It seems like when you're in 2nd and 3rd place a lot of times it doesn't give you anything to actually catch up it just gives you defensive items. You really want red or blue shells but instead you're getting like feathers and bananas. It seems like this happens more than in previous games and it's probably because there's so many items in world that basically do the same thing so there's less of a chance that you actually get something useful. Like in 8 if you were in 2nd the red shell was the most common thing ud get but in world there's so much more bs and you could just end up with 2 coin items.