The SHIRO! Community Crosses the F1 Challenge Finish Line

The checkered flag is waving as the SHIRO! community celebrates the end of an exhilarating month of F1 Challenge! Step away from your sweat-slicked Arcade Racers, fingers off those worn shifters, pop the champagne and let loose. Last month’s challenge announcement can be read here.

Racers spent the month memorizing every turn and straight away, calculating wings arrangements to shave off fractions of a second, striving for the for SHIRO! Grand Chelem podium — awards given to the three lowest total time across the game’s six arcade courses. The eight-lap nature of F1 Challenge’s arcade tracks calls for more endurance than your average racer. Four of the tracks take 10 or more minutes to complete, mastering each was a task demanding a considerable level of focus and dedication.

Double Dime was the first competitor to submit a time for each track — with a combined time of 58:28.808 — securing a tentative position atop the standings at the mid-point of the month. His tenure on top would prove short-lived, however, as Pandamonium would overtake him by nearly two full minutes, combined time 56:28.867, the following day.

On May 22, Rasputin3000 became the third competitor to complete the arcade gauntlet, with a time 57:33.059, pushing Double Dime into a third-place position, but over a minute short of the lead. Pandamonium’s first place time held for over a week but did eventually fall to WorldlyBoar’s truly impressive 55:07.964 on the 25th of May.

Double Dime was then out of the top three, but the podium was not yet set. In fact, the top three did not take on its final form until night of May 31, when then-fourth-place Kusanagi765 posted a trio of time improvements — fittingly on the trio of Neo City courses — lowering their combined time to 56:46.964, bringing Rasputin3000’s nearly 10-day stint on the podium to an end.

The length of each course in Arcade Mode led the Community Challenge planning committee to favor Time Attack mode. While this did somewhat limit play expression as vehicle customization is absent from Time Attack, the significantly lessened time investment relative to Arcade Mode encouraged participation and incremental improvement.

Six of the seven event categories played were focused on achieving the lowest possible lap time in Time Attack. Half of these challenges were available all month long — those being Glory Runner (Hockenheim), Overpassed (Suzuka), and Crowned (Monte Carlo). The other three events, Recon Lapper, Qualified, and Super Licensee, all took place on variations of the Neo City course (Novice, Advanced, and Expert respectively) and were weekly challenges.

Title: Shiro Monthly Challenge — Suzuka Best Lap — 01:16.778

Rink Rat was the big winner in the Best Lap events, winning Glory Runner (winning time 1.18.871), Crowned (winning time 1:04.712), Qualified (winning time 00:46.760), and Super Licensee (winning time 1.11.906). No other contestant claimed the top spot on more than one course in Time Attack. That is not to say that stellar times were not submitted, however. Double Dime would take home the Recon Lapper prize with a record low time 00:37.244, passing Rink Rat’s time of 00:37.441 by the smallest of margins.

Shadowmask submitted as single time to the SHIRO! May F1 Challenge, after being effectively goaded into participating live on the SHIRO! Show (5/29/2026), and this submission of 01:16.778 on the Suzuka course was not only an impressive — and ultimately victorious — top time, but a world record time. You can see the video capture of that run above.  

The results of the SHIRO! May Community Challenge would seem to indicate that the Ferrari Team is top tier in F1 Challenge, with all but one course/lap even seeing an alternative winner, that being Rink Rat using the Williams/Renault Team on the Monte Carlo course. Note that the Tyrell Team was excluded from this competition due to cheats exclusively available to that team.

While hardly an underrated title, F1 Challenge was not exactly a common recommendation. A month of intensive gear-shifting and strategic speed-control later and many in the SHIRO! community has embraced F1 Challenge’s specific brand of racing. Sega Rally and Daytona USA might still sit secularly atop most Saturn racing games hierarchy, but true to mission statement of the SHIRO! Community Challenge, F1 Challenge is at least in the conversation.

As the top finisher in the SHIRO! Grand Chelem, WorldlyBoar has earned the coveted challenge winner exclusive hat. All prize winners will be receiving bespoke magnets designed by SaturnDave and made by Xiden.

An archived copy of the tracking spreadsheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u-zPJWqpASE-ckdt-f4hmaQ1Al9-YMLUha9esCKI52Q/edit?usp=sharing

THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING!