Mario Kart World: How To Play 3-Lap Races

Mario Kart World changes the way you race. Most courses now follow a “checkpoint” system that takes your karts through a longer series of paths that don’t give you time to practice your runs or understand the full track layout. You’ll need to memorize a long racetrack instead of getting multiple runs on the same course — but there are ways to bring back that classic 3-Lap racetrack structure. By playing the game in two very specific ways, you can enjoy more laps in Mario Kart World.

If you’re looking for more old-school secrets in Mario Kart World, then check out our guides to farm coins fast, how to unlock Rainbow Road, or how to unlock the secret Mirror Mode engine class. There’s a lot to discover in this game, and a lot of it isn’t explained anywhere. You’ll have to search it out for yourself, and 3-Lap races is one of those weird secrets that shouldn’t be a secret at all.

How To Play 3-Lap Races Offline

3-Lap Races aren’t the norm in Mario Kart World. There are a few ways to focus and avoid checkpoint-style races, but you’ll have to dig into the menus to find them.

• In Grand Prix, play at 150cc speed and you’ll gain additional laps during races. Instead of only racing toward a new location, you’ll race to the location and complete a 3-lap race once you reach the area.

Grand Prix 3-lap races are embedded in courses with 5 checkpoints at 150cc. It sounds complicated but once you play you’ll see what we’re talking about. If you haven’t tried 150cc yet, you may want to try it for a more classic gameplay experience.

For a more straightforward way to play 3-lap courses, you’ll want to select VS Races.

• Select VS Race -> go to the Custom Rules menu and switch “Course Selection” to Open.
• Make sure to set Course Selection to Open instead of Random or Connected.

When Course Selection is set to “Open” you’ll be free to select courses in any order from a list. Select the courses from the world map and only choose the top option (the one at the location, no line going to another location on the map) — while not every location has a 3-lap racecourse, this is easily the best way to get 3-lap courses. More often than not you’ll get a traditional 3-lap course when selecting the top option.

How To Play 3-Lap Races Online

Playing 3-Lap racecourses online is a lot trickier because you won’t be able to select them yourself — the races come up as a vote. When you enter online races, you’ll matchmake with other players on the world map.

When choices appear as vote options, typically you’ll travel to the pictured locations in a race. To avoid these checkpoint races and get traditional lapped races, you’ll want to vote for Random tracks.

• In online play in the Race game mode, select the Random track (blue “?” in the lower-right corner) instead of any of the other pictured tracks. This will randomly select a new location, and these locations are much more likely to be a 3-lap racetrack.

It sounds oddly complicated, but this is basically the only way to race in classic Mario Kart style tracks. New options may get patched in at a later date, but for now this is the only workaround for getting the kind of races you want.