150cc.

I'm pretty sure the "cc" stands for "cheaters' club" because it's highly improbable to win a gold cup in these races without happenstance shining down on you with favor. It's pretty much "let's pick on the player" from "go!"

Basically, in order to win a race, you need two ingredients...

1) A perfect race. I'm a pretty good racer, but it's rare that I'm 100% perfect. Little mistakes quickly turn into 12th place in a matter of seconds. These races demand perfection from you, lest the entire field passes you by.

2) Hideous good fortune. The other racers toss enough cheap shots at you to make Chris Simon envious. No matter where you are - first place, middle of the field, last place after everyone's finished the race (I wish I were kidding) - they'll toss shrinkers, red shells, squid ink... anything to keep you from winning. And it doesn't help that the code controlling all this cheats, too. Too often, I've been losing horrifically, and hoping beyond hope for something useful from a question box (I dunno, like a bullet, for instance?), but, instead I get nothing but mushrooms, which don't really help on a winding course at 150cc. More often than not, it's a death sentence in to lava or off a cliff or whatever. Ugh.

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so disparate between 150 and 100cc. I got gold trophies in all the 100cc races with relative ease. 150cc it's like pulling teeth. Not as much fun as Mario Kart racing should be, if you ask me.