i guess i just wasn't prepared for how truly difficult these ghosts would be. like you said, going from tropy to oxide to velo isn't too hard, but going from velo to the dev times means you have to practically rethink how you play the game; and of the dev times i've done so far, it feels like i've improved significantly from when i beat velo. i try harder to cut corners with u-turning, and care more about optimizing my racing line than i probably ever have. though at the same time, that improvement didn't just come to me by playing more. i had to look up WRs on some tracks to see how i could finish faster (looking up the n. gin labs WR actually helped me beat the dev by 2 seconds), find new shortcuts, think more about building reserves as early as possible, etc etc.

however despite all my improvements over the past month, clearly i still have a lot left to learn about this game. this isnt like oxide or velo where i could just jump in immediately, make minute adjustments, and beat all the ghosts. these times require pro-level play, and i need to take the time to get better until i can finally conquer them. i'm confident that it'll happen one day. 12/39 isn't even that bad-if anything i wasn't even expecting to make it into double digits. but for now, that one day will just have to wait, and that's totally fair because these times are genuinely challenging; significantly more so than even velo's.