: at 0.8 they take out a slide a third as fast again as at 0.6, so a hard corner at speed slides less and settles sooner.
Level 4 is the top
Every upgrade stops at level 4. A truck that is full in an upgrade drives through that pickup and leaves it where it is, for someone else. The same goes for nitro: holding the three canisters you can carry, you drive through the next one too.
The burst
Each upgrade pickup also gives a 1-second burst of speed at half a nitro’s extra speed: the ceiling rises towards 675, where a nitro tops out at 900. It spends no nitro, and pressing Space during the burst starts the nitro as usual.
One of each per race, shared by everyone
The track holds one of each upgrade per race, and ten nitros. The pickups are shared: every driver sees the same ones. One truck takes it and it disappears for everyone, not just for the driver who took it. So a pickup you take is one a rival does not get.
Each pickup comes back once, 10 seconds later: it appears again on a tile 3 to 8 tiles behind the leading human, so whoever is in front cannot have them all and whoever is behind has something to chase. Take it a second time and it is gone until the next race.
The comeback pickup is placed by where the leading human is when it returns, not by where you are. Whoever is in front cannot count on having it again, and a driver a few tiles behind the leader has the best chance of it.
The levels last the set
Your levels carry over the three races of a set and start again from nothing in the next set. The standings between races and Final Standings show them under YOUR TRUCK, so you can see what you are racing with next.
Computer drivers
Computer drivers take none. They drive past the upgrade pickups and the nitro, have no upgrades and race at their own tuning (see the multiplayer guide). Every human in the lobby has the same chances of the pickups, which is the point of sharing them.
Hits are unchanged
Upgrades do not change how trucks hit each other. A faster truck still pushes a slower one, and a 300-unit side shove still slides a truck about 35 units, whatever your levels. Grip does not make you a wall, and Top Speed does not make you immune.
Days before the upgrades
Days raced before 5 November keep private nitros and no upgrades: a replay of one of those days races the old rules, and its leaderboard was set under them.
For how the canisters work, see the nitro guide.