Ghost racing means racing a translucent recording of a real run, replayed on the course while you drive it. The ghost is your own best, another player's or a friend's, and it passes through you, so it is a target rather than a car you can block. It has nothing to do with horror games. Mars Rally Championship, our free browser rally game, lets you race any leaderboard run's ghost or the top three at once. PolyTrack runs up to ten in a browser; Trackmania (download) and Mario Kart World (console) are the best-known elsewhere.
In-game screenshot: the opt-in rival field on Stage 2, the board's three fastest runs as gold, silver and bronze ghosts a few lengths ahead.
The quick picks
- Best for ghosts of server-checked runs: Mars Rally Championship (ours), whose board ghosts are recorded from the server's re-simulation of each run. It wins only that label.
- Most ghosts at once in a browser: PolyTrack, up to ten.
- Ghosts as the whole opponent list: DashCraft.io, where every opponent is the ghost of a player who finished the track.
- Deepest ghost system, if you will install it: Trackmania, with record ghosts you can download as files.
- Best on a console: Mario Kart World, whose Time Trials let you download ghosts from friends, top players or developers.
- Best iPhone app for racing a friend's ghost: Daily Racer.
What a ghost is, and what it isn't
A ghost is a recording of a car's path, replayed beside you as a translucent copy that you drive straight through. It cannot block you or bump you; all it can do is show where one run gains time on another.
The phrase turns up other things too. itch.io's ghosts-plus-racing tag is full of horror-themed racers, and Ghost Racing was the name of a 2018–19 Formula E app that put fans in a ghost car against the live race; we could not confirm it still exists. This post covers the time-trial meaning, which is old: Mario Kart 64's Time Trials already saved a ghost of a record run.
A ghost is also not the run itself. In Mars Rally Championship the ghosts you race are 30 fps tracks of position, rotation and speed, drawn as a rover at 25% opacity. The run behind a board time is stored as an input tape of throttle, brake, steer, handbrake, gear and recover, a few kilobytes that re-simulate bit for bit (how that determinism works). A ghost is a picture of a run; the tape is the proof.
Diagram: the ghost you race is 30 poses a second; the run is 60 input entries a second, which the server re-simulates to record that ghost.
Five kinds of ghost
Your own best. The cleanest feedback: same car, same line, one corner different. Mars Rally Championship lets you RACE your own board run, Track Racer IO records a ghost of your fastest lap and Daily Racer records your laps.
A leaderboard rival. A ranked stranger's run, usually a faster one. PolyTrack lets you pick them from its leaderboard. Mars Rally Championship offers any run on a stage's boards and, by default, puts the pilot just above your best on track.
A friend's ghost. One that reaches you by link or share. Mars Rally Championship's results screen can share a challenge link to your run, and the ghost it opens stays through your friend's retries until they beat it. Daily Racer shares ghosts with friends, and Mario Kart World downloads friends' ghost data.
A field of ghosts. Several at once. PolyTrack allows up to ten, Mars Rally Championship's opt-in rival field takes the top three, and DashCraft.io fills its whole field with them.
Live ghost-style racing. Real people on the course at the same moment, in cars that pass through each other. Mars Rally Championship takes up to eight pilots a room. Track Racer IO and PolyTrack have multiplayer too, but whether their cars pass through each other is not confirmed.
Diagram: the table confirms other players' ghosts for seven of the eight games, but only two state how many run at once: PolyTrack 10, ours 3.
Ghost racing games compared
What we compared: whether you can race your own best, other players' leaderboard ghosts and a friend's ghost by link; how many ghosts share the road; and whether live races use ghost-style cars. Competitor details come from developer pages, devlogs, documentation, store listings and press coverage; "not confirmed" means none we checked states it. Ours come from the game's code. Last checked: October 2026. Mars Rally Championship is first because it is ours; the rest are browser games first, then downloads, consoles and apps, each labelled.
| Game | Where it runs | Your own ghost | Other players' ghosts | A friend's ghost | Ghosts at once | Live ghost-style races |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mars Rally Championship Play | Browser, no account | RACE on your own board run | Any run on a stage's 3 boards | A challenge link races that board run | Top 3 (rival field, opt-in) | Up to 8, no collisions |
| PolyTrack | Browser | Not confirmed | Picked from the leaderboard | Not confirmed | Up to 10 | Experimental multiplayer since 0.6.0 |
| DashCraft.io | Browser, desktop only | Not confirmed | Every opponent | Not confirmed | Several; number not confirmed | Not confirmed |
| Track Racer IO | Browser, early build | Your fastest lap | Yes | Not confirmed | Not confirmed | Up to 4 racers |
| Trackmania (download) | PC and consoles | Not confirmed | Leaderboard ghosts with Club access | Record ghosts as files via trackmania.io | Not confirmed | Not confirmed |
| Mario Kart World (console) | Nintendo Switch 2 | Yes, in Time Trials | Top players' and developers' ghosts | Friends' ghost data | Not confirmed | Not confirmed |
| Musclecar Online (download) | Steam | Not confirmed | Ghost laps sorted into six divisions | Not confirmed | Not confirmed | Not confirmed |
| Daily Racer (app) | iPhone | Your recorded laps | Not confirmed | Share ghosts with friends | Not confirmed | Not confirmed |
Mars Rally Championship: race any board run, or the top three at once
Our game, listed first for that reason. This is Mars Rally Championship's own site; everything below it is grouped browser first, then downloads, consoles and apps, and judged on its merits.
Mars Rally Championship is a free 3D rally game that runs in the browser with no download, no install and no account. Every stage has three boards (forward, reversed and storm), shown 50 runs to a sheet on the leaderboard, and every run has REPLAY and RACE. RACE puts that run's ghost beside you. Switch on the rival field, off by default, and a timed forward run starts with the top three board ghosts at once.
