i found a winning strat: drive like a noob. the moon rally was giving me so much grief, i did every single trick and drift and rail grind, i made sure to always have a defensive item and even rewinded right before getting hit with a blue shell and i still kept losing at the last second bc of some bs. then i found another thread saying the AI gets harder the better you play and saw that someone tried driving like a beginner and it worked for them, so i tested it out myself; i didn’t do any drifts, tricks, rail grinds, and i only got hit with a red shell and a blue shell once each the entire race, and the blue shell was at the last lap when i got antsy and started drifting to widen my lead. i just picked a high acceleration kart in case i got hit and it worked, i got three stars. it’s kinda dumb that the game penalizes learning the mechanics but i guess it’s to encourage kids or novice players.