Best Crash Team Racing characters: Who are the top racers in Nitro Fueled?

Even though the stats for each racer were visibly displayed in the original game, there's always been some disparity between the best Crash Team Racing characters. Is N. Tropy better than Nitros Oxide? Is Penta Penguin really the fastest character? In Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled, the original roster of characters makes a return alongside a bunch of pals, but which are the best Crash Team Racing characters in Nitro Fueled?

Best Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled characters

The original Crash Team Racing had unique stats for every single character, which meant that a couple of characters were considered the outright best due to their top speed and turning capabilities. This isn't really the case in Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled, because despite there being 26 characters on launch and more coming later down the line, there's only actually four sets of stats for them.

In the beginner category, every single character has the same stats: 3 Speed, 4 Acceleration, and 7 Turning. These characters are great for anyone who's new to Crash Team Racing and kart racers in general, and from the start there's just Polar and Pura available, so we can recommend them if you're a newbie.

The intermediate category of racers is where you can find two different sets of stats: 5 Speed, 5 Acceleration, and 5 Turning, or 4 Speed, 7 Acceleration, and 3 Turning. From the start of the game, Crash Bandicoot and Dr. Neo Cortex have the former while Coco Bandicoot has the latter, and this is down to personal preference; I personally prefer playing with the 5/5/5 characters here, because Acceleration isn't as important as the other two.

Finally, you have the advanced class. Tiny Tiger and Dingodile are the only two characters that you can use from the get-go, and every racer here has 7 Speed, 3 Acceleration, and 2 Turning. These are the best characters when you become a Crash Team Racing master, because speed is the best attribute by far and once you can power slide endlessly round every course, having the highest speed is vital.

To actually answer the question on the best Crash Team Racing characters, it's anybody in the advanced category: Tiny Tiger, Dingodile, Penta Penguin, Papu Papu, Crunch, Big Norm, Zem, and N. Tropy. Unless some characters have hidden stats we haven't found out about yet (we'll update this guide if they do!), there isn't one character who is "meta" or one you're guaranteed to see in every online race. Yes, you can unlock Penta Penguin with one of the many Crash Team Racing cheats, but he's not quite as broken as he once was.

Crash Team Racing review | Crash Team Racing tips | Crash Team Racing shortcuts | Crash Team Racing cheats | Crash Team Racing N. Tropy | Crash Team Racing Grand Prix