You don't have to pick a ghost. Until you have a time on a stage, the one on track is the board's fastest run. After that, your forward retries race the pilot just above your best, named in a RIVAL tag with their lead over you, and beating them brings up the next name. Each gate you clear flashes your split against that ghost to the hundredth, with a minus when you are ahead.
What sets the ghosts apart is where they come from. The server re-simulates every submission from its input tape before the time posts and records the board ghost from that re-simulation, so the rover you chase drove a run the server checked. Every stage also opens with the tire tracks of its board's three fastest runs already pressed into the regolith (fewer on a young board), so you can read the leaders' lines before any ghost loads. Ghost racing explained covers how the ghosts work, step by step.
In-game screenshot: Stage 1, The Eight, at night, just past the start gate: the board's fastest runs have already pressed their ruts into the regolith ahead.
The limits are real. A ghost is a 30 fps pose recording, faithful to the verified run but not itself re-simulated. The rival field tops out at three ghosts where PolyTrack shows up to ten. Board ghosts exist only for runs on the board, and the boards are young: the Stage 1 and Stage 3 boards restarted empty on 2026-10-11. Only three stages are drivable. The file you can save is a replay video, not a ghost. The game takes a gamepad, and touch controls on screens under 1200 px wide.
Play free — no downloadPolyTrack: up to ten ghosts in a browser tab
PolyTrack is a low-poly time-attack racer by Kodub, free in a browser on itch.io, Poki and CrazyGames. Per its devlog, version 0.3.0 added leaderboards and picking opponents from them (seen as ghosts, per Poki's guide), 0.4.0 (29 July 2024) added leaderboard replays and touch controls, 0.5.0 (April 2025) let you race or watch up to ten ghosts at once, and 0.6.0 (10 March 2026) added experimental multiplayer.
PolyTrack beats Mars Rally Championship on ghosts, ten to three, and on tracks against our three stages. We could not confirm whether it keeps your own best as a ghost, lets you send one to a friend, needs an account or lets its multiplayer cars collide.
DashCraft.io: the leaderboard is the starting grid
DashCraft.io is a racer on tracks other players build, and it is the clearest case of a game made of ghosts. Its CrazyGames listing says every opponent is the ghost of another player who finished the track. The listing shows it as a browser game for desktop only, released in February 2022 and last updated in October 2024.
Your own ghost, sending one to a friend, how many ghosts run at once, mobile support and accounts are not confirmed.
Track Racer IO: an early ghost-first racer
Track Racer IO is an early browser racer built on Babylon.js 9, per its developer's forum post. Each run records a ghost of your fastest lap, and you can race your own best and other players' ghosts. Leaderboards cover global, country and friends, and multiplayer takes up to four racers.
The developer calls it rough and early. A friend's ghost, how many ghosts run together and whether the four-racer rooms keep cars apart are not confirmed. One to watch, not today's pick.
Ghost racing beyond the browser
Two downloads, a console game and a phone app, for comparison. None runs in a browser.
Trackmania (download)
Trackmania (2020), a download for PC and consoles, has the most ghost tooling we could confirm. Per Nadeo's watch replays guide, leaderboard ghosts need Club access, and for a specific record such as a world record the ghost file can be downloaded from trackmania.io. Starter access is free and Club costs $19.99 a year. For a tab, Trackmania in a browser covers the streaming route.
Mario Kart World (Nintendo Switch 2)
Mario Kart World is a paid console game. Its Time Trials let you download ghost data from friends, top players or developers and race or study it. Version 1.8.0 (September 2026) added a time for each lap and a color-coded gap to the ghost. Whether downloading ghosts needs a Nintendo Switch Online subscription is not confirmed.
Musclecar Online (download)
Musclecar Online is a Steam game in which you race "ghost-lap" recordings of other players in the same car type. Once enough laps exist they are sorted into six ranked divisions, and you start in F. A new player-designed track arrives every day at midnight GMT, per its Steam page. Its price, and whether it still runs in 2026, are not confirmed.
Daily Racer (iPhone app)
Daily Racer, from Rishi Masand, is an iPhone app. Per its App Store listing, completed laps are recorded as ghosts you can race, you can share ghosts with friends, a new track arrives each day and there is a worldwide leaderboard. How many ghosts share the road, and whether there are live races, are not confirmed.
Ghost or live race: which should you pick?
An asynchronous ghost lets you race at any hour, without waiting for a room to fill. The cost: the opponent never reacts. A live ghost-style room puts real people on the stage at the same moment from the same start, still with no contact.
Mars Rally Championship does both. Its online mode is a simultaneous time trial for up to eight pilots a room, drawn as name-tagged translucent rovers with no car-to-car collisions by design; each timer runs from that pilot's own GO, and the server ranks finish times. Online race times go on the leaderboard automatically, tagged ONLINE, so a live race feeds the same boards the ghosts come from. The netcode write-up explains how the rovers stay in sync.
No contact has a price: no blocking and no drafting. On Mars that costs little. Aero drag at 240 km/h is about 0.02 m/s², because the air is 0.020 kg/m³, about 1.6% of Earth's, so there is almost no slipstream to lose.
Pick an asynchronous ghost to learn a stage or beat a rival you can name, and a live room for the pressure of the same moment.
Where to try this
- Stage 2, The Long Run: two real corners, a good first ghost race.
- The leaderboard: press RACE on any row.
- A live ghost-style room: up to eight pilots, no collisions.
- Ghost racing: the game's own ghost racing page.