For those of you who have been wondering what a Time Trial race is in multiplayer, eLhabib and myself have taken that little experiement the other night, and I forgot to share the results with you guys.
The time trial race is exactly that - a time trial. You get no weapon pads, a single turbo per lap, and you race as fast as you can. The opponents show as ghosts on the track so you know how fast they're going, but there's no physical contacts or collisions.
I found that rather boring, really. A no-weapons race would have been more exciting, since there'd have been collisions and would have been a big bumper cars contest ;)