The idea of combining this target lap times and only refreshing energy when you meet the target time is very cool!!
But I dunno what exactly you mean with this gates... Is it like an alternate route is opening up [which might be hard to do coding-wise in terms of nodes & checkpoints], or is it like you have tiny gates on the existing route that you need to hit?

Oh and for the name... How about "Velociraptor"? xd