The times you get on pal are almost always slower than on ntsc. Most of the pal versions are more floaty so on particular tracks, you can actually get a faster time. I did notice however when I linked xl and 2097 together, that the pal version's timer counted down quite a bit faster than the ntsc version. I think the pal ship might actually move faster, but the timer ends up showing a slower time. This might have been because they were linked though. I would have done an infinite autopilot test in link mode but when the games are linked it only accepts one of the entries.