When it comes to racing games, I’ll admit that my tendencies are decidedly more in the arcade or combat-oriented direction, with more simulation-style titles typically leaving me more cold. Part of it is that buckling down and taking everything more seriously doesn’t feel like quite as much fun, but I’ve also found that sim racers on the Switch have often had touchier controls that have done them no favors as well. Feeling like it mostly falls somewhere in between, Hot Lap Racing has controls that do feel approachable, though I did get aggravated by the odd training exercises it took to simply start racing.

But before getting to some aggravations we’ll get to what works. Overall, once I got used to the general feel of the track and how car’s typically handled, I found that it worked pretty well. Aside from differences in their speed, each of the classes of cars also feel like they had their own nuances in their controls, aside from the nature of their races also differing. Hitting a NASCAR-style oval makes for some real differences from a more turn-laden road course, and I found the variety welcome. In addition, it didn’t feel terribly hard to adapt outside of simply getting used to braking distances and the proper touch and speed in turns.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some issues though, with the first being the aforementioned training you’ll need to complete. I really found this to be grating, even as I understood that its goal was to help prepare me with an understanding of proper driving techniques while moving through turns and other elements. The gates made sense, but being knocked out for hitting a cone or not turning, accelerating, or braking at the moment you passed through it was needlessly strict. In particular when playing racing games without analog triggers the tendency is to need to feather your brakes or accelerator, and that didn’t marry well with the rules established for the gates. That made these take longer than they needed to, especially since once I was on the track I didn’t have any major issues. Well, except when making contact with other drivers. The AI drivers just seem to be experts in making you spin out on a whim, but try as I might I couldn’t reliably do the same. That isn’t to say without more time and practice you couldn’t get better at it, but the fact that it felt like your opponents were ready to spin you out at any time also felt like it got away from what I assumed was more a focus on realistic racing the game was shooting for.

All of that leaves you with a pretty good, and generally approachable, racing game that forgoes more arcade-like thrills for a bit more technique. Considering that this style of racing, and racing with these classes of cars is more uncommon on the system, it does earn a bit of a pass in my mind. Not everything is quite as I’d like, but I also understand that this is probably the best overall implementation I’ve played on the system for something like Formula 1 racing. With that in mind, if you feel the desire to tackle some racing that takes itself a bit more seriously you should probably give it a look.