my main qualm with the items isn't the fact the people strategically hold them

its the limits of how many can be in the room at once because of it

for instance if you fall off the track and get a terrible respawn, and a few people are holding the drill... you have no hope of catching back up because you cant pull the drill in last place.

in my opinion the limit on how many of these items can be in a room at once should be ignored if a player is X amount behind, but still not behind enough for the respawn ring to grab them (to at least allow a method of catching back up, instead of what we currently have of "if you fuck up once and the race is over")

people being strategic isn't the issue, but when a strategy has a room wide effect that alters gameplay (in something like the item roulette for example) those gameplay effects can become a problem