So the way I have played these games is in each mario kart I try to find one track and get a top 10 time trial on it and have usually succeeded. But I only bought this game a week or so ago and I guess there must be some sort of drifting techniques I don't fully understand because the world record time seems to get ahead of me for seemingly no obvious reason.

The top 10 times are all 1:47:xx mostly and mine is 1:50:xx and I know its hard to really help without being able to see it but I guess my main concern is I notice that when I race their ghosts, they get out to a quicker start(not talking about the pressing A at the 2 countdown thing lol) and are already noticeably ahead of me right at the very first turn/drift part which is literally like 1 or 2 seconds into the race.

I feel like if i can figure this part out it might just be more of that same thing across other parts of the track keeping my time down. Its not that im not drifting as sharply as he does or getting my boost as quick, we both (as far as I can tell) drift similarly as sharp right around that corner and both of our different colored boosts trigger at the same spots on the track, he just somehow is getting to that spot quicker than me and its like right at the beginning 2 seconds or so where im noticing the biggest difference.

I was wondering if the soft drifting was it after I looked it up but wasn't sure, and when I look it up no one really seems to have discussed how to do it for Deluxe other than people saying things like it is more like a 60-70 degree angle rather than a 45 degree angle in prior version but no one actually seems to have it in writing anywhere or any concise agreement on how its done in this game